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A WISE Day for Girl Guides
Helping young girls discover “the joy of engineering” was the goal of a U of G workshop held for local Girl Guides Jan. 27.
About 60 girls attended the event organized by students in U of G's Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) group. It received support from Prof. Val Davidson, holder of the NSERC/HP Canada Chair for Women in Science and Engineering.
The visitors built geodesic domes, practised drawing designs to scale, learned about simple machines and made a windmill from a computer disk drive. Participants received engineering merit badges.
“It was so much fun, and the girls were so enthusiastic to learn about engineering,” says Erin Woods, a fifth-year biological engineering student and WISE president.
Last year's inaugural event attracted 15 girls to campus, including one youngster who subsequently enrolled in last summer's science and engineering camp run on campus by Creative Encounters.
“We brought the joy of engineering to her,” says Woods, adding that the benefits flowed both ways. “We happened to buy a lot of Girl Guide cookies from her.”