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Background: This study addresses gender differences in early career experiences in engineering by examining entry‐level jobs of Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) graduates in Canada. Purpose/Hypotheses: The study explored how gender shapes entry into this male‐dominated occupation in the context of the contemporary knowledge economy. I tested four hypotheses: (H1) There are no gender differences in job search duration and pay for BEng graduates in Canada; (H2) women experience longer job search durations than men and less pay than men; (H3) women's job searches are shorter with less pay than men; (H4) women's job searches are shorter and with the same pay as men's. Design/Method: The study uses data from Statistics Canada National Graduates Survey (2013), feminist theories, and the Cox proportional hazard (CPH) model. Results: I found that in the context of the knowledge economy, gender is a significant predictor of labor market outcomes during early career stages for Canadian BEng graduates. Hypotheses H1 and H2 were not supported. I identified partial support for Hypothesis H3 and complete support for H4. In particular, I found that women were hired sooner than men for their first engineering jobs and were paid the same salary as their male counterparts. Conclusions: Based on this study's results, I argue that early career experiences in engineering occupation continue to be defined by the gender of graduates. This paper offers several potential research areas in the field of engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New institutionalism predicts a global convergence in how higher education is organized. This convergence might be expected to intensify in professional education given accreditation requirements of professional bodies. Engineering presents an opportunity to study how international mobility agreements facilitate the development and normative diffusion of global norms in accreditation. This paper investigates how changing logics of accreditation influence the academic organization of engineering schools in Canada. Using three case studies of Canadian universities, we show how regulative and normative institutional pressures influence decisions by engineering schools to take visible action to demonstrate their conformity to global norms, while still pursuing local missions. Our findings contribute to understanding the complex mediation processes between professions and universities, and they represent a critique to dominant rationalist perspectives on quality assurance mechanisms in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic consulting is a form of knowledge and technology transfer largely under-documented and under-studied that raises ethical and resources allocation issues. Based on a survey of 2,590 Canadian researchers in engineering and natural sciences, this paper explores three forms of academic consulting: (1) paid consulting; (2) unpaid consulting for companies and; (3) unpaid consulting for government agencies. The results of this study show that academics tend to engage simultaneously in paid and unpaid consulting. Two patterns of consulting emerged from the results: a first pattern regarding engagement in paid consulting for companies and government agencies, and unpaid consulting for companies is positively associated with industry funding, size of research laboratories, large-sized research universities, technical validation of knowledge, protection of IP, and strong ties with people in companies. By comparison, a second pattern regarding engagement in unpaid consulting services provided to government organizations is positively associated with size of research laboratories, teaching, large-sized research universities, technical validation of knowledge, and with strong ties with people in government organizations. Knowledge and technology transfer policy should pay more attention to the contribution of academics engaged in consulting activities because they likely significantly contribute to help companies and government agencies solve practical problems that improve their productive and innovative capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals with different backgrounds such as engineering, medicine, industrial design, business, healthcare management and computer science often contribute to the design of a medical innovation. But how do such heterogeneous design participants actually combine their expertise to develop a medical device? Adapting Bucciarelli’s concept of “object worlds”, which recognises that those who contribute to a design process inhabit different worlds and see the object of design differently, this paper examines the perspectives of 8 design participants who contributed to the design process of three Canadian medical devices. In-depth analyses of semi-structured interviews clarified what design participants saw through their particular “lens”, how their responsibilities, knowledge and motivations combined and how they engaged into the design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research has been conducted on reliability-based design (RBD) for the ultimate limit state (ULS). Several RBD codes have been developed and implemented around the world that calibrate the ULS design for a target ULS reliability index (βuls). However, the serviceability limit-state (SLS) design still is considered using conventional deterministic approaches with an unknown SLS reliability index (βsls). This paper presents a relationship between βsls and the βuls that is specified already in the RBD codes. This relationship is linear, and a key variable in it is the ratio (R) of the SLS capacity (Qsls) to the ULS capacity (Quls). Both closed-form approximations and Monte Carlo simulations are used to characterize R probabilistically. For illustration, the relationship then is used to estimate βsls for augered cast-in-place piles designed in accordance with the RBD methodologies in the National Building Code of Canada. The results are highly dependent on the statistics of the limiting tolerable foundation settlement (ylt). For larger ylt values, the calculated βsls>βuls, which means that ULS designs automatically satisfy SLS criteria. For smaller ylt values, SLS criteria begin to control the design. The importance of sound ylt criteria is stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]