My Life…

So this semester I took pretty much the prescribed set of standard courses for second year biological engineering students here at the University of Guelph School of Engineering, along with an elective.

BIOM*3100 – Mammalian Physiology I
Professors: John Armstrong, Pawel Bartlewski, and Chandra Tayade
Course Load: Average
Personal Thoughts:
From an engineers perspective, this course was hard, I wasn’t used to study pure facts so I found it hard to absorb the information, especially since some of the stuff requires a strong biology base and I really don’t have that. I’ve gotten used to being able to work things out through calculations and whatnot and physiology isn’t like that so I had a hard time with it.
With three different sections in the course, there three different professors, one for each section. It requires adapting to different teaching styles along with different topics. BIOM*3100 covers neurophysiology, endocrine physiology, and reproductive physiology.

ENGG*2100 – Engineering and Design II
Professor: Dr. W. Stiver
Course Load: High!
Personal Thoughts:
I would definitely have to say that I have a love hate relationship with this course. On one hand, it allows you to reinforce the skills you learned in first year, and apply them to designing a system that can solve the given problem; on the other hand, the work load and stress from this course is so high, it really makes you want to snap. ENGG*2100 or as we call it ‘Design’ is a course that really tries to give you the basic engineering experience. There are two term projects, the CAE and Design Build projects respectively and two individual presentations that really aren’t to worry about for the most part (though they can be at inconvenient times).
The for the CAE project you and your randomly assigned team are given an everyday appliance, and you’re responsible for disassembling it physically (while noting where things go and how they fit together) and then each group member is given a bunch of parts and you’re expected draw these parts in NX5 (a CAE software) and then with your team, assemble these parts together in NX5 so that you get your virtually appliance to fit together and ultimately work as it would work in real life. To me the whole project was brutal, no matter how well you manage your time, drawing the parts you’re given is a pain, there are so many functions in the software and so many commands you need to learn^* on your own it can really be overwhelming. Not to mention all the frustration one faces when you realize that you and your teammates didn’t coordinate properly during the drawing process, so now your parts don’t fit together… NIGHTMARE!
Then there’s design project, the real pain in the course! For this project you’re put into another randomly assigned group and you’re given the task of designing, building, and testing a device to accomplish a given task. The project is time consuming, stressful, and utterly insane! This project was the centerpiece of the semester, pretty much all the free time is devoted to this project. You start without nothing but the problem description and you get to testing in a matter of 11 weeks, and in between you have to keep a logbook for every idea, every piece of research or anything related to the project. Your team is asked to hand in several proposal like design reports to keep the professor and TA’s up to speed about your design. The whole experience is tiring and frustrating, but it really lets you get to know who on your team you can trust to do work and who you should only assign simple tasks to. Overall I’d say that the project really does help simulate real life in that you’re expected to design a device and constantly defend the idea with calculations and hopefully be able to have it perform in real-life like you say it would on paper. It gives us, as students, the chance to experience a somewhat realistic engineering experience.
The lecture component of the course covers 4 major topics: Teamwork, Creativity, Safety, and Sustainable Development. The professor brings you through the the importance of each topic and how they relate to the field of engineering. Along the way he gives talks about how these topics affect engineerings and why they’re important. To me, although this course is frustrating, tiring, and stressful it was definitely enjoyable.

ENGG*2160 – Engineering Mechanics II
Professor: Zoryana Salo
Course Load: Average
Personal Thoughts:
This is the continuation to ENGG*1210 – Engineering Mechanics, and is perhaps the most boring course of the semester. The material isn’t exactly the more exciting stuff and the the prof really doesn’t help make is any better. If I’m not mistaken she’ a PhD student, but has taught courses before, the problem is, she’s boring! It would perhaps be better if she could put her notes online so we didn’t spend all the lecture time to writing out paragraphs in the blackboard and us copying it like madmen.
Overall, I’d say the course was quite pathetic, there wasn’t much work to do, but the final was quite the misleading, of the 8 main topics that the professor told us were from the second half of the course and implied that we should concentrate on those, funny thing is, half the exam from from before the exam and most of us were unfamiliar with the material by then well, we panicked! But overall, we did okay, can’t say it was the best exam, but it was okay.

ENGG*2400 – Engineering Systems Analysis
Professor: Robert Dony
Course Load: Average for the most part
Personal Thoughts:
This course is like a sum of course, it wraps up your knowledge high school and first year courses and then shows you how to analyze a system rather than just solving for variables. The prof tries to keep the course as interesting as possible, cause some of the stuff is pretty dull, The course is complemented by MATH*2270 – Applied Differential Equations as both courses cover Laplace Transforms, but yo get your foundation of that from MATH*2270. Overall ENGG*2400 is enjoyable, the only stressful week from it is when the computer project is due, but other than that every thing’s fine. The only improvement the course could use is perhaps having the prof put up the answers to the assignments before the respective quiz so we could check to see if we did the work right, the solutions^** would be great, but the answers would suffice.

MATH*2270 – Applied Differential Equations
Professor: Anthony Vannelli
Course Load: Average
Personal Thoughts:
This course is one of those courses that makes me hate math, all the proofs that I couldn’t do and so many Laplace Transforms and properties… The redeeming factors are that the Laplace Transforms work related to ENGG*2400 and that the professor practically spoon fed us for quizzes and exams. I have to say that the material covered in the course were kind of boring, but definitely tolerable once you get the hang of it, it’s all pretty easier and straight forward.

^*You’re only taught how to use the basics of the software, the TA’s can be helpful with guiding you with what functions in the software to use, but since the software gets updated every few years, they don’t always know the exact function to use, usually the just know what the function is called, but they’re not exactly sure how to use it. Tough luck, gotta learn it yourself.
^**Prof Dony does put up the full solutions for the assignments after the quiz.

So we were informed in class today that the University of Guelph’s (U of G) School of Engineering (SOE) here at Guelph has plans to expand and retrofit its facilities, in part to accommodate more students into the existing 4 streams^* of engineering already offered here, and in part to accommodate the newly approved mechanical engineering stream which will be offered starting next fall. As part of the expansion, many of the existing facilities will be moved and/or expanded to give students more space.

Some of the main concerns of many students of the SOE is computer lab space, student lounge space, and more machine shop access. Believe it or not, the SOE, as it sits, doesn’t really have a computer lab that is dedicated for student use, most, if not all, computer labs are also use as classrooms, so at any time during the day when you’re in there, a TA or professor will tell you to so they can hold their scheduled class. This has become quite a nuisance because a lot of our work depends on proprietary software such as MATLAB and NX5, so the only way to get the work done, is to be in the labs!!!! We really need a large computer lab so we can have 24 hour access to the software without having to worry about be told to leave while we’re working!!!

Another facility that we would benefit from if we could gain more access to is a machine shop. Throughout out entire academic career here, we spend a lot of time designing, building, and testing our own systems, but we’re usually given a limited amount of time in the machine shop that’s part of the class schedule. We would greatly benefit from having a open access machine shop where we can work on our system when we need to, not just during the limited few hours of class!!

The one place that most SOE student spend their time is the undergraduate engineering lounge! Right now all it is is a small little area that is almost always filled with students, and for the most part, is impossible to find a seat in, we would really benefit from a larger lounge area. Now we’ve been told that the expansion includes a larger lounge area, however, there is a possibility that it will no longer just be the undergraduate engineering lounge, but rather the CPES^** lounge. Its great that the new lounge will bigger, because our current lounge really is small, and when the expansion is complete there will be more students so more lounge space is definitely welcome. However, what is the point of making the lounge bigger if you’re going shove 4 more departments into the lounge?! That’s basically moving us from a small and crowded area to a large, but much more crowded area, where’s the sense in this?

Now of course, in order for this expansion to actually happen, the university will need to approve it and then it’ll need to be funded; as of right now, they’re looking at a budget of $20 to $25 million but we’re not told where that will be coming from. Presumably, CPES will contribute to that sum and that’s probably why the new lounge might be named as the CPES lounge instead of the undergraduate engineering lounge… This brings up the argument of who paid for the New Science Complex?! CPES probably also contributed to that project, and yet most SOE students, who we are told make up 60% of CPES and contribute $12M to the university each year, barely step foot in that building after second year… If the science students get an entire building built for them, why can’t we get the same thing? Especially since we’d be an even bigger part of CPES after the expansion. When in fact this retrofitting of the old building and adding new sections to expand in the square footage, that’s how I understand it at least. SOE students have a tough workload and we need all the space and help we can get, so the expansion is welcome, but if all we’re going to do is expand and then share the expanded space, what’s the point?! Honestly, I don’t know of any other students who literally have to stay over night at school to get some of their work done; I know many students from other faculties stay late, but I don’t know of faculty’s students who have to stay over night! We deserve a larger newer lounge, and it should remain the undergraduate engineering lounge, not the CPES lounge!!

Along with this expansion, comes many rumours, including the one already mentioned about the student lounge. Another one is that the new mechanical engineering stream has been approved, and along with that approval came the approval of charging a higher tuition for that stream… Now here’s the question, if the new stream will charge more tuition, how will this effect the existing streams? Rumours have it that the new stream will charge about $8000 to $8500 in tuition, now that’s $3000 more than the current $5500. So how are they going to justify that the students who will be in mechanical engineering? How are they going to make they feel like they should pay $3000 more than those in the other streams?! Chances are that they’ll bump everyone one to the same tuition cost; something that would drive me insane. As it stands, U of G’s SOE charges less tuition than the province’s larger engineering schools; however, the other schools have much better facilities than we do, and that’s why we need to expand our facilities. The question remains, how will the SOE set the tuition rates between the new and old programs so that they can contribute to the expansion, while not causing a riot?! The quick and dirty way would be to charge everyone the new target tuition rate of $8000, but that wouldn’t be fair to most of the existing student because would be starting our last semester when the expansion project is completed, If they decide to charge different amounts across different streams than those in the streams that are paying more will be unhappy. Presumably the best and fairest way to do this is the increase tuition to those students who will actually benefit for at least for a full year from the new facilities and keep the tuition rate as it is (with the acceptable/allowable increase) for those who won’t be benefiting from this expansion. I don’t see why I would need to pay for a facility that I will barely use if it completes on time; I may never benefit from it if there’s delay somewhere.

I know I’m just one student and that my voice is limited, but I do think that future SOE students will benefit from the expansion, but it would be unfair for me to pay for something that I’ll benefit from. It’s paying for a meal that I never ate, or buying a shirt that I’ll never wear; why would I do that?! I know it’s nice to be generous and give back to society and all, but there’s a limit to my generosity and paying for someone else’s school facilities isn’t exactly something that I’m willing to do.

P.S. I didn’t get any sleep last night, thanks SOE!

^*The 4 streams of engineering the SOE currently offers are biological, environmental, systems & computing, and water resources.

^**CPES is the College of Physical and Engineering Science at Guelph and is comprised of several departments, including engineering.