Dean's Messages

The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (FASE) launched a Strategic Academic Planning
(SAP) process to define its future direction and reaffirm its leadership in Canadian engineering. Led by the Vice Dean,
Strategic, and a steering committee, the initiative will articulate a clear, forward-looking academic vision that reflects FASE’s strengths, ambitions, and global impact. The steering committee included a broad representation of community members, including:

• Dean
• Vice Deans, Unit Chairs & Directors
• Faculty across career stages (early, mid, and later career) and streams (teaching and tenure stream)
• Undergraduate & Graduate students
• Accessibility advocates
• Senior administration

Consultation with Faculty members, staff, learners, alumni and partners has been ongoing since 2023, with the Faculty External Review, Facility Master Planning (FMP) and Strategic Academic Planning consultations. Throughout these consultations we invited members from across the FASE and U of T community to share their insights.

Draft Internal Strategic Academic Plan

What we heard was a strong desire to continue collaboration across the community to define a distinct identity that reflects the faculty’s strengths, ambitions and leadership role in Canadian and global engineering education.

I would like to thank everyone for their engagement, positivity, and the significant contributions that have been
considered in articulating our renewed mission, priorities, and goals. We especially thank the SAP steering committee for their dedication, guidance, and perspective.

As we work through implementation planning and drafting of the plan, we would like to provide you with another opportunity to give additional thoughts on the Strategic Academic Plan.

The survey link is available here to all FASE members to provide additional feedback on the Strategic Academic Plan content. The link will close on Oct 21, 2025, at 4:00PM EDT.

An external review of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and its BASc, MASc, MEng and PhD programs has been scheduled for March 4‐5, 2026. Four eminent colleagues have agreed to form the review team:

• Jeffrey Grossman, PhD
  Professor and former Department Chair, Materials Science & Engineering
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Leijun Li, PhD
  Professor and Department Chair, Chemical and Materials Engineering
  University of Alberta
• Natalie Stingelin, PhD
  Professor and Department Chair, Materials Science & Engineering
  Georgia Institute of Technology
• Hatem Zurob, PhD
  Professor and Department Chair, Materials Science & Engineering
  McMaster University

Members of the Faculty who would like to offer comments toward this review are asked to send them via email to governance.fase@utoronto.ca.

Please circulate this memorandum to any member of the Faculty who may not have
received it through the general distribution.

The Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board’s (CEAB) next visit will occur on October 19-21, 2025, covering all of our undergraduate programs.

The purpose of accreditation is:

“… to identify to the member engineering regulators of Engineers Canada those engineering programs whose graduates are academically qualified to begin the process to be licensed as professional engineers in Canada. The process of accreditation emphasizes the quality of the students, the academic and support staff, the curriculum, and the education facilities.” (CEAB Accreditation Criteria and Procedures 2023 PDF)

The visiting team chair is Julius Pataky, P.Eng., MBA, CEAB member and Management Consultant, KPMG (Vancouver, BC).

The vice-chairs are James Lee, Ph.D., FEC, P.Eng., Department Head and Professor, Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK) and Darlene Spracklin-Reid, P.Eng., Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John’s, NL).

Ann English, FEC, P.Eng., retired CEO and Registrar, Engineers & Geoscientists BC is an observer (Burnaby, BC).

The program visitors are:

• Chemical Engineering:
  • Andrea Julio, P.Eng.
    Program Manager, School of Engineering & Technology, Conestoga College; Lead Project Engineer, Honeywell Aerospace (Cambridge, ON)
• Civil Engineering:
  • Catherine Tatarniuk, Ph.D., FEC, P.Eng.
    Associate Teaching Professor, Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops, BC)
• Computer Engineering:
  • Sathish Gopalakrishnan, Ph.D., P.Eng.
    Associate Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC)
• Electrical Engineering:
  • Mahda Jahromi, Ph.D., P.Eng.
    Senior Lecturer, Sustainable Energy Engineering, Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC)
• Engineering Science:
  • Robert Holland, P.Eng.
    Specialist Engineering – Quality Assurance, BC HYDRO (Burnaby, BC)
    Common core (first 2 years); Engineering Mathematics, Statistics and Finance
  • Réda Fayek, Ph.D., P.Eng.
    Management Consultant, Kimitek Inc. (Kitchener, ON)
    Biomedical Systems Engineering; Energy Systems Engineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • Joshua Marshall, Ph.D., P.Eng.
    Professor and Associate Head, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Queen’s University (Kingston, ON)
    Machine intelligence; Robotics Engineering
  • Simone Pisana, Ph.D., P.Eng.
    Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University (Toronto, ON)
    Aerospace Engineering; Engineering Physics
• Industrial Engineering:
  • Ali Akgunduz, Ph.D., ing.
    Associate Dean-Academic Programs, Gina Cody School of Engineering and Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Concordia University (Montreal, QC)
• Lassonde Mineral Engineering:
  • Marek Pawlik, Ph.D., P.Eng.
    Department Head and Professor, Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC)
• Materials Engineering:
  • Marilyn Spink, P.Eng.
    Operations Director, Canadian Critical Minerals & Materials Alliance (Toronto, ON)
• Mechanical Engineering
  • Robert Brennan, Ph.D., P.Eng.
    Professor, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Calgary (Calgary, AB)