This year, the Pearl Sullivan Engineering IDEAs Clinic at the University of Waterloo marks ten years of giving students from across campus access to hands-on, real-world learning experiences.
Launched in 2015, the clinic has hosted more than 60,000 students and challenged them to tackle real-world problems drawn from industrial and societal needs.
The clinic was named for the late Dr. Pearl Sullivan, former dean of Waterloo Engineering, who was committed to integrating practical experiences into the curriculum so that students could apply classroom theories to address workplace realities.
In its early years, the clinic operated from borrowed makerspaces and labs in facilities such as the Sedra Student Design Centre and the Douglas Wright Engineering building, navigating significant learning curves while refining its model for experiential education. By 2015, growing impact and enthusiasm had attracted industry partners alongside Faculty investment and the creation of an NSERC Chair in Design Engineering held by Dr. Sanjeev Bedi, founding director of the IDEAs Clinic.
New collaborations have extended the Clinic’s reach beyond Engineering, connecting students with peers in faculties of Science, Health and Environment.
“We’re building a structure that supports continuous, applied learning from a student’s first day through to graduation,” Dr. Chris Rennick, engineering education developer at the IDEAs Clinic, says. “Everything we’ve achieved so far, and hope to achieve going forward, is thanks to our dedicated faculty members, students and partners who believe that a good engineering education is practical, collaborative and fun.”
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