By Cassandra Hendry, TLS Staff Writer
Engineering is based on knowing your speciality, and knowing it well. But what happens when you’ve reached the limits of your expertise? A collaborative class featuring six professors and seven degree programs at Carleton may have the answer.
When engineering students reach their final year of university, their accumulated skills and knowledge are tested through a unique, year-long capstone project segregated by program.
But two years ago, while working on a capstone project for housing in Canada’s North, the 25-student mechanical and aerospace class had hit the limit of their knowledge. A broader approach with various specialities was needed, and a collaborative class was born.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professors Cynthia Cruickshank, Craig Merrett, Glenn McRae and John Gaydos, and civil and environmental engineering professors Liam O’Brien and Jeffrey Erochko, all oversaw the past school year’s 50-student class of engineers.
The year-long class brought two teams of 25 students together to address an issue close to home: the sustainable building redevelopment of Albert Island as a part of Windmill Development’s Zibi project in Ottawa and Gatineau.
“We wanted to work on a project that aligned more with the students’ ideas of sustainability,” Merrett says, explaining that the professors had co-ordinated with the vice-president of Windmill to create two competing student designs for sustainable building engineering. These included student innovations in retrofitting existing buildings, optimizing the use of water and sunlight, and providing insulation through a green roof.
In the past, Merrett says, students had worked on projects throughout the world, which broadened their knowledge but also limited their ability to see up close and personal the effects of what they were designing. With the Zibi development, students were able engage in something that could influence their daily lives.
“Students get to design something that may be built in Ottawa so that when they’re older, they can walk with their kids and say, yes, I helped design this,” McRae says.
That kind of reality became a large part of the course when many students took issue with the land dispute between Windmill and the Algonquin tribes that traditionally lived in the area.
McRae says that it forced the professors to think on their feet during the course. To address these issues, a representative from Carleton’s Centre for Aboriginal Culture and Education was brought in to give a workshop, while anonymous surveys were circulated and students gave presentations based on their ethical viewpoints.
“Frankly, it challenged us as professors…The course is really about technology, society and the environment. And the society part is something engineers don’t really learn about in school,” McRae says. “It was a real world experience. The students were out there talking to people in the community, and the community was interacting as well.”
Real world experience is what the course is all about, Cruickshank says.
“The project involves other disciplines and it really gives students a chance to gain an appreciation of the other disciplines involved,” she says. “Past students have said the fourth-year project helped them decide what they want to do with their careers. It’s really rewarding that way.”
For the professors, the course was a learning experience as well. Cruickshank says that they had the opportunity to meet more students and professors with whom they usually wouldn’t collaborate and gain an appreciation for their skillsets.
“I think we all bring something unique to the table,” she says.
To learn more about the Zibi project the class worked on, visit zibi.ca.