Research Our Faculty members are recognized leaders in their fields, whose contributions help shape our country’s innovation agenda and economic prosperity. These achievements are recognized not only in their impact on society, but also through: awards and honours; the largest share of NSERC funding over the past five years; the highest number of invention disclosures recorded at U of T; 24 Canada Research Chairs, four Industrial Research Chairs, and 28 Endowed Research Chairs; and more than 100 spin-off companies. Multidisciplinary Education and Research Collaborative and cross-Faculty educational and research programs build upon our innovative academic excellence and expand the breadth of academic and research opportunities for faculty and students. In the past year, we created the Centre for Global Engineering, and the Identity, Privacy and Security Institute. In response to the growing number of multidisciplinary initiatives within our curriculum, we created a CrossDisciplinary Programs Office, which coordinates cross-Faculty Minors and certificates, including our new Minors in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering.
Globalization and Diversity We are creating an educational paradigm that works across cultures and disciplines to prepare our graduates to address the unparalleled possibilities, responsibilities, and challenges facing the next generation of engineering leaders. This initiative is manifested in the creation of the Centre for Global Engineering and will continue to be reflected in our progressive curriculum. The cultural, ethnic, academic and geographic backgrounds of our students, faculty, alumni and staff bring us closer to our goal of becoming a truly inclusive and global community. Moreover, in the past two years enrolment among female and international student has grown substantially. At the same time, we have recently developed new mentoring opportunities for students and, as of 2008, 37% of our assistant professors are women, a three-fold increase over three years. Physical Infrastructure Our Faculty’s commitment to academic and research excellence depends upon excellent facilities. Only with a physical infrastructure to match the calibre of our faculty and students can we realize our aspirations to be a world leader
among Engineering Schools. The Faculty’s Divisional Space Review, conducted in 2008–2009, found that our facilities do not reflect the current or future needs of our scholars and students. To begin to address this urgent priority, we recently completed or commenced several projects, including a $20 million renovation of the Mining Building. In addition, our ambitious plans remain at the heart of our advancement and funding priorities and we look forward to more projects underway in the near future. Finances Like other divisions of the University – and indeed many other institutions around the world – we have been challenged by the absence of expendable earnings from endowments due to the global downturn in capital markets. However, our cumulative efforts over the past two years to streamline operations and increase revenues have well positioned the Faculty to meet this year’s budgetary strain proactively and with responsibility. Though it was not without sacrifice and compromise on the part of the collegium, we balanced our 2008–2009 budget while retaining and enhancing the critical initiatives that are a priority to our academic mission.
This report marks the beginning of an annual reporting process that will assist us in assessing our progress in our unwavering pursuit of academic excellence. At the same time, this report, together with those that will succeed it, reflects our Faculty’s commitment to accountability and transparency. I would welcome your feedback. Please consider sending your comments and input to help refine and expand our quantitative measures. Reflecting on these stories of the past couple of years, I hope you will agree that there is much to be proud of and much to celebrate. I look forward to continuing our momentum into 2009–2010, and collaboratively building upon our outstanding Engineering programs; we will have many more shared stories yet to tell.
Cristina Amon, Dean
Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering | Annual Report 2009 | Dean's Message | 3