TISED Annual Report 2020-2021

Message from TISED’s Director The past year has been an unprecedented one in TISED’s history; as the world navigated the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and McGill prepared contingency plans based on the regional epidemiological situation and in anticipation of potential public health directives, TISED adapted to the every-changing landscape of the “new normal”.

Over the past year our outreach activities were adjusted and moved online, as we tried to take advantage of the virtual platforms to create a more accessible forum for our researchers and community to gather. Our flagship event, the 7th Annual Trottier Symposium on Sustainable Engineering, Energy and Design, was hosted online on September 16, 2020, and saw two distinguished speakers share their thoughts on what COVID-19 taught us about how society can tackle the climate emergency through technological and political means. Dr. Naomi Oreskes and Dr. Michael E. Mann, laid out a challenging yet hopeful roadmap of how the scientific and research community can en-gage with the policy makers to implement the technological solutions to address the forthcoming consequences of the climate crisis.

Furthermore, the SEDTalks! Training Program, TISED’s flagship student training initiative, celebrated its 5th anniversary and saw the largest and most diverse group of students completing the virtual presentation skills training workshops. Delivered in collaboration with McGill’s SkillSets team from Teaching and Learning Services, SEDTalks! continues to receive positive feedback from student participants as it promotes the high caliber sus-tainability research of the TISED graduate student community.

On the academic side, the interest in TISED’s SEAD courses remained strong during the 20202021 academic year and four of our five current courses were delivered remotely. In addition, this year TISED took important steps towards launching a Master’s program in sustainability in engineering and design, a reality. A program proposal was submitted to the Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire (BCI) in May 2020. Thanks to the work by the dedicated group of TISED members and other McGill stakeholders who worked alongside with the TISED team, the program proposal review by the Québec Ministère de l’éducation et de l’enseignement supérieur has been officially commenced.

In addition, progress on the renovations of the physical space designated for the future TISED Master’s program is underway. The project was commenced in mid-2020; project completion and move-in are expected by the end of 2021.

And though some of our acitivies related to programs such as the Research Workshops Program and the Scholar-in-Residence have been suspended while non-essential travel restrictions remain in place, TISED took steps to redirect the unspent funds from these programs to support promising