Fine tuning for Engineering

SYLVAIN-JACQUES DESJARDINS | The results are in. According to a new report issued by the Commission des universités sur les programmes (CUP), Quebec's engineering faculties shouldn't have to make sweeping changes to their programs. Just a little tinkering needed here and there.

"The report is rather timid," says Dean of Engineering John Dealy, "but it was not expected to produce dramatic results." Dealy was a member of the CUP subcommittee that examined engineering programs. While he supports most of the report's recommendations, he raises questions about some of them.

The CUP, composed of academics, students and administrators from Quebec universities, was created last January by the Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ) to examine Quebec's post-secondary course offerings and to investigate ways to improve cost efficiency. In its report on engineering, the CUP encourages increased collaboration between university departments and the possibility of joint planning or sharing of teaching staff for upper-level courses and low-enrolment programs. To this end, universities should develop common pedagogical tools, making use of information and communication technology that can improve student learning.

"At McGill, the Faculty of Engineering has been promoting increased collaboration between departments for several years," says Dealy, adding that this was an important recommendation of his faculty's Strategic Planning Task Force (1995-96).

The CUP also suggests that universities merge their computer science and computer engineering programs.

McGill's School of Computer Science, however, took the opposite step last year, by linking itself to the Faculty of Science. McGill's computer science professors voted in favour of the change, arguing that their discipline was closer in spirit to the type of critical inquiry found in science than to the problem-solving focus found in engineering.

The move was endorsed by Senate, but it wasn't universally applauded. Dealy and other engineering professors argued that the presence of computer science in their faculty was essential as the use of new technologies is becoming increasingly important in all areas of engineering.

"That [the move] went counter to recommendations made by the Faculty of Engineering and to what universities across the world are doing," says Dealy, "seemed to be of no concern to anyone."

Using computers in engineering is still an area of priority -- the faculty has proposed that its Department of Electrical Engineering be renamed the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Dealy says his faculty "stands ready to cooperate with the Faculty of Science," adding that "the major barrier to progress at this time is the serious shortage of professors of computer and software engineering."

According to the CUP report, engineering faculties should collaborate with other institutions to better complement their programs and to share teaching staff if necessary.

McGill, Dealy says, already shares staff with École Polytechnique and negotiations are under way with Concordia University to borrow its electrical and computer engineering professors to teach some courses.

The CUP urges that no new civil, geological, physical, material, or agricultural engineering programs be created, unless demand for these programs increases significantly.

"This makes sense," Dealy says, adding that McGill has no intention of proposing new programs in any of these areas. "We can hardly afford the programs we have presently," he says. "Why would we take money we don't have to start new programs?"

No new graduate engineering programs should be launched either, the commission reports, unless they complement programs currently available at other universities.

McGill's new graduate engineering programs are in accord with this recommendation, Dealy says. "The aerospace and infrastructure renewal master's programs were both developed in collaboration with several other Quebec universities."

If new engineering programs are created, the report adds, the availability of resources in all Quebec universities in the proposed field must be considered and the economic or social benefits to the province weighed.

On this issue, Dealy says, the commission was not able to address what was on everyone's mind: "That the smaller regional campuses of l'Université du Québec are costly and do not provide a good infrastructure for higher education." But, he adds, it was not in the CUP's mandate to raise issues that could be detrimental to an institution.

The CUP also invites CEGEPs and universities to harmonize their programs and increase communication to facilitate the integration of students into university.

Even though McGill enjoys close ties with English CEGEPs, Dealy says, "[the University] should work even harder in the future to nourish these relationships."

Engineering faculties are also urged by the report to attract more women students and faculty.

But Dealy said it is not clear how engineering schools should respond to this recommendation. "What are we supposed to do, go out on the street and ask women to enroll?" he says. At McGill, attracting women is not "perceived as a problem" since they already make up 50% of some engineering departments. If the discipline has typically attracted fewer females, Dealy says, "it is really a societal and cultural issue."

As well, the commission recommends giving students introductory studies in management and broadening the base curriculum for engineering students during the first 18 months of study, rather than having students specialize immediately.