Engineering faculty recruits more women
Queen’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science is experiencing a steady increase in ission of female engineers into its department.
Lynann Clapham, associate dean (academic) of Applied Science, said this year’s class is 28 per cent female. “We’ve always been very high in the ission of percentage of female students compared to other universities,” she said. “23 per cent or so in recent years. We were at our highest last year with our incoming class of 25 per cent female students.”
Clapham said the engineering faculty was quite pleased with last year’s incoming percentage of female engineers but they thought it was a onetime occurrence. This year’s class showed them otherwise. “[It] indicated that this is rather consistent on a yearly basis and not a blip,” she said. “Our program puts a lot of emphasis on collaboration and creativity. We have been trying to get our message out there better than we have in the past and it seems to be working.” The Faculty of Engineering makes sure females in the faculty are seen and heard. Two of the three first-year video bloggers from last year were female and many students who attend recruiting events are female as well.
“What happens is that our best ambassadors are female students. They love it here. Huge numbers of our female students volunteer to come out for our fall preview and are extremely enthusiastic,” Clapham said, adding that the faculty is going to continue to do what they have in the past and hope that future female engineering students will be motivated to apply to Queen’s.
Clapham said although the Faculty does not have any specific programs in place to target women, she thinks they are attracted to Queen’s Faculty of Engineering because of the department’s broad focus.
“We are moving in the direction as a part of the curriculum not to specifically attract women but what we believe is the right way of teaching engineering,” she said. “Issues such as sustainability are what we are trying to integrate into our program and these seem to be topics that attract women.
—Labiba Haque
School of Medicine construction on time
Construction for the new Queen’s School of Medicine is on target to be substantially completed by Mar. 31, 2011.
Last week, the concrete roof was poured onto the building, so that construction can begin for the structural steel penthouse.
“Steel is going up as we speak,” Queen’s Project Manager Mike Finn said. He added that the rough-in for mechanical, electrical and sprinkler system has begun.
“The lower levels are complete. We’re working on three and four now.”
The $77 million building at the corner of Stuart St. and Arch St. will be built to LEED specifications and include a three floor glass atrium. LEED specifications are designed to ensure a building is environmentally conscious in of construction materials and energy design.
Funding for the five-story project comes from the Canada-Ontario Knowledge Infrastructure Program which includes $28.8 million from the federal government and $28.8 million from the provincial government. Donations from alumni, friends, faculty and students total $19.4 million.
He said the construction crew celebrated the pouring of the concrete roof with a traditional ‘topping off’ ceremony.
“It was a get-together to more or less thank everybody for their hard work up to this point,” he said.
Finn said there were usually 90 to 100 construction workers on the site on average but that number increases every week.
At the building’s official groundbreaking on Oct. 23 last year, Dr. David Walker, dean of Faculty of Health Sciences told the Queen’s News Centre that the new building will result in unequalled benefits for the School of Medicine.
“When completed, Queen’s will have a world-class training facility that will continue to attract the best medical students and faculty, and provide an unparalleled educational experience for the doctors of tomorrow,” he said.
—Clare Clancy
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].