Personnel

Dr. Clifton Johnston is currently an Associate Professor and NSERC Chair in Design Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at Dalhousie University. Prior to joining Dalhousie University, Dr. Johnston spent nine years on Faculty in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Calgary, where he won two international curriculum development awards. He has collaborated on research and development ventures with companies ranging from Shell Canada to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. His research interests include Biofluids, sports engineering and design methodology and teaching. Dr. Johnston has recently become President for the Canadian Engineering Education Association.

Email: clifton.johnston@dal.ca

Sandra MacAulay Thompson received her B.Eng. (Mech ’97) as part of the last graduating class from the Technical University of Nova Scotia (TUNS). After working for several years in industry she returned to Dalhousie University and earned her M.A.Sc. in Industrial Engineering (’03). Sandra continued to work in industry until her first child was born several years later. Since then, she has balanced home and career by working as the Engineer in Residence for the Department of Industrial Engineering, and on various consulting projects in manufacturing and healthcare.

Email: s.macaulay.thompson@dal.ca

I was originally introduced to Clifton Johnston at the University of Calgary through the design courses I took. I came to Dalhousie to pursue grad studies in the field of human factors as it related to design. As I became more involved with design at Dalhousie, I taught all the design courses available to Mechanical Students at Dalhousie's faculty of engineering, with an increased focus on human centred design in the engineering process. Through this, I was also introduced to the IDEA Sandbox, a collaborative product design initiative with NSCAD's Design program and Dalhousie's Rowe School of Business, of which I became the manager in 2016. I work closely with the chair to teach our Mechanical Capstone course, as well as increase the programming available for human-centred product design. 

Email: holly.pharoah@dal.ca

Scott Flemming completed a B.Sc. in Mathematics at UPEI, a B.Eng. at Dalhousie, and a M. A. Sc. at the University of Toronto.  Scott has received various awards and scholarships notably an NSERC CGS-M for his masters work in Human Factors Engineering and was awarded an NSGS and Killam Scholarship for his ongoing PhD work in Engineering Education and Engineering Design.  Scott has been an Instructor at Dalhousie since 2013, is a recipient of the Dalhousie-wide Change One Thing award, and is interested in finding ways to more effectively teach engineers how to design solutions to complex problems.

Scott has worked with Dr. Johnston in several capacities in the past several years including supervising senior-year capstone projects, studying and helping to shape a summer sandbox "bootcamp", organizing the 2016 CEEA annual conference, and performing Engineering Education research.  Mr. Flemming has just published a peer-reviewed conference paper on Engineering Culture and on how this is related to the Problem Definition aspect of Engineering Design. 

Email: Scott.Flemming@Dal.Ca