Future students

Peter Carr, a Waterloo management sciences professor, was asked by a Globe and Mail reporter whether something like Facebook or Twitter can contribute to the academic side university. “Absolutely,” he responded. “The new modern philosophies of education would say it’s important to have students working in groups, interacting with each other and the professor and learning the content together.” Carr recently taught a group of students who connected with Red Cross workers at offices in Uganda, Colombia and India using Skype.

About 2,900 potential Waterloo Engineering students, family members and others checked out our Waterloo and Cambridge campuses on November 5 as part of the campus-wide annual fall open house. The day offered tours of engineering buildings and the School of Architecture, residence viewing, demonstrations, including a dissection of a car engine, and even a “Parents’ Lounge” to answer questions.

Waterloo Engineering students competed against each other this past weekend to choose the remainder of the teams for the 2012 Ontario Engineering Competition. The first-place winners of the junior design team include: Rahul Patel, Tarjote Chaggar, Matthew Vandenberg and William Cullen, all of mechatronics engineering. The top winners of the senior design team are: Nevin McCallum of electrical engineering, and Cody Prodaniuk, Jeff McClure and Maple Leung, all of mechanical engineering.

The University of Toronto is offering an Advanced Skills in Journalism for Engineers program for engineering alumni and engineering graduate students who wish to work in media. The program will provide up to 10 engineers with eight months of mentored experience as freelance business correspondents to major news organizations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. including: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Postmedia Network , the Thomson Reuters Foundation, The Financial Times, the BBC and The Washington Post.

Do you know an engineering faculty member, graduate, student or someone else under the age of 40 who is making a difference? If you do, consider nominating that person for Waterloo Region Record’s 40 Under 40 awards. Submissions for possible canadidates will be accepted until December 2. Selections will be made by a panel of judges from the Record and the community. 

Albert Elliott, VP, HR, Communications, Administration of Total E&P Canada, will discuss the company’s industry partnerships and its role in contributing to a sustainable approach to the future of the Canadian energy mix. Students, faculty members and others are invited to hear Elliott speak Tuesday, November 15 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the J.R. Coutts Engineering Lecture Hall.

“Now is about when we should start seeing trouble with 1990s buildings, with the glass starting to get fogged up, the rubber gaskets and sealants starting to fail,” John Straube, a Waterloo architecture and civil and environmental engineering professor, told a CBC reporter for a special radio and television series investigating the short-term durability and long-term costs of Toronto’s glass-walled condos.