Letter from the Director

Welcome to the Architectural Engineering Program,

I write to you to highlight the remarkable qualities of the Architectural Engineering Program. We advance our students’ education through intellectual learning and exceptional co-op experience to prepare them to be the future leaders and innovators in the profession.

Architecture and Engineering for millennia have had a profound impact on society in every era and locale. It gives structure to our societal order, empowers our educational and economic activities, and embeds values in everything designed and built. The AE program applies the notion of a holistic approach for building design.

"Our AE students have developed themselves into competent and respectable designers, thinkers, and innovators of the future. I see them working on major milestones to protect the environment by taking bold and immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lead various pathways on analysis and mitigation planning in the built environment to address the challenges ahead."

Our program is in a solid place. Since its launch in September 2018, the aim was to meet the large demand for new, uniquely skilled architectural engineers with enhanced design, collaboration, and communication abilities to solve emerging challenges confronting the building industry. Graduates of this program have a knack to bridge the gap between science and design. The highly original and exclusive Coop program in AE offers the peer learning, hands-on experience, and design education necessary between the various professions and stakeholders. The studio-driven curriculum differentiates Waterloo from other top schools with this unique niche. Students are also “bi-lingual” because they are taught by architects and engineers and study alongside architecture students for two academic terms at the School of Architecture in Cambridge.

Every year, the competition for AE program places begins with top students from all over Canada and the world for securing acceptances. We admit students who are believed to contribute to their overall community of scholarship and learning, including collaborative thinking and being a constructive member of the studios and classes while stepping into university life and engaging with diverse activities. Our students represent the best and brightest of Canada, and we have seen record numbers in program admissions. Out of 600 applicants we accept near 90 students annually. We have a fantastic management in admissions cycle and Open House events with an incredible dedication that our students, faculty and staff have shown through volunteering.

From the professional and compassionate staff members to the faculty who have been teaching in and advancing the pedagogy of the program, to the students who have engaged us with intellectual questions about learning priorities, to the industry advisory curricular committee’s thoughtful contributions, and the leadership in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Architecture’s genuine care and collaboration for the program, we have established continuing integrity of the program and its mission to serve each and every one of its constituents.

Moving forward, I have a profound commitment to the AE pedagogical vision. We have been recognized as an accredited program by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB). We created a path to an M.Arch. professional degree in the School of Architecture and are in the process of creating an M.Eng. professional degree in architectural engineering. We are all working with the greater community of faculty and staff in the AE program to support the needs of students in both Waterloo & Cambridge campuses. I seek to contribute to various other initiatives within the program as well as engage with alumni and professional community. This will reinforce students’ academic engagement and learning activities by establishing a practice network and to reflect on what we have accomplished and what we need to do in the future.

We, as engineers and architects, must recognize our disciplines and professions we represent, and reflect on the role that we can play to face the current ecological crisis and understand how natural and built environments affect people’s health and well-being, including climate change, digitization, and urbanization to name few.

As the Director of the Architectural Engineering program, it gives me immense pleasure to serve our diverse community of students, staff, and faculty. We are engaged in collaborative learning and thinking, while embracing novel strategies for reimagining the future of the built environment. It is my goal to create an environment for our students to excel in.