July 2010

Award for Service

PEGNL’s Award for Service is given to those who have served their profession diligently and who have made substantial contributions to the Association and to the advancement of the professions of engineering or geoscience.

Gordon Jin, FCSCE, P.Eng.

Gordon Jin is certainly a worthy recipient of this award.

After his graduation from Memorial with a Civil Engineering degree, Gordon worked with the provincial government for 27 years, firstly designing buildings, and then bridges.

In 2009, he changed careers and began work as a Co-operative Education Co-ordinator in Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.

His service to PEGNL began in the early ‘90’s, where he served on a variety of committees, including Finance, National Engineering Week, and Continuing Education, and he was on Council from 2002 to 2004.

He became involved with the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, or CSCE, as a Student Member and has held a number of executive positions on the CSCE Newfoundland and Labrador Section. He has been on the National Board since 1999. He has also chaired committees; been a regular contributor to the Canadian Civil Engineer magazine; and led the local committee that organized the 2009 CSCE Annual Conference in St. John’s.

His CSCE service culminated in 2009 when he was proud to be elected national President of this learned society. He is the first Newfoundlander and the first civil engineer of Chinese descent to become CSCE President in its 123-year history.

As CSCE President, he recently returned from a three-week trip to China and Hong Kong where he met with professionals, academics and members of sister civil engineering societies.

Gordon has also been appointed Adjunct Professor at Zhengzhou University and at the Luoyang Institute of Science and Technology in China.

In Hong Kong, he hosted the first Memorial University alumni event there, where 15 graduates [including 8 engineers] met for a 10-course Chinese dinner and networking. Gordon also interested some of those alumni in hiring Co-op Engineering students for work term placements in Hong Kong.

He contributes to other non-engineering related organizations, including the Bowring Park Foundation where he has offered engineering services and advice for projects such as the Cabot 500 Amphitheatre and the Duck Pond restoration.

Since 2007, he has been President of the organization that initiated The Newfoundland Chinese Head Tax Project to educate the public about the Head Tax paid by those, including his grandfather, father and uncles, who immigrated to the Dominion of Newfoundland between 1906 and 1949.

Along the way, Gordon has received a number of national Honours and Awards including one of which he is particularly proud – the Canadian Pacific Railway Engineering Medal awarded by the Engineering Institute of Canada. Other awards include CSCE Fellow and the James A. Vance Award.

Therefore, in recognition of his long and dedicated service to the engineering profession, to PEGNL, and to the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, Professional Engineers and Geoscientists Newfoundland and Labrador confers the Award for Service on Gordon Jin, P.Eng.

© Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland and Labrador