A History of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science in Celebration of MUN 100

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Memorial Engineering Through the Years —— FEAS History in Celebration of MUN 100 FEAS HISTORY IN CELEBRATION OF MUN 100 // 1

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ENGINEERING STUDENTS AND STAFF (BACK ROW S.J CAREW, JOHN MC FACEY AND A.O NEMEC) ON THE STEPS OF THE PARADE STREET CAMPUS. (MUN DAI)

FEAS celebrates its first 56 years As Memorial celebrates 100 years, the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FEAS) looks back on its evolution, major milestones, collaborative achievements, and the transformative impact it has delivered throughout its first fifty-six years.

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1930 1949 –1968

THE BEGINNING In 1930, five years after Memorial University College opened on Parade Street, a three-year engineering diploma program was introduced with Dr. Thomas H. Winter supervising the first thirteen students. C.A.D.

BECOMING A FACULTY In 1949 Memorial University College became Memorial University of Newfoundland, a degreegranting institution. One year later in 1950, the Engineering Department was renamed the Faculty of Applied Science with Dr. Carew, who hailed from Bell Island, as its first dean (1950-1968). By 1966 the Faculty had grown to include six professors teaching more than 400 engineering students.

Macintosh, Dr. G.A. Frecker and S. J. Hayes followed Dr. Winter as sole engineering professors from 1934-41. It wasn’t until Dr. Stanley James Carew replaced Professor Hayes that a second professor, John. M. Facey joined the Faculty in 1946.

It was Dr. Carew who proposed to expand the engineering diploma program into a full-degree program so students would no longer have to leave the province to get their bachelor of engineering (B.Eng.). From 1930 up to 1968, most engineering students fed into mainland schools like the Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS, since merged with Dalhousie), McGill or Waterloo, to complete their degrees.

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING DEAN

YEARS

Prof. Stanley J. Carew (Dean of Faculty of Applied Science before it became a degree-granting program)

1950–1968

Dr. Angus Bruneau (Founding dean of the new Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science)

1969–1974

Dr. Robert Dempster

1974–1980

Dr. Colin D. DiCenzo

1980–1982

Dr. G. Ross Peters

1982–1992

Dr. Rangaswamy Seshadri

1993–2002

Dr. Mahmoud Haddara

2002–2003

Dr. Raymond G. Gosine

2003–2008

Dr. John E. Quaicoe

2008–2011

Dr. Ramachandran Venkatesan

2011–2012

Dr. Greg F. Naterer (Dr. Dennis Peters acting dean from June 2021–July 2022)

2012–2022

Dr. Octavia A. Dobre (First female dean (interim) of the Faculty)

2022–2024

Dr. Bing Chen (Interim dean)

2025–

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In 1967 Drs. Carew and Vice-President Mose Morgan met with Memorial President and Vice-chancellor (1967-1973) Lord Stephen Taylor, the British physician and educator who founded Memorial’s Harlow campus, and came up with the idea of inviting several deans of engineering from elsewhere in Canada to deliver talks about their programs.

One of those presenters was Dr. Doug Wright of the University of Waterloo in Ontario who espoused the values of the co-op engineering degree program which had been introduced at Waterloo a few years before. Drs. Morgan and Carew, Lord Taylor, and

1969 –1974

EARLY YEARS DR. ANGUS BRUNEAU, VISIONARY That is how Dr. Bruneau, who later went on to become a well-known businessman and founder of Fortis Inc., a multi-billion-dollar utility company, came to lead the first co-operative engineering degree program (B.Eng.) at Memorial, with students acquiring up to two full years of industry experience prior to graduation. Since its inception, the Faculty has never wavered on its commitment to the co-op program; all engineering bachelor students at Memorial must complete eight academic terms and four to six work terms in order to graduate; this equates to sixteen to twenty-four months of paid industry work, giving them valuable experience and often resulting in job offers before they graduate.

In 1968, the first cohort of undergraduate engineering students began a year of general studies, followed in 1969 by undergraduate degree programs in three disciplines: civil, mechanical and electrical engineering - as well as a new master’s degree (M.Eng.) in ocean engineering.

Peter V Young was the man who kept the co-op program on track. As the first director of the Department of Co-Ordination in 1968, Peter, a professional engineer himself, built a staff of professional engineers and office personnel to look after student placements in industry, to provide supervision on work terms and to grade the work term reports that all students were required to complete. He and his staff found work placements for students not only in the province, but across Canada, as well as in the UK and Norway. Peter spent about thirty years ensuring engineering students

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even Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood, felt the program Dr. Wright described would be perfect for Memorial and asked for his help setting it up.

Dr. Wright suggested hiring Dr. Angus Bruneau, a young up-and-coming whip-smart professor at Waterloo, to be the founding dean of the new Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (19691974), which would be developed in the spirit of Waterloo’s co-op program.

acquired the work term placements necessary for graduation, and many of those students went on to enjoy careers with companies that had been introduced to them by the co-op office.

With the co-op placements taken care of, Dean Bruneau and other professors could concentrate on curriculum and research. From the very beginning, Dean Bruneau determined that for Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering to excel, it should not attempt to be like MacGill or any other engineering faculty; it had to have its own niche. That is how Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science became a hub for cold ocean and harsh environment research, explained Dean Bruneau’s son, Dr. Steve Bruneau, who besides being the keeper of his father’s engineering archives, has been teaching in the Faculty for twenty years. Currently Director of Industrial Outreach, the younger Bruneau offers a unique multi-generational perspective. Not only did his father serve as founding dean of the Faculty, Steve himself completed his bachelor’s and PhD in civil engineering at Memorial and two of Steve’s children and two of his nephews also studied engineering at Memorial.

“Dad was immediately drawn to the harsh ocean environment,” explained Steve. Understanding that offshore oil & gas fields would be developed in the near future, Dean Bruneau, along with Dr. Robert Dempster, who became the Faculty’s second dean, launched the first iceberg classification and towing expeditions in 1971, establishing a link between resource development and the academic community and leading to funding from both the oil & gas industry and the National Research Council (NRC).

ICE STUDY BEGINNINGS So, Drs. Bruneau and Dempster contacted the College of Fisheries on Parade Street and in the spring of 1971, the president of the college allowed the pair to go out to sea on the MV Beinir to study iceberg movement. By this time, the Faculty had begun offering doctoral studies in ocean engineering.

(NRC) providing half a million dollars in funding to further engineering research activities related to the ocean such as iceberg drift and the problems icebergs create for offshore oil exploration on the Continental Shelf. “That project got us noticed by the NRC and led to the first grant from them to establish the Ocean Engineering Research Group,” said Dr. Dempster, adding that John Allen was the first group leader followed by Ross Peters.

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“Angus was a great fellow; he inspired me. He interviewed me in Kitchener-Waterloo and he wanted to do exciting things,” said Dr. Dempster, who arrived in St. John’s in 1969 with a PhD in fluid mechanics from the University of Toronto and an understanding of advanced theory for oceans. “It was this background in fluid mechanics that brought me here. We also had John Allen who came from Scotland and had experience going out on a boat.

Angus decided in 1970 that we really needed to get some experience. But we didn’t have a lot of money and no research money.”

“Part of the grant to Memorial is aimed at developing a variety of techniques to eliminate the hazards which icebergs pose to navigation and offshore petroleum explorations,” explained the 1972 fall copy of Luminus. “There are three essential questions to be answered: How do wind, current, and the shape and density of the ice influence its motion? What are the characteristics and

“This was the most exciting time,” said Dr. Dempster, who wrote up the very first iceberg drift report with photos and drift graphs and calculated position based on radar. “I wrote up the report and we went to Ottawa to sell the idea that we were going to be the first ocean engineering faculty in Canada.”

Not only did Drs. Bruneau and Dempster take their report to Ottawa, they also took it out west and said, “we can do this.” That led to $200,000 in funding from the oil & gas industry and a second offshore expedition. This time, the team leased one of Ches Crosbie’s vessels, the Percy M Crosbie, and spent eighteen days offshore with other researchers to determine if icebergs could be deflected from interfering with offshore oil & gas installations.

“This was a character-defining moment,” said Steve Bruneau, explaining how the team succeeded in towing seven icebergs. “This showed a pioneering attitude and that gave legs to funding from various foundations,” added Steve. “Dad’s gung-ho spirit was a catalyst and he helped energize folks here by doing new research that established a link between resource development and the academic community.”

Indeed, the resulting report, co-written by Drs. Bruneau and Dempster for the oil industry, led to, in October 1971, the National Research Council

THE FIRST ICEBERG TOWING EXPEDITION ABOARD THE PERCY M. CROSBIE VESSEL IN SPRING 1971. DRS ANGUS BRUNEAU AND ROBERT DEMPSTER. (PHOTOS BY DRS. STEVE BRUNEAU AND ROBERT DEMPSTER)

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mechanisms of the opening and closing of polynyas (areas of open water in ice)? What are the mechanics of interactions between ice and ship or ice and offshore drilling platforms? Experiments already done involved towing icebergs up to 390,000 tonnes (towering 114 feet above the water) under diverse wind and current conditions.”

With two ice studies complete, the Faculty was well on its way to realizing its dream of becoming a hub for cold ocean research.

LORA-1 (LOW TEMPERATURE OCEAN RESEARCH ACTIVITY) A third major project in 1971 would never have happened if Dr. Dempster hadn’t scrounged for over a year to obtain and modify parts to build an underwater laboratory called LORA-1 (Low Temperature Ocean Research Activity), which was lowered onto the ocean floor in Broad Cove, St. Philip’s in order to study corrosion of materials in this harsh offshore environment, where

"Since 1968 (the) Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science has actively pursued a policy of grappling with problems of importance to the province. It has established research programs to examine and evaluate the environment, to combat obstacles to the exploitation of provincial natural resources and to open up new and undeveloped resources for the social and economic well-being of Newfoundland and the country as a whole.”

“Taking advantage of the natural assets of Newfoundlanders from fishermen to industrialists, and the unique environment of this province, the Faculty’s programmes are designed to meet the special needs of Newfoundland and to make significant contributions in solving problems in areas rich in economic and social returns. …the most prominent area is ocean-related research and development directed to the cold environment stretching off Newfoundland shores into the Arctic.”

— Luminus Fall, 1972

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The sixteen-foot-long cylindrical underwater laboratory was built out of two fish digesters that Dr. Dempster convinced a Crosbie and Company Ltd fish plant in Southern Harbour to donate to the cause. Engineering students enthusiastically set about using picks and shovels to remove concrete and brickwork from inside the digesters before they were transferred to the College of Trades and Technology (now College of the North Atlantic) on Prince Philip Drive. College students cut and welded metal to create the habitat, which weighed eleven tons and was anchored to the ocean floor by eight concrete blocks and eye hooks embedded in the bedrock in Conception Bay.

THE MAKING OF LORA-1. FROM DISCARDED FISH DIGESTERS TO OCEAN LAB WITH A 45-FOOTLONG INSTRUMENTATION TOWER TO MEASURE WAVE ACTION. (PHOTOS BY DRS. STEVE BRUNEAU AND ROBERT DEMPSTER)

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temperatures were below five degrees Celsius for more than six months of the year.

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The Newfoundland Light and Power Company donated an old cable station to use as the shore base as well as cables to bring electric heat and light to the habitat, which sat in thirty-three feet of water.

Bell-Northern Research donated communication lines. Air and drinking water were also supplied from shore through a 500-foot umbilical cord.

“The LORA 1 underwater station was the first of its kind in Canada,” said Dr. Dempster, explaining how it was delivered onsite by the Canadian Coast Guard’s Sir Humphrey Gilbert and could

accommodate three aquanauts if they were living on board, or five, if not. The living area contained two beds, a stainless-steel toilet, a stove, oven and table, while the work area housed radio and communications equipment.

“Engineering students and Faculty members began taking swim lessons so they could work on LORA 1.

I got my diving certificate. We pushed the idea of technology. Mose Morgan understood what we were trying to do. He couldn’t give us much funding, but I think he chose me as the second dean after I oversaw that project.”

In addition to corrosion and metals behaviour, students got to study anchoring and stabilization of underwater pipelines, the dispersion of pollutants in coastal waters, under-ice operations and the interaction of subsurface structures with sediments. The federal government assisted by testing equipment and materials from Canadian manufacturers.

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING VISIT TO CHURCHILL FALLS AND THE WESTERN LABRADOR MINING OPERATION IN LAB CITY. (PHOTOS BY DR. STEVE BRUNEAU)

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“The fact that NRC featured an eight-page spread on LORA 1 in their April 1972 magazine indicated that they felt the project was significant,” said Dr. Dempster. The article ends with the following quote.

“What is the role of a university? Judging from its Ocean Engineering Research Program, Memorial’s answer might well be: not just an institution providing an effective education for its students, but more, an institution for providing maximum benefit to students, to the institution as a whole and to society; not a closed community of scholars, but an outward-looking integrated group of specialist teaching and investigating ways to meet the special challenges of our society and environment.”

Another huge engineering project that was underway in the province at that time was Churchill Falls and Steve Bruneau explained the impact the project had on his father. “In 1973, Dad brought the entire Faculty to see Churchill Falls - and the Western Labrador mining operation in Lab City to impress upon them the scale of the project’s potential. Although Dad didn’t play a leading role in the underground powerhouse construction, he was still very proud and hired people directly out of the Churchill Falls project to teach in the Faculty, people like Harold Snyder and Tom Kierans.”

“During his time as dean, Dad also approached the Mother Superior at Holy Heart to ask her to encourage female students to consider engineering,” said Steve, who said he’s not sure how well that worked initially but his father was definitely forwardthinking and was delighted to see that in later years the Faculty had a focus on women in STEM and contributed to many camps for women such as those offered by Women in Science and Engineering (WISE). “I believe that my mother, Jean had a great influence on this also, as she was an unapologetic pioneer for women in many ways. I think they would congratulate each other if they were both here to witness that fifty years after the start of the maledominated program, Dr. Octavia Dobre served as the Faculty's first female Dean (interim).”

The Faculty’s first dean also wanted his engineering students to be well-rounded; to have a background not only in their discipline but also in the arts and humanities. Realizing that the president and vicechancellor of the university would be an excellent choice to teach such a course, Angus reached out to Lord Taylor, who not only came back with a resounding yes, but immediately immersed himself in preparation and delivery, deciding that Kenneth Clark’s series of films called Civilisation would form the basis of the course. These films covered everything from the Vikings, to Gothic Art, Romance and Renaissance and the Reformation. “…our Faculty of Engineering had decided that its students’ education would be sadly lopsided if it excluded the humanities and the social sciences,” wrote Lord Taylor to his students in the companion guide he wrote to Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation film series. “So a General Studies programme was initiated, and I was asked to be the first instructor.

Accordingly, I planned a bipolar, thirteen-week course with K. Clark on celluloid… on Wednesdays, and myself in the flesh on Mondays...”

“We soon ran into two technical difficulties,” continued Lord Taylor. “Many of the words and most of the names which K. Clark (and I, myself) used were completely new to our audience. Not one in a hundred had heard of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, even though his huge ship, the Great Eastern, had brought the first trans-Atlantic cable to Newfoundland…Our second technical snag was this.

Since film lectures are best given in the dark, it is extremely difficult to take notes.”

Thus, Lord Taylor wrote the notes ahead of time and distributed them to students after each film lecture and by 1971 had them bound in a book, which formed the aforementioned companion guide. Every engineering student was required to complete this course.

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WOMEN IN ENGINEERING AND A HOLISTIC EDUCATION

“A few of our engineering students… asked why they should be subjected to a course of general studies…

The answer might be given in these terms,” wrote Lord Taylor. “The work of the engineer is constantly changing the society in which he operates. It should, therefore, be planned with not only its physical but also its social effects in mind. No-one can make a valid judgement for society unless he is aware of the nature of the society and the roots from which it has grown. Thus a knowledge of the history of civilisation is a prerequisite to wise engineering action, which is also social action.”

“This course was a metaphor for what Dad wanted to accomplish,” said Steve. “He wanted students coming out of here to be special.”

Alongside Dr. Dempster, Dean Bruneau began recruiting other professors, notably Cal Noble, John Allen and John Molgaard.

1970 CHRISTMAS PARADE FLOAT BUILT BY ENGINEERING STUDENTS FEATURED A PAPER MÂCHÉ EARTH AND MOON WITH A COW JUMPING OVER THE MOON. (PHOTO BY DR. STEVE BRUNEAU)

“Angus recruited all of the first profs,” said Dr. Molgaard explaining that his own interview, like Dr. Dempster’s, took place in 1968 at Waterloo where Angus was still teaching. “Mose Morgan, VP of Memorial at the time, gave Angus a free hand in his recruiting.”

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Dr. Molgaard was a thirty-two-year-old postdoctoral fellow in metallurgy at McMaster in Hamilton, Ontario when Angus encouraged him to do a site visit of Memorial campus, which he did a short time later, without his wife who was too pregnant to travel. “There wasn’t much to see (in the science building where we taught). There were only three floors; the top story was not built yet and the west wing was occupied by provincial government test facilities… We were quite a small team to start with.”

Over the years Dr. Molgaard not only taught courses close to his research in materials, tribology, ice mechanics and biomedical engineering, but he developed a course called Introduction to

1974 –1980

Engineering, the only engineering course offered to first-year students outside the Faculty to garner interest. Dr. Molgaard also worked as Lord Taylor’s teaching assistant during the period he was teaching from Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, a thirteen-part documentary series and book which complemented Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series.

Although Dr. Molgaard retired from teaching fulltime in 2001 when he turned sixty-five, he continued to teach on a per-course basis for many years and continues to supervise graduate students. In 2022, he received the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Faculty.

PIVOTAL YEARS DEAN ROBERT DEMPSTER

industrialist and philanthropist and author of The Limits of Growth.”

After five years as dean, Angus Bruneau was promoted to Vice President, Professional Schools and Community Services and leadership of the Faculty transferred to Dr. Dempster in 1974.

“We were interested in research, but we never lost sight of our teaching responsibilities and turning out skilled engineering graduates,” said Dr. Dempster.

“In fact, we thought a great deal about it. We needed graduates to fuel the new oil & gas industry.”

“When I became dean, I tried to get people more involved and brought in prominent international speakers to give public lectures sponsored by Jack Angel in honour of his father. They were known as the FW Angel Memorial Lectures,” said Dr. Dempster. “People like Sir Bernard Lovell, worldrenowned physicist and astronomer; John Kenneth Galbraith, economist; and Dr. Aurelio Peccei, Italian

Dr. Dempster said the Faculty never would have been so successful without the people who kept the place running. “The staff were superb. We had Doris Bennett, secretary to the dean and Miller Ewing who looked after the budget; Peter Young took care of co-op programs and Tony Duarte looked after the laboratories.”

"From the earliest chapters of our history to the present day, the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science has been shaped by the steadfast dedication of its people from professors to staff members, including executive assistants to the deans, associate deans, discipline chairs/department heads, lab managers/directors, and student executives. Their collective commitment forms the foundation of the Faculty’s enduring success" — Dr. Bing Chen

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Also in 1974, Dr. Dempster had the honour, along with Drs. Molgaard and Allen, of overseeing Memorial’s first electrical, mechanical and civil engineers graduate. Dr. Molgaard cites that first engineering degree ceremony, as well as the design side of engineering where students from different disciplines collaborate, as the highlights of his career.

“Angus was a materials guy; he understood ice and steel under stress. When I was a student, he hired me to do some strength and structural analysis of ice in a different way. I had to cut thin layers of ice and put them under compression. Then I shone an ultraviolet light through and took pictures showing the stress point changes at every ten pounds of pressure. The colours changed. Angus wanted Newfoundlanders to become experts in icebergs and ice; that was the vision he had.”

David Rees was a member of that first graduating class, a cohort of seventy-six bachelor students.

David was one of the oldest students, in his midtwenties when he entered engineering with a wife, a child, a job and a house under construction.

David also remembers courses taught by the president and vice-chancellor. “We referred to him as Lord Taylor. One course he taught had to do with vernacular housing in Newfoundland; it was very informative.”

“Studying engineering at Memorial was wonderful; I enjoyed every minute of it. The profs were mostly young; Tom Kierans and a couple of others were a bit older. They were at the top of their game in their fields. It was great for us to be trained by them,” said David.

All of David’s classes were taught in the science building and the engineering students had use of a room to relax, for discussions and parties. “It was a lot of fun,” said David. “There was great camaraderie among the engineers, especially this first class. There was a bunch of energy there. The school was able to tap it and we thrived on it. The guys who graduated did really well; thrived in the engineering field. Quite a few millionaires came out of that first class.”

“One thing that sticks in my mind were the labs and helping one another connect; helping one another solve problems. I was older and I’d help the others with mathematical problems or to draft something,” he said, explaining that of the 133 engineering students who’d entered the program with him, seventy-six graduated. “At the start, we did a bit of all three disciplines; there was no room for procrastination. You might hate (how much pressure they put on you) when you’re a student, but what they’re teaching you is to handle a heavy workload and to get the work done well and on time. It gets entrenched in you and makes you a better person.

When people ask me, ‘What are you?’ I always describe myself as a problem solver.”

“I remember meeting Angus; we seemed to hit it off from the get-go. He was the kind of person I would aspire to be if I could. He was a good engineer, but he was also a good writer and an excellent speaker.

It was captivating listening to him,” said David. “I remember Angus saying to me, ‘the energy of the future is hydrogen. Here we are in Newfoundland; what do we have an abundance of? Electricity and electricity can be used to make hydrogen. We could take excess capacity from Churchill Falls and make hydrogen to use in aircraft and other things.’ His mind was always turning; he could see so far ahead, he was a visionary.”

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FIRST GRADUATES: DAVID REES (B.ENG. 1974)

After obtaining his bachelor degree, David continued with Newfoundland Telephone, where he’d already been working before entering the Engineering Faculty until Angus invited him to work at Memorial as his assistant.

The Nova and Alberta Corporation was interested in alternative energy and wanted to investigate burning Newfoundland peat as a fuel source. "Angus had me work on that project,” said David. “We identified a bog source near the paper mill in Grand Falls and they were willing to burn peat with other materials like bark to run the boilers. We also investigated peat as an oil absorbent and patented the product.

In the end, Nova Corp hired me away from the university and put me in charge of the project."

“We were so lucky to have Angus Bruneau when putting together the engineering faculty… He was a big influence on my life and the rest of the engineering students felt the same. I had a great deal of admiration and respect for him. Those first years, all went so smoothly; just amazing. I don’t ever remember complaints about anything, never heard rumblings. With a new school, you’d expect things to go wrong but they didn’t. I attribute that

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to Angus Bruneau and his team. Bob Dempster was a good dean too; he had a tough act to follow, but he did an excellent job.”

workload was heavy and everyone quickly learned the importance of working together and supporting each other.”

FIRST FEMALE GRADUATE: HILARY DAWSON (B.ENG. 1975)

“In our first year, the graphics lab was our home away from home, where we studied, bonded and even chilled out. I may have missed having other girls in the class, but there was little time to dwell on it.”

The following year, 1975 was a pivotal year for the Engineering Faculty. Hilary Dawson became the first female engineering graduate at Memorial.

After obtaining her electrical engineering degree, Hilary accepted a position as the first female engineer at Hermes Electronics in Halifax to work on oceanographic instrumentation. She continued in this field after moving to the west coast of BC and later shifted to software development, eventually forming her own IT consulting company, Distilled Knowledge Services.

“There was a sense of camaraderie and we got through our assignments together. I came to appreciate the special atmosphere at MUN years later when I connected with other engineers from older, and larger programs that were very competitive and dog eat dog, particularly for women. We were, and still are a team. I am looking forward to meeting up with everyone in St. John's in September 2025 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of our graduation.”

Also in 1975, the hard work of both Deans Bruneau and Dempster in securing a dedicated home for the growing Faculty came to fruition.

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DR. ROBERT DEMPSTER AND HILARY DAWSON. (PHOTO BY DR. ROBERT DEMPSTER)

“My enrollment in engineering was the direct result of an interview with Dean Bruneau, arranged by my father who was the head of philosophy at the time,” she said, explaining that her brother, Kevin had enrolled in engineering the year before. “I was sixteen, had finished first year science and was unsure where I was heading. Dr. Bruneau was a big man, both in stature and personality, and I was quickly convinced. The prospect of well-paid co-op jobs was a welcome bonus.”

And how was it for Hilary being the only woman in a classful of young men? “I was generally accepted by the group and, having grown up with brothers, was comfortable in the class. As Dave mentioned, the

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In November, the Faculty moved to the new S.J. Carew Building, on Long Pond on the north side of campus (officially named in 1977), thanks to funding from the provincial and federal governments and industry. When the S.J. Carew building opened, it was not only home to the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, but also the Department of Geology (which remained until Earth Sciences got their own Alexander Murray building across the street in 1990).

The new building was equipped with lecture rooms, including the 213-seat Angus Bruneau Engineering Lecture Theatre, and labs requiring light in the front of the building and heavy labs and shops in the back for practical experiments and hands-on project work.

It also housed the Ocean Engineering Research Centre (OERC) with a fifty-eight-metre tow tank and a hydraulically-actuated wave board to test standard ship resistance, self propulsion, open propeller tests, and podded propeller tests. This addition greatly enhanced the Faculty’s research capabilities.

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FACILITIES WITHIN THE OCEAN ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTRE IN THE S.J CAREW BUILDING

CENTRE FOR COLD OCEAN RESOURCE ENGINEERING In 1975, the pioneering research led by Drs. Bruneau and Dempster resulted in funding from the Devonian Foundation for the establishment of the Centre for Cold Ocean Resource Engineering or C-CORE with Harold Snyder as its first director. This world-renowned research institute specializing in remote sensing, ice engineering and geotechnical engineering made St. John's a hub for cold oceans research and development (R&D).

“C-CORE would not exist if we hadn’t started those field studies in 1971,” said Dr. Dempster. “We started aerial photography using a single-engine plane which allowed us to calculate iceberg mass above the water and determine the portion underneath the surface.”

At the same time, the provincial government established the Newfoundland Oceans Research and Development Corporation (NORDCO Limited), a crown corporation with the aim to commercialize the research coming out of both the engineering Faculty and C-CORE. Jan Furst became president and general manager. (See the Faculty’s 2025 Research Report for a more detailed history of FEAS-NRC partnership)

FIRST ACCREDITATION AND PEGNL’S EARLY HISTORY Another huge accomplishment for the Faculty in 1975 was getting accreditation for the civil, electrical and mechanical disciplines. “Accreditation is basically a license to graduate people with a bachelor degree in

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Canada which leads to a professional practice license or P.Eng.,” said Steve Bruneau.

But it wasn’t until after Newfoundland joined Canada that regulation happened.

“In order for an engineering graduate to receive their license to practice as a professional engineer, their education must meet certain educational standards as determined by their provincial or territorial engineering regulatory body. In Newfoundland and Labrador, that body is Professional Engineers and Geoscientists Newfoundland and Labrador or PEGNL,” explained Geoff Emberley, former CEO of PEGNL (2010-2019) and a graduate of Memorial University’s first degree-granting co-op engineering class of 1974. “These Canadian engineering regulatory bodies, through a national body called Engineers Canada (EC), developed common educational standards that are accepted by all. One of these standards is accreditation.”

“After confederation, a group of prominent engineers, including Memorial’s Stan Carew, petitioned the provincial government to establish an act to regulate engineering,” said Geoff Emberley, who progressed through PEGNL as a member of the board, to president of the board, and past president and then became a member of the Board of Engineers Canada. For his outstanding volunteer contributions to engineering in the province, Memorial awarded Geoff the JD Eaton Award in 2000. “The provincial government saw that it was in the public interest and the Association of Professional Engineers of Newfoundland (APEN), now PEGNL, was formed under an engineering act, paralleling the engineering acts of other provinces.”

Since 1965, EC’s Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) established teams to periodically review a university’s engineering program, and decide whether it qualifies for accreditation. With accreditation in place, a student signing up for an engineering program is assured their degree will allow them to be licensed. Accreditation is critical to the reputation of an engineering program and engineering education standards in Canada.

Since PEGNL was formed in 1952, Memorial engineering and PEGNL have strongly supported each other.

From 1930 through the period when Memorial students completed the three-year engineering diploma program and then went outside Newfoundland and Labrador to complete their degrees, these graduating students’ individual transcripts had to be reviewed and assessed by a provincial or territorial licensing authority, to see if additional courses were required. In 1965 these mainland programs became accredited, and their undergraduate degrees were then accepted across the country as meeting the educational requirements for licensure.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, however, there was no regulatory body for engineers until 1952 when the Association of Professional Engineers of Newfoundland or APEN was established.

According to Challenge and Change: An Illustrated History of Engineering and Geoscience in Newfoundland and Labrador by D.R. Tarrant, the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) had set up an office in St. John’s with E. Baillie as the first president in 1948 and the first meeting was held on June 7 on Memorial University’s Parade Street campus.

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With the beginnings of the co-op degree-granting program in 1969, there was a recognition that achieving accreditation would be a critical element of the program’s success. Recognition of Accreditation by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board was achieved for the civil, electrical and mechanical programs, one year after their first graduates, in 1975.

Since that time, Memorial’s disciplines have been continuously accredited including all the new disciplines added over the years. Not only has the quality of Memorial’s engineering programs been recognized by the CEAB, but the programs have received national and international recognition.

The collaboration between Memorial engineering faculty members and PEGNL members benefits everyone involved. Memorial engineering faculty members have been prominent on many PEGNL committees, especially the registration committee that licenses engineers to practice.

“Since 1974, many faculty members have served as president/chair of PEGNL’s governing body including Howard Dyer, Ross Peters, Ray Gosine, and Dennis Peters,” said Geoff. “Darlene Whalen, who worked in the co-op office and as a lecturer, is current president/chair and is the first female to serve in that position and also the first person to serve in the president/chair position more than once (1997-1998 and 2024-2025). The deans of

engineering have close relationships with the PEGNL board of directors, for many years serving on the board as an ex-officio member.”

Memorial engineering faculty members have also contributed to Engineers Canada. Many faculty members have participated in accreditation visits of other engineering schools in Canada when their programs have been up for re-accreditation. Former deans Ross Peters and Ray Gosine served for many years on the CEAB, including chairing the board, and Dennis Peters chaired the Canadian Engineering Qualifications Board (CEQB), which establishes many Engineers Canada standards for consideration by the provincial regulatory bodies.

Engineers Canada also works with similar national regulatory bodies in other countries to enable mutual recognition of university engineering programs. Ross Peters, then a member of the CEAB, was instrumental in working with an umbrella international organization to bring Japan into this mutual recognition agreement, enabling the credentials of Japanese engineering educational programs to be recognized with the group, as well as the group’s credentials to be recognized in Japan.

This is one of the reasons Ross Peters received the Order of Canada.

PEGNL has also contributed to Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science in many ways, through scholarships and participating in committees as well as providing support and advice regarding engineering regulatory and industry matters.

“There is a synergy that results from the close working relationship between people at Memorial engineering, PEGNL and Engineers Canada,” said Geoff. “That tight relationship has been helpful to all organizations in achieving their goals.”

In 1989 the provincial government changed the legislation to include geoscientists, and the name became the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland. APEGN is still the formal name, but the common name changed to PEGNL in the late 2000s making it easier for the public to remember and relate to.

Today PEGNL has approximately 5,600 members and 700 permits to practice. It is accountable to the public through the provincial Department of Digital Government & Service NL and governed by a twelve-member board, three members of which are appointed by government. Registration with PEGNL is mandatory for anyone practicing engineering or geoscience in the province (Engineers and Geoscientists Act, 2008).

DR. DEMPSTER (BACK FROM RIGHT) AT 1977 CONFERENCE ON PORT AND OCEAN ENGINEERING UNDER ARCTIC CONDITIONS (POAC) (PHOTO BY DR. ROBERT DEMPSTER)

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THE 1977 PORT AND OCEAN ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (POAC) In September 1977, Dr. Ross Peters chaired the Port and Ocean Engineering Conference under Arctic conditions. This was a huge undertaking with attendees from twenty-one countries. “Memorial, C-CORE and NORDCO collaborated to promote Newfoundland as a hub of ocean engineering,” said Dr. Dempster, who was dean at the time. “We wanted to show the world we were more than just a place for fishing.”

1980 SHIPBUILDING In 1980, Dr. Dempster introduced a new shipbuilding program with only two students. “I had submitted the proposal to Senate in 1976,” said Dr. Dempster. Dr. Bruce Colbourne, who went on to teach in the program for thirty years, first as a sessional lecturer, and later as a full-time faculty member, was one of the two students to begin the program in January 1980. The program was not supposed to start until the following year, but Bruce, who at the time had already completed Term 6 in electrical and John Gillingham, who had done naval architecture technology on Parade Street, the original campus of Memorial, both expressed an interest in the proposed program, and since they were ready to go, the original three faculty members, Bill Milne, Dr. Charles Hsiung and Dag Friis, decided to start a year early.

“For a brand-new program, off to a somewhat premature start, I remember course content being surprisingly well developed,” says Dr. Colbourne, who received his undergraduate degree alongside John Gillingham in 1982. “With two students and three faculty, it was also very personal. There was no hiding in the back of class. The three faculty had very different, but also very complimentary, backgrounds. The upshot was that we got, what I later realized to be, a very nicely rounded education, both in the technical sense and in the professional and life guidance sense. I do remember that the Ocean Ranger sank during our final semester and that Bill Milne was very keen to draw lessons from the event and impress them on us. The sense of professional responsibility imparted from those discussions stuck with me for the rest of my career.”

With the three professors in place, each took responsibility for developing certain courses.

Daag Friis dealt with structures, hull vibrations, a MEMORIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE YEARS // 16

second marine engineering course as well as ship production management; Bill Milne with the ship design courses and the first marine engineering course; and Charles Hsiung with resistance and propulsion, hydrodynamics and ship dynamics areas.

“I counted the different courses I had taught the first ten years of the program and found that it was twenty-seven different courses,” said Dag Friis, who went on to become president at DF Marine Consultants in Placentia. “And a significant portion of those had never been taught at MUN before.”

Over the course of its existence, the shipbuilding engineering (1982-1985) program changed names several times. In 1986, it became Naval Architectural Engineering and finally Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering or ONAE in 1997. All of these programs (Shipbuilding, Naval Architectural, and Ocean and Naval Architectural) were accredited from their first graduating class.

Dr. Neil Bose, former president and vice-chancellor pro tempore of Memorial, taught in both the Naval Architectural Engineering program and the Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering (ONAE) programs for twenty years, from 1987-2007.

“It was a lovely place to work,” said Dr. Bose, explaining at the time he was hired, the Faculty needed more professors and he and Dr. Mahmoud Haddara arrived around the same time. “Ross Peters was dean and Bill Milne was discipline chair. Bill was very much a people person; he thought a lot about what you might want to do and not just what the Faculty needed you to do.”

Dr. Bose taught ship statics in the first semester (Spring 1987) and then Bill Milne encouraged him to develop a course in his area of interest, which was energy efficiency in marine propulsion and this became an additional propulsion course for the discipline.

“We’d been brought in as PhDs, but we were also active researchers. I researched marine propulsion, whale propulsion and screw propellers in ice,” said Dr. Bose, who said one of the attractions of coming to St. John’s was the existence of NRC’s world-class ice and wave tanks.

In 1997, ten years into Dr. Bose’s first stint at Memorial, the program became known as it is today, ONAE. Now over forty years since its inception, the ONAE program at Memorial has graduated 631

students in the undergraduate program, which is, at the time of writing, the only Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) accredited naval architecture program with accredited mandatory work terms.

A reason for the ONAE program’s success in training naval architects and helping them establish careers in their field is its evolution with the curriculum updated and reviewed every five years. For example, when the east coast offshore oil & gas industry took off, ONAE began to include courses in offshore structure design.

Students’ experience in the program is enriched by the research of the department’s nine professors, who are well known internationally for their leading-edge research in areas such as marine safety, Arctic shipping, ship structures and ice, marine hydrodynamics, vibrations and noise and underwater vehicles.

Beyond ship and offshore platform design, today students gain experience in construction, management, marine engineering and hydrodynamics, seakeeping and manoeuvrability, submersibles and small craft design.

1980 –1982

1982 –1992

DEAN COLIN DICENZO During Dr. Colin DiCenzo’s short tenure as dean, the Faculty employed seven professors, twentyseven associate professors, nine assistant professors and two forestry professors. Before his time as dean, he served as president of the Canadian Society of Electrical Engineering as well as the Engineering Institute of Canada. For his contributions to engineering and science education, Dr. DiCenzo was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada in 1972.

DEAN G ROSS PETERS ASSOCIATE DEAN (1978-82) Dr. G Ross Peters (1939-2024), the Faculty’s fourth dean, began his engineering studies at Memorial, completing the engineering diploma before continuing on to complete his bachelor of engineering degree at the University of Toronto.

Afterwards, he obtained his PhD at the University of Aberdeen and initially joined Memorial as a lecturer in the math department before moving, in 1970, to

engineering, where he later became both associate dean and dean. His legacy is one of helping to grow and strengthen engineering education in the province.

“Engineering education was his focus,” said his son, Dr. Dennis Peters, who has taught in engineering for twenty-seven years and served in several leadership positions. He is currently interim associate vicepresident academic at Memorial. “That and improving the numbers of women in engineering.”

Susan Richter (B.Eng. 1980 and M.Eng. 1994 in civil engineering at Memorial) is a retired hydrotechnical engineer and an excellent example of Dr. Peters’ attention to the needs of individual students.

“Coming to the program without the usual math background, I almost decided that I’d made a mistake in entering the program,” she said, thinking back to her entry into engineering in the late 1970s.

“Fortunately. I talked to Dr. Peters, who for the first couple of weeks tutored me almost daily in the calculus I was lacking. That got me over the hump.

Without his help at that key moment, I wouldn’t have continued in engineering at all.” Susan went on to graduate and practised for most of her career in Newfoundland and Labrador.

“Over my career, I’ve had many people say: Your dad was a great teacher,” said Dennis.

Indeed, Dr. Peters taught and hired many students over the years influencing the course of careers.

His influence is also evident in his own family in that two of his children and two of his grandchildren are engineers.

“Dad was always teaching. He also enjoyed working with people and built a great team. Many of my senior colleagues remember him as the dean who hired them and recall fondly working with him. Of course, it wasn’t without challenges. He would say: It’s like herding cats. Academic leadership is a lot like volunteer leadership, you can’t tell people what to do, you have to convince them to follow you and generally speaking they’ll get on board.”

“When he joined the engineering Faculty in 1972, Dad was doing grad studies,” explained Dennis. “It was a transitionary time; he came in at the beginning of the program. When he started as dean, it was a period of growth. One of the main challenges early on was to accommodate more students. The number of students rose from about 120 to 180 in the first years of his deanship and he completed renos and increased faculty to accommodate that growth.”

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Milestones

“He was building the reputation of the Faculty. We were a fledgling Faculty, not yet well known across the country. He accomplished this, not only by his own output, but he joined organizations like the National Council of Deans of Engineering and Applied Science and eventually served as president.

By stepping forward and getting involved, he helped raise the profile of engineering at Memorial.”

Dr. Peters also brought in new researchers to build a strong research profile and introduced the first NSERC Industrial Chair further raising the Faculty’s research profile nationally and internationally.

He was an early leader of the Ocean Engineering Research Group. And when he was associate dean (research), he was a key player in bringing in NRC and C-CORE. Serving as chair of the advisory committee to build the university’s and the province’s ocean engineering strength.

Dr. Peters’ own early research involved investigating how cod fish muscle behaves when it’s cured. His son, Dennis, was lucky enough to experience his father’s enthusiasm when he was still in high school and worked with his father on a research project.

“Dad was doing math modelling for salt fish. I wrote the computer program and trialed it with Fisheries and Oceans on board patrol vessels. My class had completed the first programming course piloted at Booth Memorial in the ‘80s. Our teacher, John Bartlett, had written a book and developed a course in computer science. My first professional programming work was for Dad.” “As a young person, in my last year of high school and my first year of university, it was inspirational to see my work applied. We would go aboard Spanish and Portuguese trawlers and Russian factory trawlers to measure what was in the hold and figure out, using backwards calculation, how many tons of whole fish there was based on the volume of

MEMORIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE YEARS // 18

salt and fish on that day. Muscle shrinks as it cures.

There is exponential decay; it occurs quickly at first and then slows down. That research shaped my career path and I have my father to thank for that.”

Dr. Peters continued to better the path of engineering students and faculty members for many years. After his deanship, he went on to serve on the accreditation board for a number of years. For his contributions to the professional and academic community, he was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2022.

THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL FACILITIES IN ST. JOHN’S In 1984, four years after the debut of the shipbuilding program, the National Research Council (NRC) set up on Memorial campus next door to the new engineering building.

The NRC facility has changed names several times over its forty-year existence and is now known as the Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering facility or OCRE and boasts a 200-metre towing tank as well as a ninety-metre ice tank, one of the largest in the world. These facilities allow for ice modelling and scale-model testing of ship resistance, ship selfpropulsion, offshore simulation, captive and free maneuvering in ice, as well as ice forces on moored and fixed structures.

Memorial engineering students have access to facilities at NRC through the Karluk Collaboration Space, established by NRC with Memorial in 2019 to lead innovation in ocean engineering, technology and science. (See the Faculty’s 2025 Research Report for a more detailed history of FEAS-NRC partnership)

1993 –2002

DEAN RANGASWAMY SESHADRI GROWTH IN GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH Dr. Rangaswamy Seshadri, the Faculty’s fifth dean, established new industry partnerships, started the Office of Industrial Outreach and worked to attract the first Canada Research Chairs to the Faculty. Dr. Seshadri (1945-2023), known to all as Sesh, was a graduate of IIT Madras in India and came to Canada to do his doctorate at the University of Calgary.

He then worked in the burgeoning oil industry in northern Alberta before returning to academia at the University of Regina where he became their dean of engineering. It was from this position that he was recruited to Memorial to take over as dean of engineering from Dr. Peters in 1993.

“The mid-1990s were mild recession times,” explained Dr. Claude Daley, Dr. Seshandri’s colleague and friend. “Money was tight and Faculty layoffs at Memorial were rumored, though never occurred.”

In 1997, however, the Hibernia oil platform started production and the financial situation of the province and the university steadily improved.

“Sesh wanted to maintain the strong co-op undergraduate programs while also building strength in research and graduate programs,” said Dr. Daley. “He was an excellent instructor and a gifted researcher, though most of his time was taken up with the myriad administrative challenges that all landed in the dean’s office.”

During his term as dean, Dr. Seshandri established new industry partnerships, evolved the curriculum and laid the groundwork for the rapid growth of the 2000s. He started the Office of Industrial Outreach, grew the continuing education offerings, hired a communications officer to help the Faculty tell its story to the public and worked to attract the first Canada Research Chairs to the Faculty. He himself was later awarded a Canada Research Chair.

“Overall Sesh was a strong manager, who kept the Faculty moving forward with expanding programs, rising standards, stronger research and greater public engagement,” said Dr. Daley. “Memorial has, from the beginning, maintained strong links with industry and society through the co-op program and through our applied research. Sesh was an excellent academic but was definitely not an ‘ivory tower’ academic. He was a real professional who understood the obligations that engineers have to the industry and society – one of the best.”

LAUNCHING COMPUTER ENGINEERING (1997-2002) In the late 1990s, the Faculty recognized the need to offer a more concentrated set of courses in computer hardware, software and applications, particularly in communications, a field in which Canada was one of the leading nations. In response, the electrical engineering undergraduate program launched an option in computer and communications in 1997.

This new program was met with an overwhelmingly positive response by industry and stimulated the Faculty to develop a full-fledged undergraduate program in computer engineering. The first cohort of students in this new accredited program graduated in 2002.

“As computer and communications technologies converged by 2000, it was unnecessary to include communications explicitly in the title of the program, although the focus on communications was retained in the new program,” said Dr. Ramachandran (Venky) Venkatesan, professor emeritus and former acting dean of engineering (2011-2012).

In 2004, recognizing the demand for a course-based post-graduate education in computer engineering, a master of applied science in computer engineering (MASCE) was developed by Dr. Venkatesan, then associate dean of graduate studies and research and Dr. Ray Gosine, then dean. These programs were developed in response to both opportunities and challenges that had been identified by Dr. Mahmoud Haddara, previous associate dean of graduate studies and research and interim dean (2002-2003), who had studied mechanical engineering in Egypt followed by a master’s and PhD in naval architecture in California and joined Memorial in 1986. There was also a demand for graduate course-based engineering education from international students, particularly from China, and the Faculty faced some serious budget challenges that were addressed through a premium fee structure that was ultimately approved by Memorial’s Senate.

“Not only does this program continue to be offered after twenty years, but its success stimulated the launch of several similarly structured programs in environmental systems engineering and management; oil & gas engineering; risk and safety engineering; and energy systems,” said Dr. Venkatesan, who obtained his PhD in computer engineering before joining Memorial in 1987. “In FEAS HISTORY IN CELEBRATION OF MUN 100 // 19

Milestones

the early years of these programs, most students came from China, but these programs now attract students from several different countries including Canada, India, Iran and Bangladesh.”

In 2002-2003, a thesis-based master's program and a doctoral program were introduced in computer engineering. Until that point, students who graduated after having completed their theses in computer engineering were awarded degrees in electrical engineering.

Several graduate and senior undergraduate students in engineering were encouraged by the Faculty to launch tech start-ups.

Other engineering students joined these start-up companies as their first employees and several of these companies went on to participate in the university's Genesis programs. Cathexis Innovations (mentored by Dr. Siu O’Young), later known as IDBLUE, which made Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) products, was one of the first start-ups that was preincubated by the Faculty in the 1990s.

Other successful tech companies that originated within the Faculty include Virtual Marine Technology mentored by Dr. Brian Veitch and Intrignia Solutions mentored by Dr. Ray Gosine. Perhaps the most successful start-up to originate within the Faculty is Verafin, whose founders were also mentored by Dr. Gosine. Verafin, which continues to employ hundreds of people in Newfoundland and Labrador, was acquired by Nasdaq in 2020 for $2.75 billion USD.

2003 –2008

DEAN RAY GOSINE THE REDESIGN OF THE CO-OPERATIVE UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING PROGRAMS Dr. Ray Gosine, the Faculty’s seventh dean, completed his PhD at Cambridge in England after his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Memorial. Following academic positions at Cambridge and the University of British Columbia, he returned to Memorial and was appointed to J.I. Clark Chair of Intelligent Systems for Operations in Harsh Environments at Memorial University (supported by C-CORE). He was dean of engineering at Memorial from 2003 until 2008 and during this time, Dr. Gosine was instrumental in helping the Faculty redesign the undergraduate engineering curriculum to reduce the length of the bachelor’s degree program from six to five years.

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In 2005, the Faculty received the maximum six-year accreditation for its cooperative undergraduate engineering programs from the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) and used this window of opportunity to develop and launch the new program resulting in a double cohort of engineering students graduating together in 2013. Also in 2005, a second premium-fee coursebased MASc. program was offered at the graduate level in environmental systems engineering and management (MESEM).

Dr. John E. Quaicoe, who had served as chair of the electrical engineering discipline between 1990 and 1999, became associate dean (Undergraduate Studies) in 2002 (-2008). Dr. Quaicoe played a leading role in introducing transition and fast-track programs to allow high school students direct entry into the Faculty.

Development of the Engineering One curriculum, a common first year for all engineering students that includes courses in engineering, as well as math, natural science and complementary studies, under the direction of Dr. Quaicoe, who had completed his undergrad in electrical engineering in Ghana and his M.Sc. and PhD degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Toronto. He joined Memorial in 1982.

“The Faculty was conscious of the need to develop an Engineering One Help Centre to ensure the success of students who would now directly enter engineering from high school,” said Dr. Gosine, who besides serving as dean, has acted in various academic administrative roles at Memorial, including associate vice-president (research) and vicepresident (research), pro tempore.

“We were very fortunate to have Mr. Fred Cahill, an alumnus of the Faculty and a very successful engineering entrepreneur, step up to provide a generous donation to create, and in the years since, expand on the Cahill Engineering One Help Centre.”

CAHILL ENGINEERING ONE SUCCESS CENTRE. (PHOTO BY ADRIAN DOBRE)

In 2007, many years after Dr. Bruneau left academia, he and his wife, Dr. Jean Bruneau, donated over a million dollars to set up a perpetual endowment fund. “The Angus Bruneau Student LIFE Program appealed to the Bruneaus’ strong sense of leadership development and the desire to support student-led initiatives,” said Dr. Gosine, who was dean at the time. “Ultimately, we designed a perpetual program to assist generations of engineering students pursue initiatives related to leadership, and innovation.”

“In the spirit of recognizing well-rounded students, Mom and Dad gave an equal sum to the School of Music to establish the Bruneau Centre for Excellence in Choral Music,” added Dr. Steve Bruneau.

OIL & GAS AND PROCESS ENGINEERING The first offshore oilfield, Hibernia, began producing in 1997. Terra Nova followed in 2002, and the White Rose project began production in 2005. The province’s fourth offshore oil field, Hebron, saw first oil in 2017.

In 2005, the INCO Innovation Centre opened on the site of the old Thompson Student Centre after the Faculty, in collaboration with the Department of Earth Sciences, received funding from ACOA’s Atlantic Innovation Fund, to create new research and innovation space which included new processing engineering facilities.

A new undergraduate program in process engineering began in 2008 with first graduates in 2013. Dr. Faisal Khan, a world-renowned expert in safety and risk engineering, became the inaugural process engineering chair.

From the very beginning, the department declared safety and sustainability as core pillars of its curriculum. “This pioneering approach not only shaped the program’s identity but also inspired a wave of change across the country, as process and chemical engineering programs elsewhere began to follow its lead,” said Dr. Salim Ahmed, who teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in process engineering and in oil & gas engineering.

Milestones

THE ANGUS BRUNEAU STUDENT LIFE PROGRAM

“Over the years, the department grew into a hub of innovation, equipped with state-of-the-art laboratories that became the lifeblood of its research and teaching. The Process Control, Process Safety, Hydrometallurgy, Reaction Engineering and Process Engineering labs became spaces where ideas turned into breakthroughs and students transformed into leaders.”

This was also a time when significant research partnerships between the Faculty and the oil & gas industry were pursued, and an agreement was reached in 2008 with Chevron for Memorial University to join the Chevron University Partnership program. This provided funding to support the Chevron Chair in Petroleum Engineering, held by Dr. Lesley James, as well as a two-million-dollar investment in student scholarships and awards.

Subsequently Statoil (now Equinor) committed significant funding to support two Chairs in Reservoir Engineering.

In response to the need for engineering solutions to oil & gas industry challenges, a course-based master’s program in oil & gas engineering (MASc.) was introduced in 2009. “The program is unique in content, it covers all facets of the oil & gas industry beginning from upstream reservoir engineering all the way to downstream petroleum refining and production optimization,” said Dr. Syed Imtiaz, head of the Department of Process Engineering.

ON THE OCCASION OF HONORING DR. ANGUS BRUNEAU

BY RENAMING THE INCO BUILDING THE BRUNEAU CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND INNOVATION. TOP ROW: DR. STEVE BRUNEAU’S FAMILY-STEVE, MARY, LAURA, AND DAVID, WHO PURSUED OCEAN AND NAVAL ARCHITECTURE AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. FRONT ROW (L-R): DR. STEVE BRUNEAU’S BROTHER IAN, SISTER-IN-LAW JILL, THEIR TWINS TIMOTHY AND SAMANTHA (BOTH NOW IN ENGINEERING), THEIR ELDEST SON ALEX, DR. ANGUS BRUNEAU, AND HIS WIFE, JEAN. (PHOTOS BY DR. STEVE BRUNEAU)

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Milestones

“The program has been very successful from the beginning; training around forty students on average each year,” he said, adding that the program also attracts students from all across the world. “We had several MOUs with top Petroleum Universities in China to bring their students to complete their studies here.”

Later research-based programs were introduced including both a MEng and PhD in oil & gas engineering.

In 2011, the Inco Innovation Centre was renamed the Bruneau Centre for Research and Innovation in honor of Dr. Angus Bruneau, and in 2013, the Hibernia Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Laboratory launched through a partnership between the Research & Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador (RDC) and the Hibernia Management and Development Company Ltd. (HMDC).

“Under the leadership of Dr. James, the Hibernia EOR Lab became a beacon of innovation, housing multiphase core-flooding systems capable of operating at staggering pressures of up to 10,000 psi, alongside other unique equipment that pushed the boundaries of research,” said Dr. Ahmed. A lab equipped with a core flooding system allows researchers to simulate the flow of fluids through core rock samples to examine better ways to recover oil.

Today, the Department of Process Engineering offers six graduate programs alongside the flagship bachelor program, which received its first accreditation in 2013 with the graduation of its inaugural class. Since then, the program has maintained uninterrupted accreditation, with the most recent in 2024 extending its recognition until June 30, 2030.

2008 –2011

DEAN JOHN QUAICOE SUNCOR ENERGY OFFSHORE R&D CENTRE In 2008, when Dr. Ray Gosine was asked to temporarily take on responsibilities as associate vicepresident (research), Drs. Quaicoe and Venkatesan were appointed to serve as acting deans during his absence. Dr. Gosine obtained the support of the vice-president (academic) to split the associate dean of graduate studies and research into two associate dean positions, one with a focus on graduate studies and the other with a focus on research.

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Both graduate studies and research were areas of significant growth in the Faculty during that period.

In fact, from 2008-2012, under the leadership of deans John Quaicoe and Ramchandran Venkatesan, the number of international students in the Faculty continued to increase. Today the Faculty has graduate students from more than thirty countries.

“Up to the point when I became dean, we had an associate dean undergraduate position for all programs in engineering, and an associate dean of graduate studies and research,” said Dr. Quaicoe, who served as dean pro tempore from 2008-2011. “It was a very critical period of research growth. Due to the increase in the amount of research being done, the latter position was split into two, associate dean grad studies and associate dean, research. Dr. Brian Veitch was the very first associate dean, research.

That caused even greater growth in research. Now you have a separate unit that encourages researchers to conduct research and provides administrative assistance in writing grant applications.”

With this growth in research came the need for dedicated research infrastructure. “We needed a space for researchers, students, labs and highly qualified personnel. Brian Veitch spearheaded the project,” said Dr. Quaicoe, recalling that he and Dr. Veitch met with several industry officials over lunch to explain the level of funding needed to establish the R&D Centre, a 14,200-square-foot expansion of the S.J. Carew Building, in 2014.

“John Quaicoe, who was then dean, and I solicited support from industry to finance what would become the Suncor Energy Offshore R&D Centre which houses the Office of the Associate Dean Research - the Engineering Research Office (ERO),” said Dr. Veitch.

By this point, Dr. Veitch, who joined Memorial as Terra Nova Project Junior Chair in ocean environmental risk engineering, one of the earliest chairs at Memorial with a contribution from PetroCanada (now Suncor), had written a strategic growth plan for the Faculty that the president had adopted.

Dr. Veitch very much understood the importance of collaboration between academia and industry.

He also understood that in order for the Faculty to grow as a research facility, they had to find a place to house the researchers - and fast.

“When we were doing presentations to the Advisory Board, Brian produced a graph showing growth in Faculty research money,” said Dr. Quaicoe.

Milestones

DR. JOHN QUAICOE WITH GLENN JANES OF RDC AND ALAN BROWN OF SUNCOR ENERGY DURING THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE NEW SUNCOR ENERGY OFFSHORE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE. (B) THE CENTRE NOW.

“Research existed in the Faculty and was growing,” said Dr. Veitch, professor in the Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering (ONAE) Department and Cenovus Energy Research Chair, focused on safety at sea. The new centre was built with the support of Suncor Energy and the Research & Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador. “It was built to house the research people as the existing infrastructure was not suited to research activities.

We had students in offices all over campus. At one point we rented office space on Hallett Crescent because there was no place to put them.”

Another instigating factor for Dr. Veitch’s drive to set up the R&D centre was to obtain shared space for lab work. “Research can be isolating,” he said.

“Students can get lonely. Working together in teams and problem solving helps students create their own supportive social ecosystem.”

Once established, the Suncor Energy Offshore R&D Centre enabled large offshore engineering research projects in collaboration with industry partners and also helped attract more researchers, students and post-docs. “It was successful. The Faculty growth was maintained because of the space created,” said Dr. Quaicoe. “The oil companies and other members of industry got interested because they realized we

were committed and responded by collaborating on many projects. When I walk in there, I see the growth, activity, students going all about; it makes me feel like we made a contribution.”

Dr. Veitch also recognizes what the Suncor Energy Offshore R&D has contributed to the Faculty and his enthusiasm for teaching and research is evident every time he talks about his students and their potential to develop the energy-rich environment in which we live. “There are not many places on the planet with energy options like Newfoundland and Labrador,” he said. “We’re an energy hub; it will transform our economy and at the same time influence the climate challenge. Newfoundland and Labrador is full of alternative energy sources like wind, hydro and oil & gas. We have a fabulous mix; the most attractive wind map in North America.”

Dr. Veitch believes we have to take control over our own destiny. “We have to have open eyes. We should be prepared to seize opportunities and make something out of them. The whole point of research is jumping into the unknown. Sometimes we get it wrong; other times we get it right.”

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STRENGTHENING GRADUATE STUDIES DRS. LEONARD LYE AND MAHMOUD HADDARA Through the 1990s and 2000s the number of international students in the Faculty continued to increase and today the Faculty has graduate students from more than thirty countries. From the Faculty’s very beginnings, many professors, like the Faculty’s students, came from outside Newfoundland and Labrador and perhaps weren’t acclimated to winters spent on an island in the North Atlantic.

DR. LEONARD LYE LEADING A TEACHING ASSISTANT TRAINING PROGRAM IN 2019. SOME FEAS GRADUATE STUDENTS RECOGNIZED WITH OUTSTANDING GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANT AWARDS IN 2016. (PHOTOS BY DR. LEONARD LYE)

Because graduate students, in particular, could find themselves isolated in their work, social activities were established to ensure both students and Faculty had a support network to get them through long days in a classroom or lab. Dr. Leonard Lye, who was associate dean of graduate studies for ten years (2010-2018), remembers Faculty activities like skating and bowling and a grad student food fair, where students prepared food from their native countries and sold it with the proceeds going to charity. “I used to make chicken or beef satay, the national food of Malaysia, with spicy peanut sauce,” said Dr. Lye.

When Dr. Lye came to Memorial in 1988, he worked with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) program to bring water workers from the public works department in Indonesia to Memorial to do their master’s and was very cognizant of the fact that these students needed social supports.

“In 1995-1996, there was another program funded by the Asian Development Bank and Dr. Mahmoud Haddara, who was discipline chair of ONAE, associate dean of Graduate Studies, and interim dean (2002-2003), and I brought twenty to thirty engineers from Indonesia to do their master’s or PhDs. One of those students is now an associate dean in Indonesia and his daughter is here at Memorial in Computer Science.”

“When Trump first got in, we had a big influx of students from the Middle East,” explained Dr. Lye. “They were not welcome in the U.S. and Noreen Golfman suggested we invite them here.”

“My biggest contribution during my time at Memorial was improving the graduate students’ experience.

The first thing I did was develop compulsory teaching assistant training,” said Dr. Lye, explaining that once a grad student was immersed in the job of a teaching assistant, they found themselves more involved in the university community and had more opportunities to meet their peers. The training program Dr. Lye developed is now campus wide. “I also taught people how to teach and how to write theses. And I initiated the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards.”

Besides helping international students and professors settle in their new homes, Dr. Lye’s office also initiated the poster/video contest in 2015 with the Engineering Research Office. “I got people from Memorial’s Distance Education, Learning and Teaching Support (DELTS) to come give a talk about the dos and don’ts of producing videos. We gave specifications for poster size and gave participants $100 to produce quality posters at printing services.”

The contest not only helped students describe their research in an understandable and concise manner, it also provided a social opportunity to get together with their peers.

Dr. Lye also taught the very first distance engineering course - 4102, Engineering Economics.

“Students at the Marine Institute needed this course to graduate with their Bachelor of Technology so I recorded thirty videos on VHS and developed a

MEMORIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE YEARS // 24

workbook,” said Dr. Lye. “It proved to be so good; they kept using it so work term students could do it remotely. It went from VHS to DVD to streaming,” he said, adding that students were still contacting him about the lessons after his retirement.

Even now, seven years after retirement, Dr. Lye continues to teach a graduate course – 9516 Similitude Modelling and Data Analysis. “I’m back by popular demand,” he said. “I love it; you get to meet students from all over the world.”

2012 –2022

DEAN GREG NATERER Dr. Greg Naterer received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1995 and was a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Advanced Energy Systems. He became dean of Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science in 2012, and under his leadership, the Faculty's prominence rose, both nationally and internationally. In the 2021 World University Ranking, for example, Memorial’s engineering programs ranked first in industry partnerships among Canadian comprehensive universities.

During Dr. Naterer’s time as dean (2012-2022), there was over a twenty per cent increase in undergraduate enrollments and graduate enrolment approximately doubled. “One of our goals was to increase the proportion of women in engineering.

For four consecutive years, Newfoundland and Labrador achieved the highest percentage of female undergraduate engineering students in Canada, reaching twenty-seven per cent,” he said, adding that he is proud of the positive, supportive and nurturing environment the Faculty has created for women in engineering.

Dr. Naterer also oversaw several infrastructure expansion projects, including the engineering pavilion in the new Core Science Facility (CSF) in 2021; and completion of the Suncor Energy Offshore R&D Centre.

DEPARTMENTALIZATION OF THE FACULTY Another major change in the Faculty around 2014 was the move towards departmentalization. “Up until then, the Faculty operated as a single department faculty,” said Dr Wei Qiu, professor and head of Ocean and Naval and Architectural

Engineering Department. “While different disciplines - now known as departments - were responsible for managing their accredited programs, such as civil and mechanical engineering, decisions regarding budgets and human resources were largely made by the dean (and associate deans), in consultation with the relevant parties.”

The single faculty organizational structure had both advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, it allowed for shared resources, administrative efficiencies and a sense of cohesion, as all programs were aligned under a single unit. The dean, in this model, had a comprehensive understanding of the Faculty’s issues, concerns, and opportunities, and, as the head of the unit, was ultimately the only one with formal authority to make all administrative decisions.

However, there were notable drawbacks as well.

One issue with the single department faculty was the lack of a formal profile for the Faculty and its individual programs. Without departmental status, these programs lacked the recognition that comes with being a formal department, which carries significant weight within a university setting.

Dr. Dempster remembers discussion regarding departmentalization back in the late 1960s. “At the beginning when we had small faculty numbers, Angus said: ‘We’re not going to departmentalize,’” said Dr. Dempster. “He wanted to keep it simple and encourage more collaboration between different skill sets to help the Faculty grow. We were all proud of one another. There was none of this: I’m the prof. The students loved the idea of working with us. Angus wanted us to work together in a less-rigid structure than we have today, to prevent segregation of groups. So, we didn’t departmentalize. If we had, this group of students would’ve gone this way and thought of their department, rather than the whole Faculty. We had programs rather than departments.”

It was until the 2000s when the Faculty experienced rapid growth that it began the shift towards departmentalization. During this period, the Faculty experienced increased class sizes, the addition of new programs, expanded graduate enrollment and significantly increased research funding. To manage this growth, the position of associate dean for research was added, and the dean’s and associated deans' office staff expanded to support the growing activities. In this context, it became impractical for the Faculty to continue functioning effectively as a single department faculty, with the dean handling FEAS HISTORY IN CELEBRATION OF MUN 100 // 25

Milestones

all major administrative decisions. As a result, in 2014, the various programs transitioned into formal departments, with new department heads taking on responsibility for human resources, budgets (excluding salaries) and program leadership.

“Currently, the Faculty operates with a hybrid administrative structure. While some decisions and responsibilities remain centralized, such as graduate studies, others have been delegated to the departments,” said Dr. Qiu. “The debate over the full extent of departmentalization continues, as there is always an optimal size for organizational units too small, and they lack the necessary capacity; too large, and they become bureaucratic. The departments in the Faculty are growing in capability and are increasingly able to chart their own courses, providing tailored support systems, forging stronger external connections, enriching the educational experience, and strengthening partnerships with industry and community stakeholders.”

MEMORIAL CENTRE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP (MCE) Also in 2014, the Faculty launched the Memorial Centre for Entrepreneurship (MCE) in partnership with the Faculty of Business Administration to revive the student entrepreneurial spirit of the Faculty from the early 2000s. The MCE was named one of the world’s top five emerging student

entrepreneurship centres by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centres for two consecutive years and led to the creation of companies like CoLab Software, BreatheSuite and Mysa Smart Thermostats. The Faculty also houses the Student Design Hub (SDH), which provides hands-on space and resources for students to collaborate, develop prototypes and innovate through engineering design projects and competitions.

NEW PROGRAM OFFERINGS During Dr. Naterer’s decade as dean, new program offerings included the launch of a master’s in energy systems engineering (MESE) in 2019, cooffered by mechanical and electrical engineering, and the Bruneau Centre underwent renovations to accommodate growth in process engineering.

Other academic programs started during this time were two course-based graduate programs in AI and software engineering with computer science and an interdisciplinary undergraduate program in mechatronics combining electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering fundamentals. A new biomedical stream was developed in partnership with the Faculty of Medicine, and safety and risk engineering was introduced at a graduate level. The Cahill Student Success Centre expanded its offerings including a new supplemental instruction program that improved student retention through individual tutoring, mentorship, and student-led problem-solving.

SOME SDH TEAMS INCLUDING PARADIGM ENGINEERING HYPERLOOP TEAM, FMUNTENH RC CAR, EASTERN EDGE ROBOTICS AND MEMORIAL BAJA. (PHOTO BY JOHN WALSH)

STUDENTS AT AN EVENT IN THE MEMORIAL CENTRE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP (MCE).

(PHOTO BY ERANDI RAJAPAKSHA).

MEMORIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE YEARS // 26

THE CORE SCIENCE FACILITY In 2021, Memorial’s 425,000-square-foot Core Science Facility (CSF) opened its doors to students after five years of construction. The Facility provides modern research and laboratory teaching spaces for the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. For FEAS, it hosts the bio-inspired robotics lab; the biomedical signal processing lab; the computer-aided circuits and systems design lab; the radar remote sensing lab; the vision, software and robotics lab; the wireless and optical communications lab; the power lab and the renewable energy lab.

The CSF is also home to major research chairs and centres that reflect the Faculty’s growing strength in information and communication technology, alongside its long-standing leadership in ocean, energy, and harsh environment research. These include the Canada Research Chair in Ubiquitous Communications, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Next Generation Communication Technologies, the Centre for Artificial Intelligence (AI) (which supports both the AI and Software Engineering master’s programs), and the Quantum Communications and Computing Centre, supported through partnerships with IBM and others.

THE HARSH ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH FACILITY (HERF) Before leaving Memorial to the University of Prince Edward Island as vice-president, academic and research in 2022, Dr. Naterer facilitated the initial stages of the Harsh Environment Research Facility (HERF), a new building with a multi-purpose testing facility located next to the National Research Council.

STATE-OF-THE-ART CORE SCIENCE FACILITY AT MEMORIAL, HOME TO SEVERAL ENGINEERING LABS AND RESEARCH CENTERS (PHOTO BY RICH BLENKINSOPP).

The HERF project is led by Dr. Yuri Muzychka, professor and former head of mechanical engineering. The $25.5 million facility will be able to simulate harsh ocean conditions with icebergs and sea ice, high winds, waves, sea water spray, fog, and other harsh climatic conditions such as freezing rainstorms.

“All these advances did not come without challenges.

We had several setbacks,” said Dr. Naterer. “For example, a pause of the multi-year Engineering Expansion Strategic Initiative by the provincial government was disruptive after larger incoming student cohorts had already been accepted. But through a lot of hard work within the Faculty, strong advocacy and community support, we were able to

FEAS HISTORY IN CELEBRATION OF MUN 100 // 27

Milestones

continue the engineering expansion despite broader budget reductions happening across the university.”

Despite the setbacks, co–operative education continued to grow over this period to over 1,200 work term placements per year for engineering co-op students. “We pivoted and created other opportunities,” said Dr. Naterer. “New and expanded forms of experiential learning opportunities were introduced for students, including community service learning, research work terms, international exchanges, and entrepreneurship work terms.”

Dr. Naterer more than enjoyed his time as dean. “It was an honour and privilege to serve as dean and the most memorable experience of my career,” he said. “I will especially remember the relationships I developed with faculty members, staff and students.

There is a well-known Newfoundland phrase - “the best kind.” It means “great” or “couldn’t be better.” This describes the faculty, staff and students at Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. All three of our children pursued engineering studies at Memorial. My wife Josie and I are proud of them and their engineering education at Memorial.”

2022–

Present

THE FACULTY TODAY DEAN OCTAVIA DOBRE (2022-2024) DEAN BING CHEN (2025-PRESENT) Since the first engineering students graduated in 1974, the Faculty has grown to 1300 undergraduate students, six accredited undergraduate programs, 925 graduate students, twenty-three graduate programs, roughly 1,000 co-op work term placements per year, and more than $24 million in annual external research funding.

“The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science is one of the most entrepreneurial parts of the university in terms of how the Faculty is run,” said

MEMORIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE YEARS // 28

Dr. Bose. “It includes Memorial’s first Canada Excellence Research Chair. It earns the highest proportion of income in terms of tuition and is also a powerhouse in PhDs and research.”

This is an indication of the ability of the Faculty to overcome hurdles like how to place foreign students in compulsory work term placements when they are not necessarily eligible to work in Canada yet. “They found a way of placing them in their home countries,” said Dr. Bose, adding that since 1969, Memorial has placed thousands of co-operative education engineering students worldwide in more than forty countries on six continents.

The Faculty is always looking for ways to improve student workplace readiness. Starting in 2024, for example, the co-op office began supporting a Graduate Internship program for five of the course-based master’s programs. This competitive entry, non-mandatory, program gives students an opportunity to get eight months of practical experience during their degree.

“The academic staff members, also known as coordinators or ASMs, in the co-op office have all graduated from engineering programs, almost all from Memorial. This has allowed them to better mentor the students by having a shared understanding of their experiences. The ASMs have also developed enhanced learning in the students in areas of professional development, technical communications, and life-long learning,” said Patrick Sullivan, director of the Engineering Co-operative Education Office.

The university also administers a provincial government program that offers financial support for co-op placements that is directed towards smaller Newfoundland and Labrador organizations to hire work term students at a more affordable rate, resulting in an extra 850 engineering students getting placements over the last fifteen years.

Milestones

"From its humble beginnings in 1930 with thirteen students and one professor, we have grown to thirty-degree programs across seven disciplines – twenty-three graduate and seven undergraduates.

From one female student in the class of 1975, today Memorial is a leader of student diversity and women in engineering."

Future

— Dr. Octavia Dobre

In 2022 Dr. Octavia Dobre, professor and Canada Research Chair Tier-1 in Ubiquitous Connectivity, became the Faculty’s first female dean having previously served as Associate Dean (Research) from 2020-2022. “Solving problems to enhance the community and the country continues to be the main focus of the Faculty,” said Dr. Dobre who has authored or co-authored more than 500 journal and conference papers on technologies for future wireless networks, as well as optical and underwater communications. “From its humble beginnings in 1930 with thirteen students and one professor, we have grown to thirty-degree programs across seven disciplines – twenty-three graduate and seven undergraduates. From one female student in the class of 1975, today Memorial is a leader of student diversity and women in engineering. For the past two years, Newfoundland and Labrador has had a significantly high percentage of female undergraduate engineering students nationally, at over 29 per cent.” Not only that but the undergraduate co-operative education programs have received continuous accreditation from the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board since 1975, and the Co-operative Education and Work Integrated Learning – Canada since 1980.

Interim Dean Dr. Bing Chen, Professor and UArctic Chair in Marine and Coastal Environmental Engineering and former associate dean of graduate studies (2021–2024), assumed leadership of the

Faculty in January 2025. As he looks ahead, he notes that the Faculty’s growth is now accompanied by a renewed sense of momentum and purpose. “As Memorial University marks a century of excellence in higher education, the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FEAS) steps confidently into a new era defined by innovation, intelligence, collaboration and impact at local, national, and global levels” he said. “Rooted in exceptional research expertise and capabilities, FEAS has consistently advanced the frontiers of knowledge and technology, making far-reaching contributions and transformative impact across multiple disciplines of civil engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, mechatronic engineering, ocean and naval architectural engineering, and process engineering”.

Collaboration continues to shape the Faculty’s success. “Our local and global partnerships remain key to our success,” said Dr. Chen. Partnerships with industry, government, community organizations, and universities worldwide continue to expand the Faculty’s research capacity and impact. Over time, external research support has grown from under $2 million in the mid-1990s to nearly $25 million in 2024, reflecting the Faculty’s expanding role in research and innovation. Over the past three decades, the Faculty has secured more than 4,440 external research support, totaling over $266 million.

FEAS HISTORY IN CELEBRATION OF MUN 100 // 29

FEAS EXTERNAL RESEARCH FUNDING, 1995–2024

$25,000,000

$20,000,000

$15,000,000

$10,000,000

2023-24

2021-22

2022-23

2019-20

2020-21

2017-18

2018-19

2016-17

2015-16

2013-14

2014-15

2011-12

2012-13

2010-11

2009-10

2007-08

2008-09

2006-07

2005-06

2003-04

2004-05

2001-02

2002-03

1999-00

2000-01

1997-98

1998-99

1995-96

1996-97

$5,000,000

Today in addition to its concentrations in ocean technology, energy, environment & sustainable infrastructure, the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science has become a research centre for information and communication technology and is home to the Canada Research Chair in Ubiquitous Connectivity, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Next Generation Communication, the Centre for Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as the Quantum Communications and Computing Centre.

MEMORIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE YEARS // 30

From iceberg tracking and classification to designing and building communication satellites, the only way for the Faculty to go is up.

Supported by the Memorial University 100th Anniversary Fund FEAS HISTORY IN CELEBRATION OF MUN 100 // 31

Milestones Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 240 Prince Phillip Drive S.J. Carew Building; EN4019 St. John's, NL A1B 3X5 Canada Phone: (709) 864-8812 or (709) 864-4809 Fax: (709) 864-8975 MEMORIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE YEARS // 32