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Engineering has long been a male-dominated profession, with a reputation of being less than welcoming to women. In Canada and other Western countries, efforts to attract more women into the field date back decades. As a result of such initiatives, women entering engineering today could experience their work differently than those who preceded them. This paper draws on the life course paradigm to determine whether there are gender differences in engineering across age cohort. Analysing data from a survey and in-depth interviews with engineers in Ontario, Canada, the paper explores whether gender intersects with age cohort to determine experiences of employment, opportunities, and work-family conflict. Although women share some experiences across age - such as concerns about pay and recognition - differences by cohort emerged. Young women are disadvantaged compared to young men and others with respect to securing stable employment in engineering. Older women report more challenges with work-family conflict and have less decision-making authority at work. Interviews further suggest that young women both have it 'easier' and harder than others. The findings demonstrate how the life course paradigm can also be used to shed light on the intersection of gender and age in professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This institutional self-study investigated the use of text-matching software (TMS) to prevent plagiarism by students in a Canadian university that did not have an institutional license for TMS at the time of the study. Assignments from a graduate-level engineering course were analyzed using iThenticate®. During the initial phase of the study, similarity scores from the first student assignments (N = 132) were collected to determine a baseline level of textual similarity. Students were then offered an educational intervention workshop on academic integrity. Another set of similarity scores from consenting participants' second assignments (n = 106) were then collected, and a statistically significant assignment effect (p < 0.05) was found between the similarity scores of the two assignments. The results of this study indicate that TMS, when used in conjunction with educational interventions about academic integrity, can be useful to students and educators to prevent and identify academic misconduct. This study adds to the growing body of empirical research about academic integrity in Canadian higher education and, in particular, in engineering fields. [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]

Nursing, dance and studio-based arts, engineering, and athletic therapy are viewed as practice-oriented professions in which the teaching and situated learning of practical skills are central. In order to succeed, students must perform a series of performance-based assessments, which seemingly require an "able" body to enact complex tasks in situated and/or simulation-based contexts (for example, "safe nursing practice"). Our interdisciplinary research seeks to intervene within the culture of professional learning by investigating what we know about the use of smartphone video recording for situated, practice-based learning, and for supporting interactive video-based assessment as a means of accommodation and extending access for students, including students with performance anxiety,mature students, ESL learners, students with disabilities, and students in remote communities. In this paper we employ a scoping review methodology to present our findings related to students' and instructors' perspectives on the use of smartphone video to demonstrate and document practical knowledge and practice-oriented competencies across fields in the arts and sciences. We also examine broader research, as well as the ethical and design implications for the development of our technology-based toolbox project -- an online resource created to advance pedagogies deploying smartphones as tools for practical skills acquisition -- and for accommodation -- within multidisciplinary practical learning environments.

This paper presents the assessment items that were developed by science and technology teachers in Québec to explore their students' alternative ideas about engineering design technology and technological systems. These assessment items were administered to Secondary Cycle One students in Francophone and Anglophone schools in Québec to elicit their ideas about the foundational technology concepts included in the science and technology curriculum. Students' responses are presented to share their alternative and scientific explanations. In addition, various approaches to facilitate a deeper understanding of scientific models and mechanistic reasoning in students are also discussed.

Engineering education has traditionally focused on the development of technical skills and knowledge. Nowadays, the need for educating engineers in non-technical skills, such as reflective thinking, is being recognised internationally. This paper proposes that socio-cultural impacts of technology be studied together with the technology itself through the integration of social awareness modules into advanced technical courses, providing a venue for students to exercise their reflective thinking skills in the context of technologies that are of interest to them. The paper presents an exploratory study of the essays of senior year engineering students on the socio-cultural impacts of computer vision technologies. It provides insights on the themes that are of interest to the students and on the students' strengths and weaknesses relating to their reflective thinking abilities. Similar modules would apply well to other advanced courses in the engineering curriculum, to help contextualise technology and enhance the reflective abilities of engineering graduates.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent technologies are offering the power to share and grow knowledge and ideas in unprecedented ways. The CogEx software platform was developed to take advantage of the digital world with innovative ideas to support designers work in both industrial and academic contexts. This paper presents a qualitative study on the usage of CogEx during capstone design projects in mechanical engineering. It explores its potential to eventually supersede a paper logbook. This study combines three pilot projects where 15 undergraduate students used CogEx for one semester and discussed their experience in a final interview. The focus is limited to individual usage in this study. Results support that the platform has a good potential for engineering design education by replacing the paper logbook. The "extended concept mapping" structure was efficient to organize design work, and although the "concept-knowledge" separation needs refinement, it has good potential in building designer knowledge base.

Purpose:Youth with disabilities are under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in school and in the workforce. One encouraging approach to engage youth’s interest in STEM is through robotics; however, such programs are mostly for typically developing youth. The purpose of this study was to understand the development and implementation of an adapted robotics program for children and youth with disabilities and their experiences within it. Method:Our mixed methods pilot study (pre- and post-workshop surveys, observations, and interviews) involved 41 participants including: 18 youth (aged 6–13), 12 parents and 11 key informants. The robotics program involved 6, two-hour workshops held at a paediatric hospital. Results:Our findings showed that several adaptations made to the robotics program helped to enhance the participation of children with disabilities. Adaptations addressed the educational/curriculum, cognitive and learning, physical and social needs of the children. In regards to experiences within the adapted hospital program, our findings highlight that children enjoyed the program and learned about computer programming and building robots. Conclusions:Clinicians and educators should consider engaging youth with disabilities in robotics to enhance learning and interest in STEM. Implications for RehabilitationClinicians and educators should consider adapting curriculum content and mode of delivery of LEGO® robotics programs to include youth with disabilities.Appropriate staffing including clinicians and educators who are knowledgeable about youth with disabilities and LEGO® robotics are needed.Clinicians should consider engaging youth with disabilities in LEGO® to enhance learning and interest in STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Thermodynamics is a fundamental foundation of all engineering disciplines. A vast majority of engineering undergraduate programmes contain one or more courses on thermodynamics, and many engineers use thermodynamics every day to analyse or design energy systems. However, there is extensive anecdotal evidence as well as a wide range of published literature indicating that students often struggle to understand thermodynamic principles. In an effort to understand students' attitudes and perception of thermodynamics, including their expectations, experience and frustrations, an investigation was conducted. Following a review of the literature on the teaching and learning of thermodynamics in engineering, a survey questionnaire was developed and administered to close to a 1000 students in 17 thermodynamics classes at 13 universities in 7 countries. Survey results were analysed using statistical methods. This paper presents the findings of this investigation.

Globalisation has inspired a wide assortment of curricular initiatives within engineering education in the USA and Europe. This interest could be categorised in multiple directions--international exposure, service learning, or critical understanding and praxis. In Canada, however, there has been far less consideration for integrating globalisation within the engineering curriculum. The recent episode of reform initiated by the Canadian Board of Engineering Accreditation could usher in changes on this front. Situating the development of a course titled "Development and Global Engineering" within these broader conceptual and organisational impulses, this paper will illuminate a pathway towards understanding globalisation, especially within the Global South, through a comprehension of complexity and informality.

The phenomenon of women's underrepresentation in engineering is well known. However, the slow progress in achieving better gender equality here compared with other domains has accentuated the "numbers" issue, while the quality aspects have been largely ignored. This study aims to shed light on both these aspects via the lens of mentors, who are at the coalface of guiding female engineers through their education and subsequent careers. Based on data collected from 25 mentors (8 men and 17 women from 8 countries), the paper explores their experiences of being mentors, as well as their views on recommended actions for nurturing female engineers. The findings reveal that the primary motivation for becoming a mentor was personal for men and women. Many mentors from countries with relatively lower female labour participation rates perceive their roles as guarantors of their mentees' successful future career paths, and a similar trend can be found in mentors in academia. The study underscores the need for invigorating mentors' roles in order to secure a more equitable future for engineering education.

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]

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.

The last few decades have witnessed both an expansion and a transformation of immigration flows, which pose significant challenges with respect to how people work with differences across culture and space. Against this background, this paper explores how some Chinese immigrant engineers respond to differences in the Canadian labour market. It not only examines some of the learning practices engaged by the immigrants as they negotiate professional niches and professional identities, but also demonstrates how their learning process is socially mediated. In particular, it shows that licensure processes and immigrant settlement services are instrumental in entering immigrants into the cultural and social order in the Canadian labour market. It pinpoints a lack of recognitive justice in the ways in which immigrants' learning processes are institutionally reshaped. Informed by the sociocultural approach, this paper treats learning as a social participatory process, through which individual identities are constituted and reconstituted.

This paper explores Canadian engineering employers' perceptions of and experiences with internationally educated engineers (recent immigrants to Canada) employed in their organisations for varying lengths of time. Qualitative data were collected from employers using focus group methodology. Findings reflected employers' observations of culturally different behaviours and characteristics in their internationally educated employees, employers' reactions to cultural differences ranging from negative attributions to tolerance, and the implementation of largely "ad hoc" intra-organisational strategies for managing cultural differences in employer--employee relationships. Findings exposed the lack of corporate intercultural competency in the Canadian engineering profession. Equity and gatekeeping implications are discussed.

The article offers information on the periodical "Knowledge Engineering Review." It states that the periodical was established to give information related to applied artificial intelligence and knowledge based systems. It mentions that subscription price in the U.S. and Canada is 715 dollars for volume 27 of 2012. It highlights that the U.S. organizations which are registered with the Copyright Clearance Center in Danvers, Massachusetts can copy the periodical's material.

A summer academy is held for grade 9-12 high school students at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, every year. The academy, dubbed the Da Vinci Engineering Enrichment Program (DEEP), is a diverse program that aims to attract domestic and international high school students to engineering and sciences (and possibly recruit them). DEEP also provides them with the opportunity to experience the university setting. This paper discusses the organization of DEEP and presents the details of a DEEP course developed to introduce students to electrical engineering. This course is designed for junior (grades 9 and 10) students and includes lectures, hands-on activities (both in a team and individually), and a field trip. The survey results, collected as both formative and summative feedback, indicate the success of the course. This paper also provides recommendations for future offerings of the course. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures and 1 footnote.)

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the emotion learning experiences of some Chinese immigrants in Canadian engineering workplaces. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on life history style interviews with 14 Chinese immigrant engineers and 14 key informant interviews. Findings: Research respondents constructed a competitive, masculine, and individualistic engineering "culture" in Canada, where the emotional and the relational, supposedly central to the Asian and Chinese culture, are largely devalued. To fit into the individualistic culture, some Chinese immigrants learned to change their patterns of socialization and some became hard-nosed competitors. To ameliorate the deleterious effects of the alienating workplace environments, some resorted to their cultural teaching to maintain emotional health; some also tried to build collegiality and collectivity to humanize their work settings. Research limitations/implications: The study was not a comprehensive study of the emotion work in engineering workplaces. It does not capture the emotional order that may as well exist to afford different people differential negotiation power in the engineering culture. Social implications: The study suggests that while emotional connection and personalized relationship are "culturally" discouraged in engineering workplaces, they are of significant use value for immigrant workers and should be addressed to create humanized work environments. Originality/value: This is one of the few articles that examine emotion learning at the intersection of gender, race and class relations. (Contains 1 note.)

Professional mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) are one of the policy instruments employed in global and regional trade agreements to facilitate the mobility of skilled labour. While such agreements have been noted in the literature examining cross-border academic mobility, little is known about how they impact higher education. This paper examines the formation of professional MRAs in North America since the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), focusing on three fields: engineering, architecture, and accounting. In the three professions, asymmetries characterizing the NAFTA partners led to system-level reforms in Mexico. The paper discusses how and why the institutional arrangements governing professional higher education in the country were "harmonized" with those of the United States and Canada.

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]

Developing and constructing oil sand megaprojects are huge technological, engineering, and construction achievements for Alberta and Canada. Thousands of engineering and project management professionals and workers are contributing to the current effort with great pride and sense of satisfaction. But recent large capital oil sands construction projects have all experienced significant cost and schedule overruns. There are a number of reasons for these overruns. This paper provides a definition of a “megaproject,” illustrates the challenges in delivering oil sands megaprojects, and lists a number of reasons for cost and schedule overruns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laptop learning programs have been developed to create ubiquitous online learning environments. Given the infancy of many programs, there is little understanding of aspects of the program are perceived to provide value to faculty and students. This paper focuses on the value proposition (with respect to perceived benefits versus capital investment) for undergraduate students in a mandatory, campus-wide, comprehensive laptop learning program. Results indicate that the perceived value of the laptop for technical programs such as science, engineering, and information technology, and liberal arts programs such as business and criminology, justice, and policy studies are significantly different. This difference results in a clear need to use different laptop learning models for each type of program and that a single campus-wide model will likely prove unsatisfactory for most students. A need to better communicate the true value of industry-specific software and skills acquisition is also highlighted. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

Educational institutions pay careful attention to the design of program curricula, which represent a framework to meet institutional goals and missions. Of course, the success of any institution depends highly on the quality of its program curriculum. The development of such a curriculum and, more importantly, the evaluation of its quality are complex and time-consuming processes. This traditional approach requires many cumbersome manual iterations, making it a long and error-prone process. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes a new curriculum support engine as an alternative approach. The proposed curriculum support engine is a Web-based application that helps in designing any program curriculum in real time. The engine incorporates several important features, allowing the verification of the proposed curriculum coherence and the generation of statistics necessary for academic and accreditation purposes. Useful viewing and editing tools are also provided. The proposed curriculum support engine is flexible and allows additional criteria that the curriculum designer can specify to be incorporated. In particular, the engine covers the Accreditation of Canadian Engineering Programs (CEAB), the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), and the Commission of Academic Accreditation of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of UAE (CAA-UAE). (Contains 10 figures.)

The article studies the differences in knowledge production between academic researchers. In this perspective, it attempts at first to answer the following question: what factors explain differences in knowledge production between Canadian researchers in natural sciences and engineering? After a presentation of some of the empirical evidence related to this first question, a distinction between two types of academic institutions, entrepreneurial versus non-entrepreneurial universities, is introduced. Drawing from this distinction, four empirical models are suggested to test differences in knowledge production between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial researchers. The results show, first, that funding, time devoted to teaching activities, research team and individual attributes have a similar but differentiated impact on knowledge production of entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial researchers. Second, there are some unbalanced effects of the variables co-operation, time devoted to research activities, academic fields and university size on the knowledge production of Canadian researchers on natural science and engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering--channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter--proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). In the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the State-managed implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors.

This paper describes the achievements of an innovative eight-year research program first introduced in Mizoguchi and Bourdeau (2000), which was aimed at building a theory-aware authoring system by using ontological engineering. To date, we have proposed OMNIBUS, an ontology that comprehensively covers different learning/instructional theories and paradigms, and SMARTIES, a theory-aware and standards-compliant authoring system to create learning/instructional scenarios based on OMNIBUS. This approach was intended to bridge the gap between theory and practice in scientific and technological development, including learning/instruction support. The goals of this study included the following: that computers would (a) "understand" a variety of learning/instructional theories based on their organization, (b) "utilize" such understanding to help authors build learning/instructional scenarios, and (c) "make" such theoretically sound scenarios interoperable within the framework of technology standards. This paper suggests an ontological engineering solution to achieve these three goals and describes the implementation and feasibility demonstrations of the basic functions of SMARTIES, a solution that supports the design of learning/instructional scenarios based on multiple theories. Although the evaluation is far from complete in terms of practical use, we believe that the results of this study speak to high-level technical challenges of ITS authoring systems and the other areas of AIED, and therefore constitute a substantial contribution. (Contains 14 figures, 4 tables, and 15 footnotes.)

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]

This note investigates different procedures to improve radar-based estimates of rainfall accumulation, using the City of Winnipeg, Canada, as an example. Specific contributions include the implementation assessment of an advection scheme to track the movement of storms, a scheme to account for wind-induced drift, and an attenuation correction scheme that includes a simple hail identification method. It was found that a combination of these schemes improved the correlation between gauge radar 10-min accumulations from 0.48 to 0.86 for six rainfall events that occurred in the summer of 2000 in Winnipeg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the opinions and the level of awareness of university students on renewable energy and environment issues in the fields of engineering and economics/business in Canada, Romania, and Turkey, surveys were conducted in several universities in these three countries. The survey results that are presented and discussed here indicate that while there are differences between the three groups, they are small and can be explained by cultural and socioeconomic factors. A larger study with an expanded survey questionnaire applied to a wider spectrum of groups in a larger set of countries would be useful to identify differences and educational needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents an overview of the "International Forum on Engineering Decision Making" held on April 2006 in Lake Louise, Canada. The forum aims to outline current challenges related to spatially distributed systems, to develop directions for future research, and to discuss and to present possible solutions and applications in this specific field.

This paper examines the determinants of patenting and spin-off creation using survey data of 479 researchers in engineering and 449 researchers in life sciences funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The results show that research novelty and laboratory size are the only two variables significantly explaining patenting and spin-off formation in both engineering and life sciences. Network capital explains spin-off formation in engineering and in life sciences as well as patenting in life sciences, but not in engineering. Furthermore, the results suggest that many categories of resources explain patenting and spin-off formation in engineering and in life sciences, but that the combinations of resources required differ for patenting and spin-off formation and between engineering and life sciences. The results of this paper suggest that customized policies would be required to accommodate differences between spin-off formation and patenting as well as between engineering and life sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article pays tribute to Canadian engineer, researcher and educator M. Saeed Mirza. It offers information on his family and professional background. It also describes his accomplishments and his contributions to the field of civil engineering in Canada. It also lists some of his awards and affiliations.

The article presents the microelectromechanical systems issue of Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The author also offers information regarding the recently conducted meeting of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association. In the meeting, an interesting panel discussion on globalization issues was brought out and how it affects the Electrical and Computer Engineering curricula and the economy as a whole.