Women now account for 10 per cent of the program’s student body
By Alison Roach
Photos by Marianne Meadhal, PAMR
Cecilien Luo and Parisa Khorsand have become the first female students to graduate from SFU Surrey’s Mechatronic Systems Engineering (MSE) program. The program was launched in 2007 and is now one of SFU Surrey’s most popular programs. MSE integrates three engineering fields — mechanical, electrical, and software engineering — to give students the skills they need for today’s high-tech industries. The program is largely male-dominated, but many women seem to be following Luo and Khorsand’s example, with female students now accounting for 10 per cent of the program’s total, with 41 female students.
The Peak was able to talk with Khorsand, a 25-year-old originally from Iran, who always knew she wanted to study engineering and quickly became interested in mechatronics after learning more about it. Khorsand hopes that more women will decide to enroll in MSE, she said, “It’s a great program, and I would advise more women to take it.” Khorsand did not have many female colleagues in her classes throughout her undergraduate degree, and actually believed that she was the only woman graduating until after convocation, when she learned that Luo had completed the program as well. However, even though she was part of a small minority in her classes, she didn’t find the environment of the program difficult as a woman. In fact, Khorsand said, “At first it was a little hard to get used to, but I think everyone in my class was kind of looking out for the women, everyone was nice. I mean, it wasn’t an environment where I’d say ‘Oh my god, I’m a woman.’ ”
Khorsand took full advantage of the program’s connections, completing six paid co-op terms, as well as one volunteer co-op term. These terms included an international co-op as a computer-aided design (CAD) operator, one as a software design associate with a professor, and four terms at Research in Motion (RIM) as a DSP (digital signal processing) test developer. Luo also pursued co-op during her degree, and worked at Telus, an opportunity that lead to her current position at Netricom, a design contractor for Telus. Of her time in the MSE program, Khorsand said, “I loved my experience, I think it was great.” Now that she has completed her degree, she plans to take some time to work before returning to pursue her masters in telecommunications or computer engineering, for which she said that SFU is definitely an option.
These two women’s completion of their MSE degrees is a milestone for the young program, which graduated 25 students this term, bringing its total number of grads up to 52.
