Forward With Integrity update: Boosting engineering’s future

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Wilkinson_David.jpg” caption=”Dean David Wilkinson updates the community on how the Faculty of Engineering is advancing the priorities outlined in Forward With Integrity. File photo.”]The Daily News is providing updates about how each of McMaster's Faculties is
advancing the FWI priorities. Today, Dean of Engineering David Wilkinson provides this
update.

When the President's Forward With Integrity letter was first released, Dean David
Wilkinson could quickly identify key opportunities for the Faculty of Engineering.

“There are strong links between McMaster's teaching and learning approaches in
engineering and the priorities identified in Forward With Integrity,” he said.
“Engagement with the community and our well-earned reputation as leaders in
experiential education and globally recognized research are foundational for the Faculty
and echo central themes in the letter.”

Since the letter's release, there has been a great deal of activity within the Faculty to
identify ways to advance the priorities, including a full day Faculty retreat last
December.

“Forward with Integrity links well with the Faculty's ongoing strategic planning process
and empowers us to move ahead in areas where there is strong alignment between the
two,” he said.

Wilkinson cites the Faculty rethinking its approach to scheduling and running
undergraduate labs as a good example of how FWI is changing the way students learn
and are taught.

“A shortage of space is forcing us to rework how we organize the laboratory
experience,” he said. “We are using this as an opportunity to make labs more open-
ended and self-guided, enabling students to become more fully engaged in the learning
process.”

While the Faculty is quite involved in the community, Wilkinson says FWI has provided a
new opportunity to identify ways Engineering faculty and students can become more
broadly engaged.

“Our expertise and experience is quite deep in building relationships with industrial
partners as both employers of our students and as research collaborators,” he said.
“There is an opportunity to do more however to engage the community beyond these
groups, for example around the Faculty's mission for 'engineering a sustainable society'.
Identifying these opportunities is a significant priority.”

Wilkinson says faculty, staff and students are all working together to help advance these
ideas. He says the recent student referendum in support of the proposed ExCEL
building, a project that will bring together Engineering's many experiential education
groups along with student clubs and teams, is an example of that outreach.

“We've been deliberate in our approach, engaging faculty, students, alumni and staff, as
well as external stakeholders, in determining how we can best move forward with
integrity,” he said.