Enabling the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges for Educators

Abstract

The Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges (CEGC) capture the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in a way that is uniquely contextualized to Canada. This “grand challenge” approach is intended to focus and inspire the engineering profession, and to provide a context for Canadian engineering educators to prepare engineering students with the necessary leadership and socio-technical skills to address and solve these large complex challenges and facilitate impactful change. This course, “Enabling the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges for Educators” creates learning modules to enable engineering educators to efficiently and effectively teach the CEGC.

To frame these challenges and to inspire engineering educators to prepare students to address these complex socio-technical issues, Engineering Deans Canada (EDC) have developed and endorsed the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges (CEGC). The CEGC, created in 2019, capture the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals in a Canadian context. There are six CEGC: CEGC 1) Resilient infrastructure; CEGC 2) Access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy; CEGC 3) Access to safe water in all communities; CEGC 4) Inclusive, safe, and sustainable cities; CEGC 5) Inclusive and sustainable industrialization; and CEGC 6) Access to affordable and inclusive STEM education. They reflect broad, integrative problems of deep societal importance, where leadership and expertise will chart the pathway towards solutions.

The modules are designed for engineering educators to supplement courses, workshops, and other teaching delivery methods, and complement teaching material for their learners. The modules are scaffolded by introducing a summary of each of the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges, presenting examples of the challenges from the Ontario context in cities and Indigenous communities, and creating structured learning activities with guided lesson plans to develop leadership skills. Embedded within this approach are frameworks to build capacity for sustainability and engineering leadership.

The course is structured in a step by step approach by first taking a learning journey across the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges, then studying examples of these challenges in Ontario cities and Indigenous communities, and followed by integrating leadership skills to understand and address the grand challenges. The course also includes a toolkit for educators that provides guidance on navigating the course material to enable educators to reuse the materials for the CEGC, cities and communities, and leadership skills in a meaningful manner.

All materials are developed in both English and French.