Here you can find information on awards, course enhancement grants, the student feedback survey and more.

Please note: To assist with contingency planning in responding to COVID-19, the Engineering Teaching and Learning team has provided these recommendations for remote teaching.

Professor Carolyn Small Engineering Education Innovator Award

The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science is seeking nominations for the Professor Carolyn Small Engineering Education Innovator Award, a one-time award presented to pre-tenure faculty members in recognition of the 125th anniversary of the Faculty. The award bears the name of the first woman graduate (BSc ’73) of the Faculty to be appointed as a faculty member. Professor Small joined the Mechanical Engineering/Clinical Mechanics group in 1987. The award recognizes outstanding educational innovation in the Faculty that positively influences the teaching practices of other instructors as well as the learning of engineering students. Faculty may be nominated for innovation in many forms: in the classroom, online, project-based activity, experiential learning, developing student support programs, educational leadership, and/or curriculum development. The nomination letter should describe the activity of the nominee, the impact it has had on students, and the impact it has had on other instructors at Queen’s. Support letters, and evidence of impact are encouraged but the entire nomination should be fewer than eight pages.

All tenure-track, but not-yet tenured, members of the FEAS Faculty Board are eligible and may be nominated by other faculty members. The award will be adjudicated by a committee of faculty members with a strong track record of excellence in education. The committee may bestow this award on more than one faculty member.

Winners of the award will be invited to present a plenary talk about their educational practices as part of the 125th anniversary celebrations. They will also receive a grant of $15,000 to be used to support activity relevant to the award, e.g. curriculum development, travel to engineering education or higher education conferences, relevant workshops, educational research, or course development. Winners will also receive a free, one-year membership in the Canadian Engineering Education Association, and will be listed on the faculty webpage. The award will be formally acknowledged at Faculty Board.

Dean Nathan F. Dupuis Leadership in Engineering Education Award

The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science is seeking nominations for the Dean Nathan F. Dupuis award, a one-time award presented to deserving faculty member(s) in recognition of the 125th anniversary of the Faculty. The award bears the name of the first Dean of the “Faculty of Practical Science,” a position Professor Dupuis held for 17 years until 1911. The award recognizes outstanding sustained contributions to quality education in the Faculty that have greatly impacted students. Faculty members may be nominated for outstanding education of many forms: in the classroom, online, project-based activity, experiential learning, developing student support programs, educational leadership, and/or curriculum development. The nomination letter should describe the activity of the nominee over many years, and the impact it has had on students. Support letters and evidence of impact are encouraged but the entire nomination should be fewer than eight pages.

All members of the FEAS Faculty Board are eligible and may be nominated by other faculty members. The award will be adjudicated by a committee of faculty members with a strong track record of excellence in education. The committee may bestow this award on more than one faculty member.

Winners of the award will be invited to present a plenary talk about their educational practices as part of the 125th anniversary celebrations. They will also receive a grant of $15,000 to be used to support activity relevant to the award, e.g. curriculum development, travel to engineering education or higher education conferences, relevant workshops, educational research, or course development. Winners will also receive a free, one year membership in the Canadian Engineering Education Association and will be listed on the faculty webpage. The award will be formally acknowledged at Faculty Board.

Dean's Excellence in Education Award

This award recognizes outstanding contributions to the educational environment in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science by a faculty member. Winners of the award will receive a grant of $10,000 to be used to support activity relevant to the award, e.g. travel to engineering education or higher education conferences, relevant workshops, educational research, or course development. Winners will also receive a free membership in the Canadian Engineering Education Association for one year, and will be listed on the list of award winners on the faculty webpage. The award will be formally acknowledged at Faculty Board.

Faculty may be nominated for outstanding innovation in education of various forms, whether it be in the classroom, online, project-based activity, experiential learning, developing student support programs, educational leadership, or curriculum development. All members of the FEAS Faculty Board are eligible, and may be nominated by heads of departments or by other faculty members. The nomination letter should describe the activity of the nominee and the impact it has had on students. The award will be adjudicated by a committee of faculty members with strong track record of excellent teaching.

Dean's Educational Enhancement Grants

Dean's Educational Enhancement Grants are funded by the Dean to enhance the learning environment in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at both the undergraduate and graduate level. All instructors who teach courses in any of the ten engineering programs are eligible. The program includes a small funding program (around $5,000) with an easy application process to support new innovations, and a larger Course redevelopment program to support substantial changes to courses or groups of courses.

Sample Grant Applications:

Dean's Educational Enhancement Grant Recipients - December 2016

Course/Description Primary Contact Total
CHEE310 Jim McLellan $30,000
APSC182 Richard Brachman $50,000
APSC100 M2 Anne Topper $25,000
MECH495/MECH493 Claire Davies $32,400
MINE469 Steve McKinnon $30,000
ELEC461 Saeed Gazor $30,000
Professionalism modules Marianna Kontopoulou, Chris Pickles, Dave Strong $65,000
Biology for Engineers Kim Woodhouse $10,000
Development of Online Tutorials (MINE321) Takis Katsabanis $5,000
Matlab/Simulink Modules for Automatic Controls (MECH350) Qingguo Li $5,000

Dean's Educational Enhancement Grant Recipients - April 2017

Course/Description Primary Contact Total
APSC100 Module 3 Alan Ableson $2,500
ELEC221 Suzan Eren $5,000
Multi-course redevelopment in MECH Rick Sellens and Brad Diak $130,000
CIVL455 Ana Da Silva $5,000

Student Feedback Survey

Instructors can opt to use an anonymous survey in onQ to ask their students for feedback. After running the survey the data is viewable by the instructor in their onQ course and instructors can also modify the survey. If you need any assistance with this please, contact the Teaching and Learning Team at ETLT@queensu.ca.

Engineering Design and Practice Sequence (EDPS)

In June 2009, the department heads, undergraduate chairs, and curriculum committee chairs in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science held a retreat to discuss future directions for the faculty. One of the outcomes from the retreat was the desire to create a sequence of courses in design and professional practice in all years of every undergraduate program. A Curriculum Review Committee was created, consisting of representatives from all engineering programs in the faculty of engineering, a student society representative, the Associate Dean, the Director of Program Development, the NSERC Chair in Engineering Design, and members with economics, library, and professionalism expertise. The group was tasked with creating what became known as the Engineering Design and Practice Sequence (EDPS).

The CRC drew on considerable experience from prior innovative project-based courses, including APSC 100 (Engineering Practice), APSC 190 (Professional Engineering Skills), MECH 212 (Design Techniques), and APSC 381 (Fundamentals of Design Engineering). These courses illustrated various ways and means of teaching and learning design and professional skills at both the faculty-wide and departmental levels, and all have now been integrated or evolved to meet the new EDPS objectives.

The committee created high-level objectives for each year of the sequence, beginning with an existing engineering practice course, APSC-100, and culminating in the departmental or multidisciplinary capstone courses. The committee developed a paired second-year design/communications course, APSC 200/293, that is focused on problem definition, creativity and idea generation, decision making, and professional practice, with communication skills as an integral but separately assessed entity. This first half of this unique course has common instruction material and activities for students in all disciplines and continues in the second half with discipline-oriented projects.

The CRC established high-level objectives to:

  • enhance design and innovation capacity of our students
  • be primarily project based, with appropriate scaffolding in early years to develop project management, design process, teaming, and communications skills
  • incorporate graduate attribute assessment, required by CEAB
  • include most of the CEAB accreditation units required for engineering design
  • ensure that the structure is designed to encourage future multidisciplinary projects
  • encourage professional behaviour and skills
  • use peer mentoring to develop leadership and provide support for early year students

The resulting Engineering Design and Practice Sequence (EDPS) is a four-year sequence of courses for all students in engineering programs. It provides an opportunity to develop an excellent skillset in broad aspects of design, creativity, economics, critical thinking, project management, and professionalism, all in the context of engineering.

The first two years of the EDPS are delivered by faculty-wide project-based courses APSC-100 (EDPS I) and APSC-200/293 (EDPS II). For third and fourth year, students may choose to follow their discipline-specific sequence (EDPS III and IV) delivered by their department and tailored to the disciplinary design and practice approach, or they may alternately enrol in the multidisciplinary EDPS III and IV courses, APSC 381 and APSC 480. This multidisciplinary design sequence (MDS) employs “design for innovation” project-based learning in multidisciplinary teams, including fully funded industry sponsored projects in the fourth year. All EDPS IV courses are supervised by an engineering faculty member.

More detail about the EDPS course sequence is described in the following paper:

B Frank, D Strong, R Sellens & L Clapham (2013) Progress with the Professional Spine: A Four-Year Engineering Design and Practice Sequence, Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, 19:1, 63-74

www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.7158/22054952.2013.11464079

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