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3 Ways Universities Support Female Engineering Students

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Source: Medium

As a girl, it can be intimidating to study a profession that is very male-dominated. Thankfully, universities are making an effort to ensure that any of their female engineering students feel supported and empowered throughout their university career. Here are 3 ways that universities are making this possible:

Women in Engineering Societies

Societies (similar to clubs) are a great way to meet like-minded students and build a community at your school. Joining a Women in Engineering society will connect you with students in different years, invite you to exciting social events and even allow for leadership opportunities on campus.

Scholarships

Schools are offering scholarships specifically for females entering or currently in their engineering programs (like this Women for STEM fund at Ontario Tech University). These scholarships are usually promoted on the university’s website, but you can also learn more about them through high school guidance counsellors or a quick call to the university’s Student Awards department.

Conferences

Conferences can be a great way to build your network of female engineering students beyond your own university. They can also be an amazing opportunity to hear from industry professionals and introduce you to companies that you may work for one day!

There is no better time to be a woman in engineering and hopefully, these resources reignite your motivation to join the field.

Go ENG Girl- Building Confidence in Young Female Engineers

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Decisions, Decisions.

If you think back to your days in high school, having to figure out your future in your last year can be daunting. Even if you’re somewhat sure of what you want to study, how do you know for sure? How do you go forward feeling confident and ready to take on new challenges? Many females who are attracted to engineering often relate their interest to early maker projects where they had the chance to take-apart and build new creations, and solve creative problems. Many also find support and guidance along the way from a parent or close family member who also has a vested interest or background in engineering.

However, not everyone has access to these opportunities, so solidifying their decision and confidence to pursue an interest in engineering can be challenging. It’s been noted that girls are often more likely than boys to think that engineering is too difficult, and lack confidence in their ability to succeed and persevere- especially so if that support system is non-existent. This is where events like Go ENG Girl come into play.

Keynote speaker Katelyn Poyntz, Manager Project Engineering at St. Michaels Hospital.

The Wonderful World of Engineering

Each year, the University of Waterloo’s Engineering Outreach Department runs an event entitled Go Eng Girl, where over 100 Grade 7-10 girls are engaged in learning all about the wonderful world of engineering and its possibilities. Engineering Outreach’s Women in Engineering branch is lead on the event and passionately believes that every girl should have the opportunity to explore her passion, interest, and options in engineering. Through the event, participants are exposed to a network of peers, families, and role models that help answer questions and demystify concerns and stereotypes.

Panelists and role models answer questions.

From keynote speaker Katelyn Poyntz, Manager Project Engineering at St. Michaels Hospital, who shared her journey through the world of engineering, to a panel of current female engineering students, the event provided participants with a network of role models and an opportunity to ask questions and get inspired. The panelists highlighted their experiences, their successes, struggles, hobbies, and inspirations. It was a great opportunity to show these young girls that the panelists are just like them.

After the panel, participants were engaged in a design challenge which gave them a small glimpse into what engineering is all about. The girls were split up into small teams where they learned about the engineering design process and worked together to solve a problem. Ultimately, the design challenge was a way to empower these young women to experiment, create, and learn the importance of teamwork, failing and perseverance.
While it’s unrealistic to expect that every girl will become an engineer, it is important to show them possibilities they never imagined and help them build the network and support system needed to pursue their passion and get that iron ring.

Erika Kiessner

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Q&A WITH EngHERO: Erika Kiessner

Erika Kiessner is an exhibit developer for an independent exhibit design and fabrication company. She creates all the cool interactive exhibits at places like the ROM or Ontario Science Centre!Erika Keissner Polaroid 2

Q: What’s one thing you wish you knew about engineering back when you were in high school?

I honestly wasn’t sure what I was getting into when I signed up for engineering. I just knew that it was a good place to go if you were good at math and interested in science. I guess I wish someone had told me how abstract it is. An engineering degree isn’t about learning a set of concrete skills. It is more about learning a set of mental tools and approaches for solving problems. Thankfully that toolkit can be useful in a lot of fields. I’m very glad that I did an internship as part of my degree. It showed me the kind of work that I wouldn’t be happy doing long term.

Q: What’s your proudest accomplishment as an engineer?

This question is hard since I don’t work as an engineer. I have done some work doing mechanical and electrical design for artists and I have developed some elegant systems for several art pieces. Ironically the mechanisms were all hidden away inside the pieces so no one but me could really appreciate them!

Q: Tell me about a time in your career when your work has been about discovery or curiosity?

I am very fortunate that most of my career has been about discovery and curiosity. I have done a lot of work for science museums and to properly design an exhibit to explain a concept you really need a deep understanding of that concept. Plus, one of my goals in designing a good exhibit is to get people curious. And to do that I have to be curious myself.

Q: What are you doing these days?

My job now is as an exhibit developer for a small independent exhibit design and fabrication firm called Aesthetec Studio, in Toronto. We do concept development, prototyping and electronics fabrication for exhibits for museums and other institutions. Basically anything interactive that is a hybrid of the digital and physical is in our wheel house. I started at the Ontario Science Centre as floor staff talking about science to visitors.

I knew before I graduated that I wasn’t interested in going into a traditional engineering job and through my undergraduate thesis, I got to know some people at the OSC. So I started on the floor and worked my way into designing exhibits, something I can definitely thank my engineering degree for.

I spent three years there developing new exhibits and that was where my career started. After the OSC I took a year to do a masters degree in Fine Arts, specializing in interaction design. This gave me another set of tools to apply to my practice and helped me look at my work in more than one way.

Q: Do you feel your work contributes to society? How so?

Absolutely. My work is meant to teach people about the universe and more importantly, get them excited about finding out how and why things work.

Q: Why do we need more female engineers?

I think there are two reasons. The first is that in any field that is involved in problem solving, the more perspectives that come to a problem the better scope the proposed solutions will have. The second is that engineering culture would be better served by having more women, for much the same reason.

Q: Why do you personally believe the statistics are the way they are in terms of females in engineering?

Not all of the streams of engineering have an unbalanced female to male ratio. At the University of Toronto, where I studied, chemical engineering was affectionately known as “Fem Eng” because it was predominantly women. Similarly, I would estimate that industrial engineering, the stream I studied was about 40% women. I believe computer engineering was a bit lower but the ones that really stood out were mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, in which there were far more men than women. So what I really wonder is why some types of engineering attract women and others do not.

Generally, I think males get more encouragement to be strong in math and science than women do. That is changing, I hope. I also think that females are more willing to assert themselves in these areas over any societal opposition, than they were a generation ago. The old guard is turning over into the new, and ever more women will get into engineering. At one time doctors were all men and now women are pretty much equally represented. I think engineering will go that way too.

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Check out Aesthetec Studio‘s work