Encouraging Girls in Engineering: Investing in our Future
WE MADE IT!
When academia and industry partner together you get “Feats of Engineering,” a program to encourage enrolment and career opportunities for young women in engineering.
On June 11th we had the privilege to host Youth Think Tank members Claire and Vikki and Ryerson student Stephanie at our Cisco Canada headquarters in downtown Toronto. We were just a little excited – here are the students showing off their new Cisco ICAN shirts with Associate Systems Engineers Alice Okundaye and Sam Yiu.
After a short welcome and introduction to Cisco the students were put to work configuring a Cisco Telepresence unit. They used the same unit to have a videoconference with Cisco Engineer, Casey Kewais, located in our office in Kanata, Ontario.
We ended the day being interviewed by the students. Some of the things they wanted to know…
What do we do? Our specific team at Cisco are service and sales engineers who help customers understand and deploy our technology.
Why do we like it? It is cool. We are changing the way the world works, lives, plays and learns. Our technology is the foundation of so many awesome things that are happening in the world. We all like the aspect of working with customers and interacting with people.
What advice would we give? Don’t be intimidated because there are not many women in the field, you can do it. Stay curious and learn as much as you can.
Then we turned the tables.
Our students have been working on a project called “WEMADEIT”. Their website is designed by high school students for high school students to encourage them to consider Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers. Along the way they have written, interviewed and created videos. So we asked them…
What did you learn while doing this project?
Here’s what they said: Engineering is a very broad field and people do a lot of different kinds of jobs. IT is everywhere!
We couldn’t agree more.
Read more about how Youth Think Tank is investigating why girls aren’t getting into engineering here.
Tags:
