Last Friday, October 10, the first meeting of Women in Science (WiS) was held on our very own Waterloo campus. Since 1992, Waterloo’s Women in Engineering (WiE for short) has been providing resources, opportunities, and programs for girls to encourage more females to take engineering in university, and to succeed in the program. Over the years, WiE has developed successful events like Go Eng Girl for female students in grades 7-10, and Engineering Badge Day for Girl Guides. Today, most students are aware of WiE and what it does to increase the number of girls studying engineering at the post-secondary level at Waterloo.
Yet somehow, even after all these years of great goings-on with WiE, Waterloo still had no resource for female science students. No safe place where they could gather and chat about science, books, or sexism in the workplace. This finally came to an end when a female student with a PhD in physics, now the first ever chair of WiS, and a few other passionate women, recognized the need for this resource. In response to this need, they campaigned to receive funding for a program that would encourage and support women in science, and they were successful!
At the inaugural meeting, after the election of the chair, interested upper-year science students talked about what they could do to make WiS as effective as possible. As so often happens when many girls gather, a lot of high-rated brainstorming took place under the umbrella headings of Academic/Career Support, Community building/Emotional support, Advocacy/Education/Outreach. Among their great ideas included having workshops, bringing in prominent female scientists, creating mentoring programs between upper-years and first years, creating faculty-specific reps and events, having fun community socials, and engaging male scientists in awareness.
In the past decade or so, there has been a major push to get more girls to study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) programs in university and to get rid of the sexism that abounds in these fields. In creating WiS, Waterloo has taken the next step towards making our university a more equal environment for both sexes.
If you’re interested in this great new group, there are upcoming monthly meetings and there will definitely be events! To get involved, like their Facebook page Women in Science: UWaterloo. Or, get involved with WiE at Women in Waterloo Engineering on Facebook; after all, we all have the same goals. Go girls!
Leave a Reply