Engineering designers need new models of collaboration as we work to solve some of the world’s most “wicked” problems. It is with this interdisciplinary thinking in mind that a collaborative pilot project was launched in 2023 in partnership with Harvey Mudd College and the Turkstra Chair in Urban Design. The Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship project brought together nine 3rd year engineering students from around the world to participate in a nine-week internship to work on multiple sustainability projects. By inviting an international team we brought together individuals from different cultural, educational, and engineering discipline backgrounds.
In 2023, the students were tasked with developing solutions to assist the City of London, Ontario with meeting its housing pledge to build 47,000 units by 2031. In the first half of the fellowship, students learned about sustainable urban design from experts, went on field trips to visit municipal infrastructure, and researched the issues of creating more housing that is both sustainable and kind to the inhabitants of London. Once the project started, the student teams had access to a community of practice comprising of professors from the collaborating schools, as well as staff from the City of London, to design impactful solutions for London’s inhabitants.
Project overview by Berry Genge, Paloma Lopez Sarmien, and Tia Tounesi
2024 Fellowship
We are looking for socially conscious and empathic engineering students in their third year of study to participate in the fellowship in the summer of 2024. The fellowship will provide a unique opportunity to develop your design, communication, and teamwork skills while working in intercultural and interdisciplinary teams on pressing global problems. This experience will include several field trips and will provide opportunities to learn from domain experts and participants from sectors relating to sustainability and sustainable design. For Waterloo engineering students, you can get a work term credit while working on a real-world project which impacts local communities in an environment that is focussed on your development as a well-rounded engineer.
If you are interested in the fellowship, please contact Chris Rennick.