FOUNDATION FEATURE
GIRLS IN THE STORY The story today is that more women choose engineer- ing than ever before in Canada, even though the profes- sion is far from achieving gender parity. Recent data from Engineers Canada suggest that just 13 per cent of practising, licensed engineers in Canada are women. In a program adapted from one started by APEGA, Engineers Canada — the country’s national voice for engineering regulators — promotes an initiative called 30-by-30. It seeks to increase the proportion of newly licensed women in engineering to 30 per cent by 2030. Perhaps the message is having an effect. Engineers Canada recently reported that female enrolment in undergraduate and graduate engineering programs in Canada reached new heights last year, at about 21 per cent and 25 per cent of total enrolment, respectively, up from about 18 and 23 per cent in 2012. READesign, meanwhile, was created with both genders in mind. But overall, it’s storytelling approach engineering disciplines. “I was interested in doing something similar in High River because there’s nothing like this available in the less urban areas outside of Calgary,” says Ms. Hurst, who has also volunteered for APEGA, as a science olympics work group member. The concept of READesign, which targets girls and boys, intrigued her: “You get to combine literacy with giving children hands-on experience designing things.” Every Tuesday in October, a dozen children aged nine to 13 gathered at the newly renovated library, alongside library staff and a handful of volunteers from the engineering world. After reading a book and iden- tifying or being assigned a problem facing the central character, kids in small teams tackled their challenges, using a variety of craft supplies and construction toys like LEGO, K’NEX, and littleBits. One of Ms. Hurst’s favourite workshops, during a later offering of the program in February 2017, involved the picture book Curious George Discovers Space , a story about the iconic and precocious monkey visiting a space centre. After reading the book, the class was
PLOT POWER A boy tests out a motor at Wood Buffalo Regional Library, a design solution for The Sea Chest.
may resonate more with girls, says its creator, D’Andre Wilson-Iherjirika, P.Eng. “Some studies show that girls prefer the storytelling aspect in the sense that you see more girls playing with dolls and role-playing. They like to tell a story or be part of a story.” A growing number of organizations, in fact, are looking to stories to engage girls in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). They may be onto something. An article in Scientific American in 2013 hypothesized that storytelling would help bridge those girls who are strong in both verbal communication and math to STEM. Research at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan shows that girls with that combination of aptitudes more often choose non-STEM careers than their male counterparts do. How could society fix that? Perhaps by appealing to their verbal aptitude with stories and their STEM aptitude with subject matter.
42 | PEG WINTER 2017
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