Welcome to Smith Engineering! This guidebook is intended to help acquaint you with the resources in the Faculty, and help you start your teaching role. We encourage you to seek assistance where it is needed, leveraging the community of talented university staff, Faculty Office employees, and departmental colleagues.
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Since 1894 the Faculty has been providing engineering education in Canada, preparing students for leadership in a global society with innovative and rigorous engineering programs. Smith Engineering admits 4,600 of the highest-calibre undergraduate students from Canada and abroad each year. Ninety-one per cent of Engineering's undergraduate students complete their degrees - the highest success rate of any engineering program in Canada. Graduates leave Queen's with an outstanding, committed alumni network that will sustain them throughout their careers.
The Faculty consists of five engineering departments:
The Faculty of Arts and Science hosts four engineering science programs that are also supported by Smith Engineering:
Faculty Board: The Faculty Board is the governing body of Smith Engineering and is composed of members of the Faculty, certain administrative officers of the university and representatives of the students in the Faculty. To access membership, agendas, minutes, dates, and terms of reference, please see the Governance section of our website.
Operations Committee: A standing committee of Faculty Board which deals with Admissions, Scholarships, Academic Progress, and Curriculum matters. For further information, please see: Rules of Procedures of the Faculty Board.
Curriculum Committee: A sub-committee of the Operations Committee, the primary responsibilities of the curriculum committee, involving curriculum are:
Academic Progress Committee: A sub-committee of the Operations Committee, the primary responsibilities of the Academic Progress committee, are:
Organizational Chart: For the link to the PDF version of the organization chart for the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, please see the Human Resources website
University administration structure: For details regarding university administration structure and governance, please see: Queen's University Administration and Governance
Faculty-wide Continuous Curriculum Improvement – Smith Engineering assists programs in Graduate Attribute (GA) Assessment and Continuous Improvement (CI) to meet requirements set by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. This includes the collection and curation of wide array of data (GA assessment, student surveys, LMS, registration, institutional) from internal and external sources. This information is to provide a basis for data-informed curriculum improvement at both the course and program level. This information is routinely used to:
Some of the units that support teaching in the Faculty, and broadly in the university.
Engineering Teaching and Learning Team: In addition to the central teaching supports at Queen’s, the Faculty has an embedded Teaching and Learning Team available for you. A group of Instructional Designers and Multimedia Specialists are available during core business hours to consult on any teaching-related subject. From learning approaches, to assessment design, to learning object production, to educational technology support - the Teaching and Learning Team is your one-stop-shop to get answers to all your questions. Drop in and visit them in the Engineering Teaching and Learning Lab on the main floor of Dupuis Hall. For more information, visit the Teaching and Learning Team page.
Centre for Teaching and Learning: The Centre for Teaching and learning is the academic service unit that promotes and supports quality teaching and builds teaching and educational leadership capacity in direct support of Queen’s students’ learning experiences. We support evidence-based, innovative and sustainable strategic program enhancement initiatives, and encourage and support emerging, grassroots investigations of novel approaches to teaching and learning. For more information, or to book a consultation, please visit the Centre for Teaching and Learning website.
Queen’s Library: Services for Faculty and Instructors
Student Academic Success Services: sass.queensu.ca
Engineering Faculty and Staff Directory
Indigenous Futures Engineering: Aboriginal Access to Engineering provides culturally relevant student support services to Indigenous students enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.
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Students enter Smith Engineering into our common first year program. Students have free choice of any of our 10 programs at the end of their first year. The academic programs are listed on the faculty Calendar site at: calendar.engineering.queensu.ca
Departments manage the curriculum for each engineering program by a departmental curriculum committee and the faculty in the department. Curriculum changes are approved by these groups before moving to the Faculty Curriculum Committee for discussion, and finally Faculty Board.
The Engineering Design and Practice Sequence (EDPS) is a four-year sequence of courses in design and professional practice offered to students in all years of every engineering program. The first two years of the EDPS are delivered by faculty-wide project-based courses APSC-100 (EPDS I) and APSC-200/298 (EDPS II), which is jointly delivered with departments. The third and fourth years of the sequence (EDPS III and IV) are delivered by departments, and tailored to the disciplinary design and practice approaches.
For more information on the EDPS, please visit: edps.engineering.queensu.ca
All undergraduate engineering programs in Canada are accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB), which is part of Engineers Canada. CEAB sets out certain expectations for the outcomes developed in engineering programs, curriculum, and quality. Details of requirements are here: 2017 Accreditation Criteria and Procedures (PDF).
The critical parts of accreditation that concern you as a new faculty member are:
Academic Calendar: To access sessional dates and important dates for the upcoming academic year, please see the Academic Calendar
CEAB Graduate Attribute assessment Timeline: The graduate attribute processes, and what is expected of instructors, varies by department and program. However, all programs follow a similar timeline working with the Faculty representative responsible for overseeing all graduate attribute and continuous improvement processes.
Graduate curriculum is administered by departments and approved by faculty in the department before going to the Graduate Council in the Faculty, and then to the School of Graduate Studies, which oversees all graduate programs at Queen’s.
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Course design is part science and part art, and luckily in we have the Engineering Teaching and Learning Team available to you for consultations. Experienced Instructional Designers and Multimedia support personnel are here to help you with all your questions whether you are designing a course from scratch or whether you are re-designing a course that you have been teaching for the last 5 years. They can help you with items such as:
Constructive Alignment: ensuring that strong alignment exists between learning outcomes, course content and assessments in order to focus student effort on the things you really want them to master. All Instructional Designers on the Engineering Teaching and Learning Team have their M.Ed. and most also have their B.Ed. If you need a consultation about your course’s constructive alignment then they would be happy to help.
Quality: Queen’s University has an institutional membership to the Quality Matters program ( https://www.qualitymatters.org/ ), which provide evidence-based quality benchmarks for course design of both online and blended courses. All the staff in the Engineering Teaching and Learning Team are Quality Matters certified and they can help you leverage the educational literature to support you in designing great courses. Syllabus: The course Syllabus is your contract with the student and you have a tremendous opportunity to set students up for success when producing a comprehensive Syllabus. We have a template that you can follow to get your started. You can find it on onQ in the “Instructor Resources” course. If you don’t have access to the course, contact the Engineering Teaching and Learning Team at feas.online@queensu.ca to get enrolled.
Slide Decks: Are you looking for professional looking slide deck templates to brand your presentations? See the “Instructor Resources” course on onQ for some examples. Are you looking for feedback on your slide decks that you use in class or online? Ask any staff member in the Engineering Teaching and Learning Lab and they’ll be happy to give you some constructive feedback.
EdTech Extensions: do you want to use Educational Technology Tools to enhance student learning? Talk to the staff in the Engineering Teaching and Learning Lab about tools like Learning Catalytics, GRASP, Aropa, Lightboard, etc. If you want to try something new, then they can help!
More Resources
Course Setup
Hiring TAs: This is coordinated by department managers, UG assistant, and/or graduate assistant. At the start of term each instructor will need to meet with teaching assistants to go over
Ensure that any necessary course textbooks are ordered through the Campus Bookstore well before the start of term: Campus Bookstore - Textbook Adoptions
Course Technology
Student Data System and submitting Final Grades (PeopleSoft): Queen’s University uses PeopleSoft Information Systems in order to manage student records. To access PeopleSoft training materials and resources, please see the Office of the Registrar website.
SOLUS: This is the student side of the student data system. For information please see: SOLUS Central on the Registrar's website.
Faculty IT Support: For help with downloading software, cloud backup, and other IT related issues, please visit the Faculty IT section.
Information Security: Storing and transporting electronic information, if done without appropriate attention to the security of that information, can expose it to unauthorized access, theft, and other risks. The greatest concern is with information considered personal and confidential, and that is a primary focus of the Electronic Information Security Guidelines. For more information, please see the ITServices website.
Other educational technology: The university and the Faculty collectively provide access to a range of tools to support course delivery, including Microsoft 365 and cloud-based team spaces, class response systems, student peer evaluation, rubric development, video and screen capture software, etc. Contact the Engineering Teaching and Learning Team for more information: feas.online@queensu.ca.
onQ
onQ (the Queen’s branded Brightspace learning management system from Desire2Learn) is the official method of communication between the teaching team and the students in your course. Amongst other things, onQ allows you to host important course documents online, conduct online quizzes, send emails to students, post in news forums, and a great deal more. Instructors often use this platform to post important course updates in the news forum. However, it is important to remember that students will not automatically be notified about these posts, unless you enable the email notification button. It is also important to be clear with students about how often you expect them to check onQ.
For help with creating a course, enrolling students, and other onQ related issues, please reach out to the Engineering Teaching and Learning Team or see this link for central supports at Queen’s: onQ Support for Instructors
Course Administration
For information about academics including calendars, forms, academic integrity, etc., please see the Current Students section.
Other relevant information can be found at: