Laurentian Engineering makes its mark: Skyrocketing enrollment, national awards contribute to Bharti School's stature as academic powerhouse.

• Author: Tollinsky, Norm
• Position: DESIGN-BUILD

It's easy enough to illustrate the amazing growth of Laurentian University's Bharti School of Engineering with a recitation of its skyrocketing enrolment numbers, but nothing speaks to the school's stature as an academic powerhouse as eloquently as the awards its junior and senior teams took home from the 2015 Canadian Engineering Competition in March.

When the junior team won top honours at the Ontario Engineering Competition in February and the senior team came in second, both qualified to represent Ontario at the national competition at Memorial University in St. John's.

"It was the first time that a university sent two teams to the competition and both won first prize," said Bharti School director Dr. Ramesh Subramanian.

"It's amazing how far we've come. We just had our iron ring ceremony and we had dose to 90 students graduating. Less than 10 years ago, we had fewer than 15."

The school has seen enrollment increases of 25 to 30 per cent in each of the last four years and currently has a total of close to 700 students--625 at the undergraduate level, and between 50 and 55 Masters and PhD students.

"In 2005, we had 100 students in the entire school," said Subramanian.

There are 25 faculty members, including seven in mechanical, seven in chemical, eight or nine in mining and a couple in civil.

Mining profs are the most difficult to recruit because there aren't very many PhDs coming out of Canada, said Subramanian.

Pay scales in industry are so good for mining engineers that most students forgo graduate degrees and embark on a career in industry at the earliest opportunity, forcing mining schools to recruit overseas.

The mining and mechanical engineering programs each have approximately 250 students with chemical engineering accounting for another 125 to 150. Mechanical engineering was a two-year program for many years, but was expanded to four years beginning in 2009. There's also a two-year civil engineering program the university hopes to build on.

The school's growing stature is attributable in part to the generosity of Stan Bharti, chairman and CEO of merchant banker Forbes & Manhattan, and Ned Goodman, CEO of Toronto-based Dundee Corporation.

Bharti, who moved to Sudbury to join Falconbridge in 1978 and called the city home until 1995, gave the school a $10-million endowment in November 2011 to fund scholarships, field trips, faculty recruitment and improvements to classrooms and labs. The following year, Laurentian named its School...