A message to schools from UBC student recruitment:
Dear principals, teachers, counsellors and parents,
January 15, 2022, is the final deadline for applications to UBC Engineering’s undergraduate program. We hope you’ll encourage all the problem-solving, creative-thinking, visionary grade 12 girls you know to apply to our program before the deadline. More than ever, the world needs their skills and ability to make a difference.
The challenge is that many young women, for a variety of social and personal reasons, do not see their future in engineering. We see this in our admissions stats at UBC Engineering, where women make up only 33 percent of the incoming first year student population.
That number can change when we all take the time to talk with the young women we know who are in the midst of making life-changing decisions about what and where to study. Many young women have simply not even considered that engineering could be a career for them. Yet when they learn more about the opportunities and impact that come with engineering, their world opens to new possibilities.
Engineers make a difference
Engineering is a human-centered, helping career that touches almost every aspect of our lives. Engineers are creating cleaner ways to generate energy, safer infrastructure, biomedical devices that save lives, and many other inventions and technologies that reduce inequality, keep us safe and improve quality of life.
Engineering is a rewarding career
In Canada, the 15 highest-paying bachelor's degrees by salary potential for women all involve science or math, and 9 out of those 15 degrees are in engineering. When young women are encouraged to pursue engineering and tech fields, they are set up for a well-paid career with significant opportunities for advancement and promotion. WWW150.STATCAN.GC.CA/N1/PUB/11-626-X/11-626-X2020018-ENG.PDF
Sex does not determine performance
Girls test as well as boys in math and science. Yet even still, many people (including girls themselves) assume that they underperform compared to their male peers. Our review of GPAs at UBC Engineering shows that females perform at are either the same level or slightly higher than their male counterparts, across all year levels.
Help us move the needle
Our admissions process continues to be gender blind, so no student is preferentially admitted based on gender. However, we hope that by encouraging more young women to apply, we’ll move the needle and be a little closer to achieving gender parity in our 2022 cohort.
You can make a difference
We'd love it if you shared this request with other teachers and parents, and with your students. We've heard from many women engineers that they only applied to engineering because a teacher or a parent encouraged them to do so.
You can be the person that makes a difference in a young woman’s life. Please reach out to those students who you think should consider engineering based on their success in science and math, their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills and their desire to make a difference in our world.
For more information on engineering careers, we encourage you to watch Behind the Career, our YouTube series on recent women alumni and their careers.
Our warmest regards,
Erin Fehr
Student Recruitment Officer
erin.fehr@ubc.ca
Wendy McHardy
Director of Marketing & Communications
wendy.mchardy@ubc.ca
Sheryl Staub-French
Professor of Civil Engineering
Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
