Message from the Director Over the last year, our lives and much of our society has changed; with the arrival of the novel coronavirus and the ongoing pandemic, like for many, the previous year has been an unprecedented one for TISED. In the wake of COVID-19, we had to rethink and adapt how we deliver our courses, student enhancement activities and public outreach events. Despite these challenging times, we remain resolute on advancing the goals and mission of the institute; to catalyze interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research, to educate current and future generations of engineers, urban planners and architects to be leaders in sustainability and to create and participate in forums for sustainability in those professions. Despite this new challenge that is upon us, TISED has made significant progress on many initiatives. The catalogue of our “SEAD” sustainability courses has grown to five with two new course offerings added in the 2019-2020 academic year; SEAD 540 Industrial Ecology and Systems and SEAD 550 Decision Making for Sustainability in Engineering. Student enrollment in the SEAD courses is steadily increasing (87 students in 2019-20), demonstrating that our students recognize the importance of sustainability in engineering and the role it is likely to play in their future professional careers. 2019-2020 also saw us take another step towards making a Master’s program in Sustainability in Engineering and Design, a reality. After intensive review, feedback and revisions with input from the University administration, the proposal document was submitted to Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire & Québec Ministère de l’éducation et de l’enseignement supérieur in May 2020. A site visit is anticipated in Fall 2020. The success of our (SEDTalks! Program) has resulted in a new donation from an industrial partner, WSP, for the SEDTalks! Event for the next three years, starting with the 2020-2021 edition. And though the 2020 SEDTalks! Event, scheduled for spring 2020, had to be postponed due to the pandemic, plans for a rescheduled, virtual and interactive edition of this flagship student training event are already on the way. Similarly, our 7th Annual Trottier Symposium on Sustainable Engineering, Energy and Design will be hosted online this year. This event, which typically takes place in the spring, was moved to the fall in 2020. Our theme for this year’s event is Lessons from a Pandemic: Solutions for Addressing the Climate Change Crisis and we will have two distinguished speakers share their thoughts on what COVID-19 taught us about how society can tackle the climate emergency through technological and policy implementation. Looking forward to the coming year, we anticipate more progress on the creation of our Master’s Program, with the start renovations of our designated space in the Lorne M. Trottier building and a program site visit. Despite challenges that lie ahead, we will continue to strive for creating research exchange opportunities for our members, delivering student support through funding and education enhancement activities and public outreach. To a successful and healthy 2020-2021 for all,
Subhasis Ghoshal Professor and Director, Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design
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