Ctrl+ GIRL+Create: Go Eng Girl Igniting the Next Wave of Engineers
Authors: Salena Jandu, Nancy Chen
It’s no secret that for many years, the engineering fields have been dominated by men. At McMaster Faculty of Engineering, we work hard to inspire and support young women and non-binary students on their journey to engineering. With several outreach events for various communities, Mac Eng focuses on empowering young women to explore the possibilities for innovation and creativity within engineering. One outreach program is Go ENG Girl, a joint initiative between McMaster University, Ontario Network of Women in Engineering (ONWie), and Venture Academy.
Around the early 2000s, the number of girls entering engineering programs declined. Go ENG Girl began in 2005 to attract more girls to engineering and has grown to almost 2000 participants annually from across Canada, from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland.
Go ENG Girl is aimed at prospective students from elementary school to the end of high school, offering opportunities to engage with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through a series of hands-on design projects. Within McMaster, a team of students guides and supports these future engineers in tasks such as programming and prototyping. These students also oversee the activities and provide opportunities to the students’ guardians to learn about cybersecurity and university application processes.
Recently, on October 21st, 2023, McMaster hosted a Go Eng Girl event for female and non-binary identifying students in grades 7–11. The event was run by the Mac Eng Community Outreach team and supported by a number of student volunteers.
The Go Eng Girl event focused on aerospace engineering concepts such as payloads, propellants, chemistry concepts for fuel, combustion reactions, and Newton’s third law of motion. The girls were tasked with evenly distributing payloads (paperclips) to the rocket (balloon).
The classroom was set up with fishing line hanging from the ceiling, with laundry clips hanging at the bottom to weigh the line down. The teams would tape a straw to their balloon and thread the line through to ensure that the balloon stayed on course.
The goal of the project was to launch their balloon all the way to the ceiling while carrying the most paperclips (rocket that reached ‘space’ with the greatest payload).
Many girls jumped right in and sketched out their potential designs. A few groups caught on that the straw side of the balloon weighed more, so more paperclips should go on the other side to maintain balance. The younger girls at the event even went as far as customizing and decorating their rockets! (Pictured below is “the jellybean”).
Many groups opted to chain a bunch of paperclips together and create an “X” pattern at the top/tip of the balloon, hoping this would equally distribute the weight. The younger girls tested their rockets the most, tweaking their design slightly each time (just like the engineering design process!). When engineering anything, the process is never linear. It requires sketching, prototyping, testing, failing, tweaking, testing… and then finally ending up with a viable solution.
A lot of girls mentioned hearing about engineering before but could not give a definition of what it was or what engineers exactly do. A brilliant team of girls stated that they did not know what engineering was but now considered it a career option. Many of the girls wanted to keep going and fixing their project but had to move on to the rocketry portion of the workshop.
The McMaster rocketry team visited and gave a presentation about their team. They showed some cool videos of competitions they compete in. They even brought in their rocket to show the class! The girls seemed fascinated by the launch video.
After the presentation, they handed out laptops and taught the girls how to use Open Rocket (software). They demonstrated how to make a simple rocket with all the key components (fins, nose cone, body) as well as how to select the proper material for a rocket.
We interviewed Kaneera, a student-staff member on the Mac Eng Recruitment team and current HESE student, who prepared the presentation and discussion regarding university applications and supporting students for the parents attending the event.
As a proud female-identifying student in the Faculty of Engineering, she is passionate about supporting as many conversations as she can with prospective students to promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) programs and display the offerings at McMaster. She stated that “Engineering is for everyone. It is important to show that anyone can go into engineering.”
The Community Outreach team does much more than just Go Eng Girl each year! All year, they target diverse youth with unique backgrounds through outreach initiatives, curriculum-based school workshops, and exciting summer camps. Venture Academy is a summer day camp that runs weeklong engineering/stem-based camps throughout July and August. During the school year, they also organize various workshops, connect with the community, and even host evening clubs on McMaster campus for elementary school students.
This event has successfully introduced many girls to McMaster Engineering, and many of the current program runners were once participants in Go ENG Girl, proving the lasting impact one initiative can have on the course of lives. With further support from the McMaster community through outreach, mentorships, and other volunteer opportunities, Go ENG Girl has a bright future.
