Technical education

Axel Meisen answers the question "tell us about your first job in engineering?" He describes two summer jobs while he was an undergraduate student at Imperial College in London. His first job was with British Gas, collecting data to determine why there is carbon formation when natural gas is reformed in a very large gas plant. "The production of carbon followed the Arrhenius equation", which demonstrated that chemical laws apply on a large scale. The second was with a metallurgical firm operating a smelter in Peru, where his appreciation of chemical engineering was mixed with the local labourers who worked for the company. They weren't sufficiently educated to obtain work as engineers and this indicated a human dimension to engineering that Dr. Meisen recognized for the first time and remains an element in his career.

Dr. Axel Meisen developed an interest in chemical engineering in his native Germany and competed an undergraduate degree at Imperial College in London before immigrating to Canada. He describes his first summer jobs with British Gas in the United Kingdom, and at a smelter in Peru where he witnessed a human dimension to engineering through his interaction with the local workers there. He recalls several of his mentors including Frank Murray, head of the UBC Department of Chemical Engineering, Liam Finn, who appointed him Associate Dean of Applied Science at UBC, and Edward Roberts, who chaired Board of Regents at Memorial University when Dr. Meisen was appointed President and Vice Chancellor there in 1999. He describes several of his projects, including his work on the Washington Accord, the implementation of a co-op education program in engineering at UBC, and the creation of the Pulp and Paper Centre at UBC. He also describes his recent initiatives to build closer relationships between engineers and academia, government, and industry to encourage a broader participation of engineers in these fields. He reflects on the changes to chemical engineering that he has witnessed, including the new roles for biology and electrochemistry in the field, and the enhanced inclusivity and international aspect of the discipline. He encourages high school students interested in chemical engineering to take a long-term view of their careers including how engineering may change during that period. He advises new graduates to pay attention to the people on the team they are working with, and to think about what they want to come next in their careers.

Andrew Hrymak answers the question "what new engineering initiatives would you like to undertake?" He describes his new interest in sustainability – not just protecting the environment, but means to improve the stewardship of the Earth and mitigate climate change. He is exploring the circular economy, changing the perception of byproducts from "waste" to "value opportunities". He sees this as an initiative that is being currently explored across engineering disciplines, a contribution that many are collaboratively working on.

Chemical engineer Andrew Hrymak describes his experiences as an undergraduate and graduate student, a university professor and Department Chair at McMaster University and as Dean of Engineering at Western University. Drawn to chemical engineering by a design project in the first year of his undergraduate program, that involved a processing plant to generate electrical power from steam, his subsequent work was in this same area of process systems engineering. He worked as a research assistant at McMaster and was introduced to polymer processing, developing computer codes and mathematical models to determine pressure distributions during different processes. His supervisor for this work, John Vlachopoulos became a mentor who provided advice for through a long part of Dr. Hrymak's career. Dr. Hrymak describes his career as having three "chunks". The first 15 years were as a university professor, doing teaching using problem-based-learning techniques, and conducting research within his group and with colleagues. He became Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department in 2000, and, with his colleagues, took advantage of opportunities provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canada Research Chair programs to recruit new professors and build up the research infrastructure. Then in 2009, he started a decade as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Western, developing projects such as the WindEEE Dome, the world's only three-dimensional wind tunnel, polymer composites research with the Fraunhofer Institute of Chemical Technology in Germany. Dr. Hrymak describes his new interest in sustainability – exploring the circular economy, changing the perception of byproducts from "waste" to "value opportunities". He reflects on the changes he has seen during his career, particularly the explosion of information that is freely available. He advises high school students interested in possible careers in engineering that an engineering degree can spawn many different careers, in academia, business management, and government. And he encourages newly graduates to develop their soft skills to develop effective teams and communication with others. He encourages new graduates to think more about how technology is impacting different socioeconomic groups.

Military engineer Bruce McGibbon describes his experiences as an engineer in, and consultant for, the Canadian Armed Forces. After pursuing military studies at College Militaire Royal de St Jean and Royal Military College, he was posted to One Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in Gagetown, NB. He took graduate courses in Computer Science at UNB and used these to develop programs to guide missile systems with Raytheon in El Paso Texas, and then in Shilo MB. His subsequent projects included: a field trial to determine the effect of hearing protection on artillerymen; the development of low-light rifle sights eventually manufactured by Ernst Leitz Canada Ltd; and the creation of Militia Training and Support Centres at Gagetown, Valcartier, Pembroke, Borden, and Edmonton. He led the project to procure (wheeled) Light Armoured Vehicles that were eventually constructed by the General Motors Diesel Division in London, Ontario. He also developed the program whereby officers are trained at the Department of Applied Military Science at Royal Military College, Kingston, instead of in the United Kingdom. He briefly describes his book "Inside DND – Procurements: The Hidden Story".