From the Nominator

The University of Alberta Faculty of Engineering is one of the top five engineering schools in Canada. With approximately 4,400 undergraduate students, we admit and graduate 800 to 1,000 students per year. This viewbook was produced to attract potential students who have broad interests that extend beyond mathematics and science. We are working hard to create greater diversity in our engineering programs in gender and ethnicity but also in areas of interest. Historically, students who excel in math and science students are drawn to engineering. Our goal is to also attract the attention of students who may be considering programs such as arts, law, business, or other fields—the creative problem solvers of the world.

From the Judges

We received some entries from engineering programs, much to the judges’ delight—and surprisingly so. We don’t often think of “engineering” and “playful” together in the same sentence, but the University of Alberta managed to create a playful and interactive viewbook for its engineering program. This viewbook grew out of a strategy to show that “engineering is a creative profession for people who want to change the world” and position Alberta’s engineering program to “the creative problem solvers of the world.” The viewbook introduces this theme immediately on the cover, beginning with the statement, “others see problems, you see solutions,” illustrated geometrically in a manner that evokes a flow chart. This focus on the student as problem solver continues with the leading statement “start a thinker, leave a doer” and continues as the viewbook provides subtle problem solving challenges throughout—through a continuing flow chart motif, through more geometric type that invites interpretation, and even through die-cut sheets that, if taken apart and assembled, become a three-dimensional airplane. The viewbook balances this interactivity with plenty of information about the university’s various courses of study, all written efficiently and never becoming overwhelming.