CEI. view . fall 2012
15
Cooper Faust could have left Windsor to attend any number
of engineering schools,
but the opportunity to learn and conduct
research in magnificent new surroundings proved an enticement too
tempting to resist.
“It’s really cool that we’re going to be the first ones in there,”
says Faust. He is entering first-year electrical engineering this fall
and will study in the brand new Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering
Innovation (CEI).
Faust’s excitement about the CEI
ignited earlier this year when his
chemistry teacher brought him and
a group of classmates to a design
competition for high school students
in the CEI labs. There he got an initial
taste of its true scope and magnitude.
“I didn’t realize that it would be
this big, and be so nice,” he says.
“The lab we were in was really cool.
If they didn’t have something like
this, I probably would have gone
somewhere else.”
That kind of enthusiasm is music
to the ears of people like Veronika
Mogyorody who is the CEI’s academic architectural advisor. She’s
been intimately involved with the minutia of planning the building’s
layout and design since 2007. She says tremendous thought went
in to every little detail to ensure the facility will be a top-notch
destination for engineering research and learning.
Critical to the building’s design was the notion that it should be
a space whose physical orientation facilitates teamwork and peer-
based learning, says Mogyorody. “People don’t work in isolation and
most engineering is moving towards team-based problem-solving.”
Besides reconfigurable classrooms that accommodate lecture-
based teaching as well as breakout group work, the building has plenty
of common areas designed to encourage students to socially interact
with one another, a critical factor for planting the seeds of innovation
according to the Faculty of Engineering dean, Dr. Mehrdad Saif.
The faculty is presently divided into four departments that
reflect a variety of engineering professions, but the building was
designed to discourage the natural compartmentalization that
often occurs.
“The whole point was to remove barriers and have people
from different disciplines interacting with one another,” says Saif,
who notes that the designers took their cues from such successful
businesses as Microsoft and Google.
“The spaces are designed for comfort,
but also to stimulate creative thinking
and collaboration. The space itself
plays a major role in that.”
Engineering Student Society
President Lotus Pupulin says that
aspect is extremely exciting for
students who until now have never
really had a true space to call their
own. “Now we have a place to learn
and be innovative,” says the third-year
civil engineering student. “It promotes
more sharing and openness, and that’s
how engineers work together. We can’t
wait to have our own space.”
Pupulin says that students were consulted at every step of the
design process and were involved in a series of meetings to gain
information from them on what they wanted to see in the building
and how to best utilize the new space.
“It was nice to see that the faculty always wanted input from
various student groups,” she says.
Another critical component to the facility’s teaching capability
lies in the notion that it’s a “live building.” Students, especially those
from such disciplines as civil or mechanical engineering, will be
able to look up to exposed ceilings and see the guts of its heating,
cooling, plumbing and electrical operations, while sensors built into
pedestrian bridges will teach them about strain and load bearing.
Research labs, meanwhile, will be larger and offer greater
versatility and functionality, while enjoying higher visibility than
“the CEI will be a drawing
card for the best and
brightest young minds in
engineering across the
country.”
Dr. Mehrdad Saif,
DEAN OF ENGINEERING
The Centre for Engineering Innovation
FORGING CONNECTIONS
BY STEPHEN FIELDS
