Professional Development For Engineering Students (PDEng)
PDEng is a series of courses which are to be completed by students in the Engineering Faculty during their coop terms. It was started in January 2005 with the objective of ensuring that students have professional skills to complement the technical skills students normally learn in class.
The courses attempt to teach students critical thinking to address common problems that occur in workplace settings, such as project management or collaboration between team members.
Ever since its introduction, the PDENG program has been widely criticized for its lack of effectiveness, failure to meet normal course standards for marking, and overworking students during their co-op work terms.
A final recommendation to overhaul the program was made May 12, 2010 by the Dean of Engineering., which can be found here Dean of Engineering's Review of PDENG . PDEng currently still exists and is running regularly scheduled courses until Winter 2011, at which point either PDEng or WatPD Engineering will be offered. Many details on the switch are still not known, however all engineering students will still have a mandatory course on professional skills for at least 5 of their co-op terms.
Read more about this topic: University Of Waterloo Faculty Of Engineering
Famous quotes containing the words professional, development, engineering and/or students:
“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Mining today is an affair of mathematics, of finance, of the latest in engineering skill. Cautious men behind polished desks in San Francisco figure out in advance the amount of metal to a cubic yard, the number of yards washed a day, the cost of each operation. They have no need of grubstakes.”
—Merle Colby, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Members of the faculty, faculty members, students of Huxley and Huxley students. I guess that covers everything.”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx)