A Customizable Multidisciplinary Design Program in a Traditional Engineering Faculty

A new three-year Bachelor of Multidisciplinary Design – Experiential Learning program was approved by the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities in 2022 at the University of Ottawa in Canada. The program is situated in the Faculty of Engineering and welcomed its first student cohort in the Fall of 2023. The program is designed for students who have a diverse set of interests, and who are passionate about combining technology with other fields, including social science, business, or arts, rather than those wanting to be engineers. The flexible program provides students with the skills required for modern multidisciplinary job markets, and with the opportunity to define and pursue their own career trajectory. As this type of flexibility and openness may seem daunting for first year students, sample learning paths were created based on current job market trends, with more learning paths in development. To support using these paths and developing new ones, a tool was developed to help students plan their path and select their courses. This paper focuses on the development of this unique program in the Canadian context, as well as the challenges associated with its development. Since this new program is not a traditional engineering discipline, and is targeting non-traditional students, recruitment efforts and marketing needed to be modified from those used elsewhere in the Faculty.