About 170 girls in grades 7 to 10 spent Saturday morning at McMaster University learning about what it takes to become an engineer with the annual Go ENG Girl program.

The "enthusiastic" group and about 150 parents heard from experts and participated in activities, including building a circuit for laser tag.

But regardless of whether the girls are future engineers, or even whether they choose to study at McMaster, the event gives them the information they need to know what it takes to apply to undergraduate programs, said organizer Kim Jones. It shows them how interesting a career in engineering can be.

Jones is a professor of chemical engineering at McMaster and chair of the Ontario Network for Women in Engineering (ONWIE) — a group that formed in 2005 when universities decided to work collaboratively to attract more women to engineering programs.

At McMaster there has been a steady rise in women applying to engineering. Preliminary numbers for this year show 35 per cent of first-year students are women. In the 2014 to 2015 school year there were 19.5 per cent and that number has been growing year-by-year.

Across Ontario there were 6,612 women enrolled in engineering compared with 25,927 men in 2017, according to ONWIE. And just 14 per cent of engineering faculty across Canada are women.

"I think that we had a hill to climb and we're partway up the hill," said Ishwar Puri, dean of engineering at McMaster. The goal is parity.

In his seven years at McMaster there has been a lot of focus on attracting more women, work that has seen the university take a "holistic approach." This includes recruiting more women faculty, offering more research opportunities (which women are more interested in), offering mentoring and making gender diversity "front and centre in our strategic plan."

Part of the reason for the Go ENG Girl event, of which there are many across Ontario and Canada, is that barriers begin at early ages. Research shows that boys and girls appear equally interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) until Grade 6, he said.

In Grade 7 you start to see girls not having the confidence to participate, stepping back in coed environments, Jones said. This is particularly important when it comes to course selection in high school. By the time students are in Grade 12 only around 30 per cent taking physics are young women.

"For me I was really intrigued by the possibility of taking all the courses I like: English, math, physics, chemistry ... and bringing together in a way where I could apply it to solve problems and also get a job," Jones said.

She was also lucky to have the "best role models" in her parents — her dad is an engineer and her mom did her undergraduate degree in math and masters in computer science and management. But universities don't just want people with her privileged background applying to engineering, she said.

McMaster has learned a lot from its work to be more inclusive and attract more women, leading to more diversity. This includes a more active Black student population and a LGBTQ club, Puri said.

Yet while there have been strides on some front, there remain other barriers in engineering. For instance, while the rate of female students in first year enrolment has grown, when you look at upper years enrolment in individual disciplines it varies.

Chemical engineering has seen the biggest growth with 43.7 per cent of upper year students last year identifying as women. While mechanical engineering and computing and software programs dipped to 13 per cent.

Part of this issue is the perception that to be a mechanical engineer you need to like to fix cars and get dirty. But there is more to the field, Puri said.

In computer engineering and software the problem is a battle of "stereotypes." The industry has a reputation for being "rife with misogyny" and "bro culture," he said. "That is a challenge, the next challenge we really have to focus on."

Jones agreed, adding that they need to do some "radical things" to address the fact that the tech field is perceived as an "exclusive, macho culture."

It's important for women and people from diverse backgrounds to be involved in that industry so the apps and software being designed works for everyone. Jones pointed to the historic example of crash test dummies initially only fitting the size of men — not women and children. As a modern example, she said you wouldn't want facial recognition software that works better on white men, then other people.

One way the university is looking at tackling the issue is changing the structure of first-year courses next year. Where students take four engineering classes, next year it will be a single class that wraps various disciplines in together with a team of instructors.

The class will include some lectures, but the class will be problem-led. Students will be given five different problems to work on throughout the year. Students will work in teams, where the students will rotate roles and no team will have just one woman.

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McMaster says engineering is for everyone and events like the Go ENG Girl program on Saturday are the university "putting our money where our mouth is," Puri said.

noreilly@thespec.com

905-526-3199 | @NicoleatTheSpec