Throughout summer, students walking around the Engineering Complex at U of T may look younger than usual. They’re not engineering students just yet – some won’t be for a handful of years – though the summer programs offered at U of T Engineering are helping them get there.
Wrapping up on July 27 is the Da Vinci Engineering Enrichment Program (DEEP) Summer Academy. For 10 years, DEEP has brought together more than 9,000 high school students from around the world to U of T, all of them sharing a passion to become engineers.
“We’ve gone from being just a day program where we saw a couple hundred students to being a residence program where we’re seeing over a thousand students from around the world,” said Dawn Britton, Associate Director of U of T Engineering’s Outreach Office.
Here, they get hands-on experience through design courses and are taught by the best and brightest graduate students and alumni on a vast number of engineering topics, from stem cells to robotics to solar energy.
Students this year also got to meet U of T Engineering’s famed Blue Sky Solar Racing Team, where they were amazed at the sight of racing cars, Cerulean and Azure. “I’m totally joining this if I end up coming here!” said one student. “What do you think about building a 12-wheeled solar car?” asked another.
“These are really bright students,” said Seyed Ali Nasseri (AeroE MASc candidate), who is teaching three courses, including the design course, Design, Build, Fly! Nasseri sees the program as not only inspiring for his students, but for him as well. “For the instructors, this is an opportunity to experiment with different ways of teaching. It’s also really fun.”
As DEEP comes to a close for another summer, outreach programs Jr. DEEP and ENGage are set to begin August 6.
Jr. DEEP invites students from grades 5 to 8 to explore engineering disciplines through a number of courses taught by undergraduates. ENGage, now in its third year, also seeks to nurture fifth to eight graders’ interest in engineering and science, while promoting academic and social growth and development for black youth.
Dimpho Radebe (IndE 1T4), ENGage coordinator and instructor, sees the ever-growing program – it was only offered to grades 7 and 8 in previous years – as invaluable.
“It’s the only program of its kind in Canada,” she said. “Having students excited about science, technology, engineering and math at a younger age increases the likelihood that they will continue to be excited about it as they grow older.”
That was the case for ENGage co-founder and fellow instructor Mikhail Burke (MSE 1T2). “It was thanks to U of T programs that I decided at 12 years old that I wanted to do science and engineering as a profession and that I wanted to study at U of T.”
He added, “Many youths who share my ethnic background don’t have the same resources or opportunities as I had. ENGage creates an avenue to stimulate more young black minds and has an opportunity to assist in the production of more successful U of T alumni such as myself.”
To learn more about U of T Engineering’s outreach programs, visit:outreach.engineering.utoronto.ca/home.htm
