The University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Engineering Outreach Team is the recipient of this year’s NSERC Award for Science Promotion (Group), thanks to its success in delivering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programming to K-12 girls and young women in the Ottawa and Gatineau region. With more than 48,000 students each year, the team operates the largest university K-12 STEM outreach effort in Canada.

The outreach team focuses on providing underserved youth hands on STEM experiences that expose them to real laboratories, tools, and rapid prototyping technologies. Through its fleet of makerspaces on wheels called “Maker Mobiles”, it brings innovative programming and technologies to underserved rural, urban and indigenous communities in the hopes of fostering interest for STEM careers. Through these visits, the team provides free weeks of camp for indigenous and refugee children, while administering bursaries for families in need.

Based on the team’s remarkable efforts, the Ministry of Education of Ontario in 2018 awarded the Team credit-granting authority, providing high school credits to students in Grades 9, 10, and 11. This allows the team to design custom programs, such as its all-girl computer science courses, which connects young women with industry mentors, while exposing students to advanced content which may not be available at their high school. The team’s latest endeavor aims to open source all its content, courses and training as a means of providing educators, the necessary skills, materials and training in the hopes of increasing design, engineering and computer science literacy across Canada.