ONWiE Summit 2023
The 2023 Biennial Summit of the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering will be jointly hosted by McMaster University in the city of Hamilton November 14-15, 2023. McMaster University and ONWiE acknowledge that the conference will be organized and held on the traditional territories of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations, and within the lands protected by the “Dish with One Spoon” wampum agreement. We recognize, honour, and respect Indigenous peoples in the region, past, present, and future.
The theme of the conference is “Diversity through Inclusion.” The founding mission of ONWiE was to increase gender diversity in engineering, and we recognise that it is essential to build inclusive spaces that welcome all students. Not only is that the fair thing to do, but it will also improve recruitment efforts.
Inclusion should be embedded in community outreach, recruitment efforts, undergraduate and graduate education, co-op and internship experiences, treatment of faculty and staff, decision-making and careers. Intersectional perspectives are critical in ensuring effective approaches.
We invite submissions in all areas of engineering inclusion and diversity, especially on the conference theme. Although we welcome scholarly submissions, our goal is to share best practices of ideas that make a real difference and can be translated to other forums. Work can include original research, review of research-based best-practices, and on-the-ground efforts. Measuring success is an asset. Examples include:
- Community outreach initiatives. This includes approaches that meet the needs of specific communities (e.g. Black or Indigenous scholars), that engage in new ways (e.g. inclusive workshops with community partners) or that reach underserved groups in interesting ways. It could also include analyses of interventions to make all participants feel more included.
- Recruitment approaches. This includes sharing effective messaging, ways of engaging with under-represented potential students and analyses of barriers.
- Undergraduate education. This includes all aspects of inclusive pegagogy, understanding intersectional student experiences, training, mentorship, support programs and effective affinity groups activities.
- Co-op and internship experiences. This includes supports for equity-deserving students from the university, professionalism courses, policies for managing harassment and discrimination, mentorship and understanding barriers to success.
- Graduate education. This includes approaches to training principal investigators and research groups, recruiting a diversity of graduate students, inclusive practices (e.g. ways to support parental leave or family obligations), targeted supports and analysis of experiences.
- Hiring for diversity. This includes approaches such as cohort hiring, training of search committees, implementation of rubrics, design of job ad, interview approaches, spousal hiring, and measurement targets.
- Faculty supports. This includes onboarding, tenure and promotion expectations, COVID relief, mentorship, leadership development, training and understanding experiences.
- Staff supports (including teaching assistants). This includes onboarding, expectations, mentorship, leadership development, training and understanding experiences.
- Decision-making. This includes equity lenses, specific administrative structures to support equity, diversity and inclusion and measurement.
- Career building. This includes industry-led approaches such as affinity groups and internal supports and alumni engagement.
Session Types
Sessions typically run for about 90 minutes and will include the following presentation modes:
- Podium Talk (15 minutes presentation + 5 minutes Q&A) – briefly explain your work with presentation slides; expect questions from the audience.
- Lightning Talk (5 minutes presentation + 5 minutes Q&A) – focus more on the idea and the results; well suited for works-in-progress, good ideas or approaches and early research findings.
Other Ideas
- Panel Discussion
- Collaboratorium (Unconference)
- Workshop
Abstract Requirements
You are invited to submit a short, 200-word session proposal by August 21, 2023. If you would like to suggest a different presentation mode, please contact us by email.