Chairholders
Profile
David Strong
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science
Queen's University
Chair title
NSERC Chair in Design Engineering
Chair program
Chairs in Design Engineering Program
Role
Senior Chairholder since 2003
Summary
The NSERC Chair in Design Engineering at Queen's University is an essential element of our core belief in the need to educate all engineering students in the multidisciplinary nature of design, in parallel with providing the skills required to rapidly become effective team members in the workplace upon graduation. The first term of the Chair focused on elevating and integrating effective design education in the undergraduate program. A key success was the establishment of an elective Multidisciplinary Design Stream (MDS) for students who wished to pursue specialization in design and innovation. Incorporating an intensive third year course in design process and techniques, this stream culminates with a full-year, industry client-sponsored design project for multidisciplinary student teams. Over 70 client partners and many hundreds of students have participated in the program. A 90 percent client return rate, many student hires and countless testimonials attest to the value of the experience for all parties.
The second term of the Chair, renewed in 2008, introduced new initiatives at both the undergraduate and graduate level, while continuing to grow and enhance key first-term initiatives. New undergraduate objectives, including initiatives to facilitate a new design and professional skills sequence in all programs, enhance and embed effective design skills while also increasing our collaborative industry partnerships. Strategies at the graduate level include design workshops, as well as a new graduate multidisciplinary design course.
Curriculum development will be enhanced by continuing to expand engineering education research that began in the first term. Key research areas, such as assessment, curriculum delivery optimization and outreach will be pursued.
The NSERC Chair in Design Engineering at Queen's has involved a substantial number of partners since its inception in 2003. Our partnership philosophy is to involve a large number of organizations in our fee-based multidisciplinary undergraduate design projects, in addition to larger-scale graduate project partnerships. This approach encourages broad input and dissemination of engineering design and innovation techniques, and extensive communication and consultation opportunities. To this end, the program has involved a total of 84 corporate partners to date, in addition to substantial support from the Ontario Centres of Excellence and Auto21.
Partners
- Hatch Associates Ltd.
- Shell Canada Ltd.
- PenSafe
- Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment
- General Motors of Canada Ltd.
- NOVA Chemicals Corporation
- Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG)
- Shorewood Packaging
Contact information
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science
Queen's University
Beamish-Munro Hall, Rm. 301
45 Union Street
Kingston, Ontario
K7L 3N6
Tel.: 613-533-2606
Fax: 613-533-2721
Email: strongd@queensu.ca
