Innovation Winter 2024.25

“It’s a competitive market right now for engi neers, so companies know they need to do the right things to keep people,” she says. But change doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s impossible to have representation from everyone on every team, so that also means identifying and engaging partners that can help fill gaps. It’s also key, says Cochrane, to ensure we don’t “tokenize” people; “you can’t ask one person to speak on behalf of an entire group.” EDI in the next generation One way to instill the importance of EDI in the workplace is to educate engineering and geoscience students before they start their career. An important step toward change is incorporating EDI in post-secondary education, which instills diversity in design to the next generation of engineers and geoscientists. In UBC’s biomedical engineering

With more under-represented identities working on design projects, the outcomes may be more inclusive. P hoto : T hisis E ngineering /U nsplash

department, while EDI is part of courses from the first year forward, it’s a key component in capstone – part of the final design course. The major project is defined by a client, and teams must complete a prototype. Blending students with different strengths and different backgrounds is a main consideration in creating groups of five or six. “We try our best to set diverse teams,” says Dr. Sharareh Bayat, P.Eng., a lecturer at the UBC School of Biomedical Engineering. Students are also asked to take part in EDI activities as part of their professional development, such as workshops. They must have a plan to fulfill hours for EDI activities, says Bayat. The idea is to mimic requirements of a real job. “Hopefully future engineers actually can integrate diversity in their design and embrace diverse perspectives to hopefully get greater innovation and more problem- solving skills,” she says. “It’s all about making sure everyone is included in a design and that in the future, no one is left behind.” Engineers and Geoscientists BC recently published a Registrant Demographic Report with data collected from registrants. The report helps the organization better understand the diversity of registrants. See report details page 34.

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Innovation Winter 2024/25

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