The minutes of the meetings will be bilingual in the sense that the interventions and proposals will be made in the language in which they were made.Faculty of Engineering Faculty -Council Meeting 2019.03
10:00 Oct 03, 2019, in room CBY 707
Present
Officers of the Faculty
J. Beauvais, M. Dube, L. Peyton, M. Labrosse, D. Taylor, T. Lethbridge, B. Kruczek, C. D’Amours, N. Baddour, C. Rennie, C. Adams.
Professors
C. Sowinski, JP St-Pierre, E. Baranova, B. Lessard, H. Aoude, J. Infante Sedano, E. Dragomirescu, M. Noël, H. Schriemer, H. Al Osman, K. Hinzer, E. Petriu, K. Dolgaleva, J. L. De Carufel, B. Dhillon, R. St-Gelais, A. Weck, T. Uchida
Professors
M. Majeed, S. Abdul Majid.
Staff
S. Gandolfini, H. Howes, V. Samson.
Students
Steeves, Yi. Liu, F. Amini, C. Choueifaty, V. Jidkov
Excused
Officers of the Faculty
J. Zhang.
Professors
B. Martin-Perez, D. Inkpen, G.-V. Jourdan, J. Yao, I. Catelas.
Students
I. Alainachi. A. Gowling, F. Lavergne, G. Granata, T. El-Helwani. S. Knysh.
Absent
Professors
X. Cao
Students
V. Patil, N. Bagaria, E. Raju, O. Benning
19.03.01 Approval of the Agenda
The agenda was approved.
19.03.02 Minutes of the last meeting (April 2019)
The minutes had been approved electronically.
19.03.03 Matters arising from the minutes
The Masters of Entrepreneurial Engineering Design has been approved by the Senate. We are awaiting Ministry approval.
19.03.04 Report of the Dean
Health and Safety
There were minor incidents in recent months. These included ticks during fieldwork, and a member of staff who sustained an injury on the steps of Colonel By.
Cybersecurity
This will be a regular item in the Dean’s report. It is one of the university’s top three risks. Phishing has become even more subtle than ever before: People have written messages that falsely claim they are from the Dean. Many people’s emails are likely on the dark web as potential targets. Organizational structure, including payment authorizers, can also be found on the dark web.
STEM update
The protective net has been removed from some STEM labs as the glass has been replaced. It is hoped that all work will be done by the end of the year.
Other items
- All Faculties need to produce their budgets by Oct 30.
- There has been a major increase in students in recent years, which puts pressure on all aspects of operations.
- We have obtained 9 new professor positions recently. 4 out of the 5 people we recruited last fall are women. All were our first choices.
- We need to constantly increase our research funding and impact. The Ontario Government’s new rules will make doing this even more important.
- The Health and Safety culture is not perfect but is steadily improving.
- Our CEED program and the STEM building are putting us at the forefront of Canadian universities. However, NSERC is ending the Design Chair positions, so we need to find a way to make these initiatives sustainable for the future.
- Homecoming weekend is coming up. Our faculty is engaged with many events.
- We have an unbalanced departmental responsibility for some of the programs, particularly with regard to design courses that are taken by students in all academic units.
19.03.05 Report of the Vice-Dean (Research)
The Vice-Dean provided a written report.
Research Facilitator Dr. Mahoney left, and the office of the Vice Dean is working on hiring a replacement.
19.03.06 Report of the Vice-Dean (Undergraduate Studies)
- The Vice-Dean provided a written report.
- The Vice-Dean created a handbook for professors. It will be online once it has been made accessible.
- The administration has pulled the plug on the UOSyllabus program. It will be replaced by a new tool.
- Next meeting there will be approximately 12 curriculum proposals.
- The Vice Dean will send a message reminding people about unacceptable social media usage. He urges people to report violations. There was some discussion about how the university should respond to inappropriate online behaviour in external sites. There was discussion of mentoring.
- Statistics from TLSS about staff taking their professional development courses are not readily available, even though some people have requested this.
- Enrolment for this year is as good as last year. Some programs received a higher intake than anticipated and some a lower intake, but the two balance. Admission averages keep going up. Across Ontario, the number of admission applications for traditional engineering disciplines is declining.
19.03.07 Report of the Vice Dean (Graduate Studies)
Applications increased dramatically, yet again. Our objective was to have stable enrolment, and we ended up increasing by 5%, mostly in programs where there was capacity to grow. We are looking to increase the number of PhD students, however.
We are no longer going to use the term ‘M.Eng. students’ and will refer them instead as ‘Professional Program students.’ We are tracking such students to determine how well universities in other countries have prepared them; this will help inform future admissions. We have been putting work into ensuring that professional program students are prepared for the job market. This includes internships and a professional development course that programs could choose to make mandatory.
There is pressure from the administration to revitalize our programs. Most of the growth has come from new programs.
On a motion duly moved and seconded, Faculty Council approved 2019-GRAD-GENIE-EBT-06: Major modifications to the EBT program. The programs will now be named Digital Transformation and Innovation. There will also be specializations in applied data science and in user experience design. There are also some new courses, and other minor changes.
On a motion duly moved and seconded, Faculty Council approved 2019-GRAD-GENIE-ELG-07: Minor modifications to the ELG program. The biggest change is to create courses matching Carleton courses.
On a motion duly moved and seconded, Faculty Council approved 2019-GRAD-GENIE-AAI-09: Major modifications to the CSI program. This adds a required course.
On a motion duly moved and seconded, Faculty Council approved 019-GRAD-GENIE-ELG-10. Major modifications to the ELG program. This adds a co-op option. It also adds the professional developments workshops course as required.
19.03.08 Report of the Vice Dean (Quality Assurance and Teaching Innovation)
The Vice Dean reminded Chairs that Vena training for faculty was available upon request.
Engineers Canada has produced a White Paper on the future of AUs and quantitative measurement of inputs to programs. Following consultation with the Faculty Executive and Associate Chairs responsible for the various undergraduate programs, the Vice-Dean provided a written response to Engineers Canada on behalf of of the Faculty.
The Canadian Conference on Engineering Education went well, with about 250 attendees.
19.03.09 Recommendations from the Undergraduate Representative for Chemical Engineering
Farhang Frank Amini suggested that the chairs and associate directors of programs should visit classes each year, so students know who is who.
He suggested that there be a simple flowchart explaining the decision-making processes of the Faculty (including decisions that once approved in the Faculty then have to be approved by the Senate) and student associations. He requested that there be diagrams for program changes and also a diagram for the changes to tuition.
During discussion, the issue of the impact of changes on students was raised. The Vice-Dean (Undergraduate Studies) pointed out that there is grandfathering in program changes so old versions of programs remain available for existing students.
It was pointed out that some of the information is on the website at https://engineering.uottawa.ca/governance. The Vice Dean Governance indicated he would look into these suggestions.
The meeting concluded at 11:30.
Timothy C. Lethbridge, Vice-Dean (Governance)
