Volunteers Needed for Education Outreach Truss Building Activity

In conjunction with the Science Education Partnership the Lambton chapter of the PEO will once again offer schools the chance to participate in an activity celebrating National Engineering Month (NEM).

Volunteers will visit Grade 5 classrooms in pairs to lead students through a truss building activity. Students work in pairs to build a truss structure to given specifications. Trusses are tested to measure the load at failure. Prospective volunteers will first be invited to observe a classroom session to learn what is involved. The activity takes approximately two thirds of a school day (~4 hours).

This opportunity aligns with expectations in the Gr. 5 Forces Acting on Structures unit. All materials will be provided by the SEP Science Centre. Students will have the real-world engineering challenge of building the strongest truss they can with the least amount of material.

Please contact Wendy Hooghiem at the Science Education Partnership for more information or if you are interested. Wendy.Hooghiem@lkdsb.net or 519-335-1500 ext. 31580

Volunteers Needed - Judges for 2021 Lambton County Science Fair

The 2021 Lambton County Science Fair is being held the week of April 5th through April 11th digitally this year.  As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 precautions, a complete digital fair will be held for all regions in Canada.  Lambton County anticipates a return of the in person fair during 2022. 

With the temporary fair setup, the need for volunteer judges continues along with a revised (and in some ways easier) judging format for this year. 

The organizing committee is looking for interested people who are willing to give a few hours of their time to assist in the judging of projects.  The event needs people from the scientific community to donate their time to judge the Fair each year.  If you are involved in teaching and/or science and technology and would like to spend a fascinating bit of time reviewing and potentially talking to Science Fair participants, we would love to hear from you.  The donation of your time is very important, as the Lambton County Science Fair ultimately selects up to 5 students to advance to the Canada Wide Science Fair every year, based on your hard work. 

The philosophy of judging is to make sure that it is a positive experience for the students and gives them an opportunity to interact with people who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about science. 

For those that have been involved in the past, this year’s judging will be significantly different; however, will strive to remain consistent with the national judging program planned.   The main focus of judging will be broken into 2 phases.  The first will include review of projects in the virtual science website at leisure.  While this website has not been made public yet, it is expected to be similar to the following site displaying last years Canada Wide entries https://projectboard.world/ysc/home?r=j7o65.  The second phase of judging will include virtual meetings of select projects to determine winners.  

For the first round of judging, those assisting will simply pick convenient times in your day(s) within the stated window of time to review the online project content and score a list of projects provided to you.  Judging will be completed, once you’ve turned over your scores and ranking to the Chief Judge.  This format is designed to make it easy for you to judge anytime over the week and will likely only take a couple hours of total effort. 

In the second round of judging, either Saturday or Sunday, you will be taking the top selections identified during the week and conducting 20min interviews in groups of 2 or more with students, to further grade their projects and determine whether they are eligible to be a winner in their age category or be a Canada Wide Participant.  Times and meeting organization will be prepared for you and assigned in Microsoft Teams or similar format.  There will be hard cut-off times for interview fairness between students and all times will fall in a stated window of availability.  You will present your selections to the chief judge following completion of your judging on Saturday or Sunday.  Judges from the first round of judging can participate in Saturday’s second round of judging. 

We are looking for judges that are available to help at the following times:

• Between Mon. April 5th evening and Fri. April 9th morning (you pick your time at leisure to review a group of online projects and rank them with a score)

• Saturday April 10th (intermittent from about 9:00 am until 4:00 pm) including online interviews/judging through Microsoft Teams (or similar) in pairs

• Sunday April 11th (intermittent from about 9:00 am until 3:00 pm) including online interviews/judging through Microsoft Teams as a group

We will accept as many volunteers as possible, although with the revised format we may need to adjust the judging totals based on projects entered.

If you are interested in judging at the fair, please contact Mike Crabb (mike.crabb@woodplc.com; mikecrabb13@gmail.com; or 519-330-9587).  If possible, please provide the following information:

• Contact information (both email and phone number)

• Availability for Pre-Judging during the week and / or

• Availability for Virtual Judging sessions Saturday or Sunday.

• (if planning to judge virtually on the weekend) Confirmation of access to a web camera/microphone on your computer and preferred virtual software (used Teams/Zoom/etc.)

Age Levels:

(a) Exhibition (grade 6 and below)

(b) Junior (grades 7 & 8)

(c) Intermediate (grades 9 & 10) 

(d) Senior (grades 11 and 12)

Women's representation and persistence in STEM undergraduate studies

Katherine Wall at Statistics Canada conducted a study on women's representation and persistence in STEM undergraduate studies.  It is interesting to note that although women make up approximately 44% of the overall STEM undergraduate student body, only 19% of engineering and engineering technology students are female.  Additionally, the author notes that women's underrepresentation in STEM is mostly related to the majors chosen by men and women upon initial enrolment into undergraduate studies, and their subsequent career paths, rather than as a result of switching majors once enrolled in post-secondary studies.  Although further study is required, this would imply that the difference in engineering representation between genders begins much earlier than perhaps anticipated, highlighting an important reason why PEO Lambton Chapter continues to offer and support many education outreach activities for students at various levels of schooling.

The Statistics Canada report can be found in full here: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2019001/article/00006-eng.htm

Fall Membership Meeting 2017

On Thursday, October 26th, the chapter hosted its Fall Membership Meeting. Due to an accident, our originally planned speaker, Mr. Todd Storms was not able to attend. Thankfully, Mr. John M. Ward, P.Eng. was able to step in last minute to provide a fantastic presentation titled "How Green is my Electric Car". 

At the meeting, five new engineers received their Professional Engineers Licence Certificate. Congratulations!

Why More Women Aren't Becoming Engineers

Here's an interesting read on why there are relatively fewer women than men in engineering fields. Despite the article being published in 2010, many women in the field still continue to face the same struggle today.

Click here to open the article in a new window.