University of Waterloo
IN-47: Innovation A

A pilot from the Faculties of Engineering, Environment, and Mathematics --- expanding to other faculties in years to come.  In line with Waterloo@100, this symposium brings together a selection of projects primarily related to the Global Future theme of sustainability, from across multiple faculties.

Participating students are from Environment and Business, Computer Science, and a variety of Engineering disciplines including: Chemical, Civil, Computer, Electrical, Management, Mechanical, Mechatronics, Software, and Systems Design Engineering.  All students, instructors, and TAs, were co-located in the Ideas Clinic, creating opportunities for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary interaction and collaboration at all levels.

Capstone is the culmination of the undergraduate student experience, providing a critical opportunity for students to showcase their ingenuity and design skills --- in the classroom and beyond.  Capstone encourages teams to engage with real-world problems outside the classroom, as a transitional educational experience to the larger scopes and longer timelines (even longer than co-op!) that they can expect to see in their careers.

Opportunity/problem identification, background research, ideation, empirical work, and evaluation are universal elements of capstone.  These elements can have varied realizations in different disciplines, with some common threads. For example, some teams from all three faculties took TCPS2 training and engaged with some form of human subject interaction.  Engineering learned PESTLE analysis from Environment. CS students got help building physical devices from Engineering.  Environment/Business students connected Engineering projects to broader scopes and real deployment contexts. CS students were inspired by Environment students to choose sustainability-oriented projects.  All teams benefited from presenting to and hearing from more diverse audiences.