New program attracts women to engineering

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By Bob Klanac
Thursday, April 10, 2008
A few years ago, Ernest Yanful, Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of Western Ontario, thought about future international development issues and the growth of female students in the faculty.
But the 'aha' moment where he put the two issues together didn't come until he saw the commitment of women at an international development conference. Out of that inspiration came a unique civil-engineering program that looks to the future for its success.
 
Yanful created the Civil Engineering and International Development Program which has attracted a remarkable number of female engineering students.
 
“The underpinning rationale is that over the next 20 years the population of the world is going to increase by two billion people and 95 per cent of these people will be living in developing countries," he says quoting recent data from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Yanful goes on to point out the subsequent increased demand for housing, roads, infrastructure, safe water, energy and food in the developing world, noting that most of these issues deal with civil engineering.
 
But it took a trip to an Engineers Without Borders conference for Yanful to see how this pressing world issue could be addressed by Western's engineering faculty.
 
“About 500 people were at the conference, many of them women," he recalls. “Most of them paid their own way."
 
“I couldn't believe that students would pay to go to a conference in Ottawa, and pay to stay in a hotel for three or four days."
 
The conference, like the Engineers Without Borders organization itself, dealt with international development and the energy and enthusiasm of the students proved infectious to Yanful.
 
“I came back and made the proposal to the dean," he says. “He said 'wow'."
 
Yanful saw the program proposal through the various levels of approval including faculty council and senate and it was launched last September.
 
“We are trying to respond to a future trend by training a different type of civil engineer with the skill set, exposure to and understanding of development issues so they can deal with the kind of issues we see coming down the road," he says.
 
There are currently 20 students in the Civil Engineering and International Development Program with some having moved over from the environmental engineering program. The curriculum sees the students take a mix of civil and environmental engineering courses and two courses on international development. 
 
“Following the completion of third year they go oversees on a four month summer internship," says Yanful. “We want to place them in a context to use their civil engineering background to solve some problems such as water management, bridges, housing and infrastructure.
“We're sending them to Ghana this year and next year we'll add Peru as well."
 
The number of females in the program is remarkable, according to Yanful, with seven out of the nine first-year students, four out of the nine second-year students all women.
 
“I think that these people are looking or see this as an opportunity to serve society to help and contribute something," Yanful says. “They are not interested in building cars, chips for computers, or working in a chemical plant.
 
“They see it as a social responsibility by giving back to society to help people in a developing country to build bridges or infrastructure." Yanful says that to do this kind of work requires a particular sensibility with a bit of daring. “To go live in a developing country takes a special kind of person.

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