The Faculty of Engineering is expanding its expertise in fields that will help improve intelligent border crossing transportation systems, create lightweight products for the automotive and aerospace sectors and revolutionize manufacturing, healthcare and the energy industry with autonomous systems.
These areas are some of the research 11 new faculty positions will bring to engineering over the next three years. The new positions are part of the University of Windsor's recent decision to add up to 50 new faculty positions across the university.
The engineering faculty will add specialists in the following areas:
- Sustainable energy systems
- Light-weight automotive/aerospace products engineering
- Engine, combustion and after treatment systems for advanced fuels
- Plastics and polymer composite materials
- Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) for cross-border research and education
- Information technologies in civil engineering
- Advanced power systems
- Autonomous intelligent systems
- Smart sensors and actuators
- Ergonomics & usability engineering
- Engineering, management & entrepreneurship
Eighteen tenure-track assistant professor positions across six faculties have been approved in the first round of hiring through a consultative process led by provost Douglas Kneale, with the deans of the faculties and their respective programs. The Faculty of Engineering has spent the last six months recruiting, evaluating and selecting candidates for the first wave of hiring.
“Investing in faculty in this way is also investing in our students. We are looking for outstanding teachers, researchers, scholars, creators, and practitioners with a diverse range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary engagement,” says Dr. Kneale. “From face-to-face lecture hall to mobile device, from lab to clinic to performance, I want people who are making a noise in their fields, who value innovative and effective teaching and learning, who will be successful in mentoring our undergraduate and graduate students, and whose work will attract external funding to support their programs of research and creativity.”
Kneale says the hiring of 50 new professors is both a hugely transformative moment for the University and an investment in the future of the entire community. The hiring initiative, first announced by the president in a March 2015 public address, was conceived as a response to a changing provincial mandate—one in which student outcomes and learning contexts will play a greater role in funding models.
Funded through the Strategic Priority Fund that was established in 2009, the new hiring reflects the University’s ongoing commitment to vibrant, engaged learning environments for UWindsor students and ensuring that from their first year, students learn from instructors whose diverse backgrounds, applied expertise, and lived experience bring depth and currency to student learning. At UWindsor, 76 per cent of course sections are taught by regular full-time faculty member—an institutional strength that will be maintained and enhanced by this new hiring initiative.