Ken Coley
Dean, Faculty of Engineering
PEng, CEng
PhD, Imperial College of Science and technology, London, UK
BSc (Hons), Metallurgy
Nationally renowned researcher, educator and administrator Ken Coley is the current Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, effective July 1, 2019.
Having just previously served as a Materials Science and Engineering professor at McMaster University, Coley held the ArcelorMittal Dofasco Chair in Ferrous Metallurgy and served as Director of the Steel Research Centre in Hamilton. He is an award-winning researcher who, most recently, was honoured with the John F. Elliott Lectureship Award from the Association of Iron & Steel Technology.
Coley joined McMaster in 1996 as an associate professor and gained tenure in 1999. He served as Chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department from 2005-09, during which time the number of undergraduate students enrolled in the program doubled.
Prior to McMaster, he was the British Steel Lecturer in Process Metallurgy at University of Strathclyde from 1989-96. Prior to that, he was a senior scientific officer at the National Physical Laboratory (UK) from 1986-89.
As Associate Dean (Academic) at McMaster, Coley successfully led initiatives which saw the first- to second-year undergraduate student attrition rate drop from 22 per cent to less than 4.5 per cent. He played a leading role in the design of the school’s Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences Program and, most recently, has been leading the implementation of McMaster Engineering’s The Pivot initiative to transform undergraduate education.
