Engineering Explorations

The fourth edition of Engineering Explorations, the Native Access to Engineering program's science camp for aboriginal high school students, was run on the Sir George Williams Campus from June 22 to 26.

Thirty-one Cree, Inuit and Mohawk students from a dozen communities and their teachers travelled to Montreal from as far away as Great Whale and Inukjuak for a week of discovery and fun in Concordia's Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science.

They learned how science and engineering relate to traditional life, economic development and the everyday world by making rockets and inukshuk (rock structures built on the tundra for navigation and herding caribou).

They heard from Native engineers and toured university labs, visited Air Canada's maintenance facilities, and had an afternoon of "science Olympics" at Loyola. At an evening at La Ronde, the physics of roller-coasters proved especially popular.

While the students were discovering applied science, their teachers took part in professional development workshops, discussing teaching mathematics, interactive science projects, culturally relevant curricula and using computers in the classroom.

At the closing ceremonies, Dean Nabil Esmail, along with Marc Lalande, from the Canadian Aboriginal Science and Engineering Association (CASEA), handed out achievement certificates to all participants. - Dawn Wiseman