Individualized Program

Engineers and information scientists shape and are shaped by the social world in which they practice, and that world is becoming smaller and more interconnected. This observation opens a variety of research questions in the newly emerging field of global engineering. The major emphases of work in global engineering are in leadership studies and social entrepreneurship.

Faculty members in the Centre for Engineering in Society supervise masters and PhD students interested in interdisciplinary research related to their research area under the Individualized Program (INDI) of the School of Graduate Studies.

The Centre invites students to explore questions bearing on the relationship between society and technology, and to prepare students to engage in ethical engineering and entrepreneurship practices in the service of a global community. Some areas of focus could include:

• Global competency: Communication skills; cross-cultural communication; management.

• Social impacts of technology: Equity; effects of technology on social, political, and cultural practices; ethics and practices of technological development aid.

• Globalization of technology: Function of multinational and international firms, international business and engineering codes, legislation, and regulation.

• Technology entrepreneurship: dissemination of technological innovation, teamwork, idea generation, creativity processes.

Interested students are encouraged to send their detailed CV along with a short research proposal directly to a professor with the Centre, whose interests are most closely related to the student's proposed research.