(Photo: Owen Egan)

A student group called POWE (Promoting Opportunities for Women in Engineering) joined forces recently with Faculty career counsellors to hold the third annual Women in Engineering Speed-Networking event.

Sonia Kouassi (Bombardier Transportation) is one of many practising engineers who regularly devote time and energy to help mentor McGill students. (Photo: Owen Egan)

Twenty professional women were on hand to help students explore career paths and discuss transitioning from the classroom to the workplace.

POWE exists to increase awareness about the many contributions women have made to engineering and to encourage more women to enter the profession.

You can contact POWE at: powe@mcgilleus.ca

From left: Racha Assaf, BEng’09, (Shell) and Lindsay Ferguson, BEng’11, (SNC-Lavalin) with the Speed-Networking event's POWE organizers: Ashley Galagusz, Elizabeth Perron and Vanessa Vannelli. (Photo: Owen Egan)

(Photo: Hossein Taheri)

A massive water main break at the City of Montreal’s McTavish Reservoir recently sent 40,000 cubic metres of drinking water — enough to fill 17 Olympic-sized pools — gushing down onto McGill’s downtown campus. Engineering Faculty students responded quickly to prevent considerable flood damage.

Here is the link to the McGill Reporter article about engineering students and their response to the flood.

Professor Mohamed Meguid

Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics Professor Mohamed Meguid has been named Associate Dean (Undergraduate Education), succeeding Professor Subhasis Ghoshal, who is returning to teaching and research after six years as an associate dean.

A graduate of Cairo-Azhar University and the University of Western Ontario, Professor Meguid’s specialization is geotechnical engineering. Prior to his appointment he was Associate Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics. He joined McGill in 2004.

Chemical Engineering Professor Sylvain Coulombe has been named his department’s new chair, succeeding Professor Dimitrios Berk, who served eight years in the post.

A graduate of Université de Sherbrooke and McGill, Professor Coulombe worked as a Senior Research Scientist at General Electric Global Research & Development (USA) before joining McGill in 2001. He is a registered engineer and winner of the 2010 Carrie M. Derick Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Supervision.

Student applicants are accepted solely on the basis of academic merit, regardless of where they live. Any student can enter McGill if she or he meets the requirements set by their Faculty, department or program.

The student body at present is comprised of men and women from approximately 150 countries and all 13 Canadian provinces and territories. Our student population is the most internationally diverse of any research-intensive university in Canada. The enrolment breakdown is as follows:

• The total number of students is 37,835;

• Domestic students account for 80 per cent of the population and international students comprise the remaining 20 per cent;

• Students from Quebec account for 68 per cent of the Canadian contingent and students from elsewhere in Canada total 32 per cent.

The Dean’s Report regrets any confusion that may have been caused.

A major initiative has been launched that will give our Faculty’s professors and students a powerful vehicle to influence public policy in the area of sustainable engineering and design.

A $10-million gift from alumnus Lorne Trottier, BEng’70, MEng’73, DSc’06, and his family will fund an institute that will broaden our students’ knowledge and serve as an influential, independent, fact-based think tank to better inform and educate decision-makers and the public about sustainability issues.

Mechanical Engineering Professor Jeff Bergthorson is one of three dozen professors at McGill Engineering whose research encompasses aspects of sustainability. He is seen here in the Macdonald Engineering Building’s Alternative Fuels Laboratory analyzing how biofuels can be used to power next-generation engines. The work Bergthorson and his colleagues are doing will inform other research about how best to integrate alternative fuels into transportation and power-generation systems, and help to develop new engine designs that improve efficiency and reduce emissions. (Photo: Sean Salusbury)

The Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design—TISED for short—builds on an existing sustainability endeavour called ISEAD (the Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design), which was launched in 2010 with support from alumnus Ram Panda, MEng’71, MBA’77. All of ISEAD’s programs and activities will be incorporated into the new, broader-based Trottier Institute.

“Science and technology form the basis of our societies,” Trottier says, “so the public should have a solid appreciation and understanding of them. As part of that effort we have to do more to inform people about current and future sustainable practices.”

Environmental Engineering Master’s student Miriam Lebeau is researching processes that could transform liquid waste into value-added by-products. (Photo: Owen Egan)

Interim Dean of Engineering Andrew G. Kirk says that “adding a public policy dimension to our work will enable McGill Engineering to move into areas well beyond our existing sustainability institute’s mandate. The resources provided by the Trottier gift will make McGill Engineering a leading player in sustainability engineering practices—in Quebec, across Canada and, as much as possible, abroad. I am confident that the new institute will influence work being conducted at other universities and impact substantially on federal and provincial government agencies and departments.”

As part of its mandate TISED will forge a partnership with Montreal’s École Polytechnique, where Trottier has endowed a similar institute that will focus on sustainable energy practices. Collaboration between the two engineering schools will include an annual public symposium to focus attention on the relevance of sustainable engineering and design to people’s lives.

Informed discussion

The symposium’s themes will be determined by McGill Engineering one year and École Polytechnique the next. The venue for the event will also alternate between the two campuses. Trottier, co-President of the Quebec-based computer graphics firm, Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., says cooperation between the two schools “will help to secure Montreal’s place as a driver of research and discovery in the critically important area of sustainability.”

Another researcher working in the area of sustainability is Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics Professor Hatzopoulou. She has wide-ranging research interests, but a common theme of her work is supplying accurate data to elected officials and other policy-makers to enable them to make informed decisions. She leads an interdisciplinary team of engineers and health scientists that was recently awarded a three-year, $450,000 Collaborative Health Research Projects grant from the federal government. The team will examine means to reconcile the divide between urban policies that promote active transportation, and health objectives which call for minimizing the exposure of Canadians to air pollution. (Photo: Owen Egan)

McGill Engineering’s new think tank will publish white papers on global sustainability issues and on topics related to federal and provincial sustainability policies. TISED will work with other McGill units, Canadian and international universities, relevant professional bodies and federal and provincial government agencies and departments to promote informed discussion in the field.

Funds from the Trottier gift will be allocated in ways that benefit professors, graduate students and undergraduates alike. The diverse elements of the gift include an Endowed Chair; a Scholars-in-Residence program; administrative support for teaching and research projects; Faculty Scholar Awards to attract and retain outstanding junior professors; master’s and doctoral fellowships; Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (S•U•R•E) Awards; and support for undergraduate student competitions and design projects.

Benchmarks for success

It will take approximately five years for the Trottier Institute to become fully operational. The official launch is scheduled for mid- to late spring.

At a time when each dollar Quebec universities spend is being rigorously scrutinized, both Trottier and the Faculty have taken exceptional care to prepare a balanced five-year budget. No infrastructure costs are foreseen, for example; TISED will be housed in space originally provided for the Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design.

Precise benchmarks were also agreed upon to assist in the institute’s management and to help gauge TISED’s short- and long-term success.

In addition, part of the Trottier gift has been set aside as leverage funding—a strategy to attract matching support from other generous donors to support various areas of TISED’s mandate.

Editor’s Note: See three adjoining articles this eNewsletter related to the Trottier Institute gift:

• “Trottier matching funds double his gift’s impact”.

• “Sustainability will be one of engineering’s main themes in the 21st century”.

• “An exceptionally committed alumnus improves teaching, research and community service”.

During discussions with alumnus Lorne Trottier it became clear that he and the Faculty shared a common vision of how his gift could enable McGill Engineering to contribute more meaningfully to an understanding of sustainability.

• The Trottier gift will provide administrative support to help professors in numerous areas of teaching and research. Specifically, it will help them to obtain matching funds from external sources; form partnerships with industry, national laboratories and foundations; work with other Quebec universities, such as École Polytechnique, to develop joint programs; share best practices; promote student interaction and choose research areas with a public policy dimension. Particular attention will be paid to the work of junior faculty—rising stars with the potential to make important contributions.

• Priority research areas have been identified, too: energy (particularly renewable energy with a strong focus on electricity); photovoltaics and clean combustion; sustainable manufacturing; green information technologies; green aviation; sustainable urban transport; and urban development.
• In terms of undergraduate education the Trottier funding will complement current and planned initiatives to help ensure that sustainable engineering components are present in all undergraduate programs. There are plans to develop a Minor in Sustainable Engineering, new Impact of Technology courses and pilot projects and case studies to help professors incorporate sustainable engineering concepts into their teaching and research.

• The benefits for graduate students include a proposed Professional Master’s Degree in Sustainable Engineering and activities to enable TISED Fellows to interact as a true community of scholars.

Growth can equally be interpreted to mean “depth”, however, and increased depth is one of the many positive results that flow to McGill Engineering through alumni donations.

Recent gifts in areas such as sustainability, innovation, entrepreneurship and teaching have significantly broadened McGill Engineering’s ability to provide students with enhanced skills to meet 21st-century challenges.

As educators we have to cope with an ever-changing landscape in deciding how best to prepare graduates for the evolving realities of life outside the classroom, and alumni support remains key in enabling our Faculty to adapt fundamental teaching and research principles to meet these new demands.

Remaining relevant

We are proud of the quality of our programs, and we continue to receive high marks from most of our students, but we know that that we must remain vigilant to maintain our competitive position alongside other top schools.

Our classrooms, our laboratory facilities, the types of advising and counselling we provide, and the nature of the contacts we maintain with industry and professional associations are all analyzed and critiqued through the prism of what happens elsewhere.

In an era of declining government support, alumni gifts—both big and small—are essential to ensure that our Faculty’s work remains relevant, that our programs are judged first-in-class and that our reputation is considered well above par.

Your past support has brought us to where we are; your future support will lead us to new heights.

Thank you for all that you do.

Andrew G. Kirk
Interim Dean

Lab technician Daniel Bayard (right) briefs alumnus Dominic Bergeron at a Groupe ABS testing facility in Ville d’Anjou, Quebec. (Photo: Owen Egan)

Annual gifts to the Alma Mater Fund are essential in helping McGill Engineering to grow and develop. Each gift serves as a building block to spur innovation and maintain excellence.

Dominic Bergeron, BEng’87, is a loyal alumnus who understands this concept. He has been an annual donor for 25 years.

The native of Sorel-Tracy (east of Montreal) had his pick of universities, but he chose McGill Engineering for two reasons: to master his English-language skills and because of McGill’s international reputation. A quarter-century later, he has no doubts he made the right decision.

“Having ‘McGill’ on my CV got me my first job—with Domtar—and I know it’s played an important role each time I applied for positions after that. Our university is known all over the world, and I guess the main reason I’m an annual donor is to do my part to help ensure that McGill remains one of the best.”

His current position is Director of Special Projects at the Montreal-based consulting firm, Groupe ABS. Among other services, the company conducts compliance audits to determine if its clients’ operations meet government regulations and industry standards.

Bergeron himself specializes in environmental site assessments—everything from soil and groundwater characterizations to site remediation and environmental management.

The Mechanical Engineering graduate is one of a small group of alumni who started giving back their first year after graduation. He has increased that initial $20 donation every year since, and is now one of the 1 per cent of Engineering Faculty graduates known as Leadership Donors. In Bergeron’s case, he is a member of the Deans’ Circle.

“I am where I am today in large part because of what I learned at McGill,” he says, “so I’ve adjusted my yearly Alma Mater Fund gifts to reflect my actual income.”

Bergeron says he didn’t benefit personally from alumni gifts when he was a student— “at least not in terms of obtaining an internship or a scholarship or anything like that—but I’m sure the equipment and the facilities we used back in the 80’s were partly paid for by earlier generations of alumni.

“When I donate now, I do so with that thought in mind. I see my contributions as helping current and future students who, in turn, will do their part one day to help the generation that comes after them.”

If he has one message for his fellow grads, Bergeron says it would be that “it’s not so much the amount you give but the giving itself. Fifty or a hundred dollars is not an awful lot for one individual to donate each year, but if you can convince 10,000 of our grads to donate, that would mean an incredible resource for McGill Engineering.”

Editor’s Note: See adjoining article in this eNewsletter titled “Small gifts add up”.

Many alumni think that big gifts are the only way to make a real difference at McGill Engineering. Individuals of more modest means sometime feel that the gifts they are able to give are unimportant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

All donations have a ripple effect, and when alumni give every year—regardless of the amount—they make a huge difference. When students and professors tell you that every gift counts, they truly mean it, and they appreciate each and every one.

As the table above indicates, 11 per cent of the Faculty of Engineering’s 22,100 alumni made an annual gift donation last year.