What Waterloo Engineering Outreach is doing to attract more women into the profession is one of the issues that will be discussed in California next week as Waterloo Engineering takes to the road for their annual California Alumni events. Two events will host up to 300 alumni allowing them to catch up on what is happening at Waterloo Engineering and listen to outstanding professors share their engineering insights and expertise.
The February 2nd event, to be held at Eventbrite’s head office in San Francisco and hosted by Manoj Sachdev, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will feature Mary Wells, professor of mechanical engineering and associate dean of outreach, who is speaking on the importance of changing the narrative behind engineering in order to attract women to the profession. Wells is also the Chair of the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering and the President of the Metallurgy and Materials Society (MetSoc) of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.
Female participation
“We need to tell better stories about the value engineers bring to society,” says Wells. “Engineers solve problems that affect humanity - what we do helps people and we need to share these stories in order to bring more women into our profession. Without female participation and their perspectives into solving difficult engineering problems, we are not getting the full picture or the best solutions.”
John Long, professor of electrical and computer engineering will give a highly anticipated tech talk on the “Future Opportunities for Silicon Nanoelectronics”. Long joined Waterloo Engineering last year from the Delft University of Technology where he was the chair of the Electronics Research Laboratory for many years. His current research interests include high speed wireline and high frequency, low power and mobile transceiver circuits for integrated wireless communications systems
On February 4th, in Palo Alto, Xun Wang, VP of Engineering at Medallia will welcome alumni to a Waterloo Engineering reception where Wells will present what the Faculty is doing to ameliorate the shortage of women in engineering, and what the profession can do as a whole to increase diversity.
Curious Alumni
“Our alumni are very proud of their degree and want to know how they can help make the Waterloo Engineering experience even better for students. They are always curious to know what we are doing and how the Educating the Engineer of the Future campaign is coming along,” says Nenone Donaldson, associate director of development and alumni affairs.