On October 21/22nd 36 women from the School of Computing attended the 2nd annual Ontario Celebration of Women in Computing conference, held at the University of Toronto. This event held special meaning for the Queen’s attendees as they were responsible for the highly successful inaugural event held in Kingston last year.
The conference provided an excellent program filled with talks from incredible role models from Google, RBC, RIM, OCE, COACH (Canada’s Health Informatics Association) as well as representatives from academia. Our own Amber Simpson, Kelly Lyons and Karolina Zurowska all served as excellent role modes with Amber participating as an academic role model on a panel, Kelly serving as co-chair of the conference and Karolina presenting her research. There were representatives from the sponsoring companies who were actively recruiting at the event at the “job fair”.
The Friday evening social event consisted of a talk by Cate Huston, a software engineer at Google followed by a competitive game of Computer Science Jeopardy. Attendees were then treated to a Second City comedy show — there was plenty of laughter during the weekend!
The Queen’s group consisted of 13 graduate students, 22 undergrads (many first year students), Mary McCollam and Wendy Powley. The bus trip to
and from the conference provided an opportunity for the students to get to know each other and to further discuss the issues raised at the conference. It was an excellent bonding experience and a great opportunity for undergrads and grads to connect.
The attendees would like to thank the faculty and the School of Computing who generously contributed financially to this event.
We are now looking forward to watching ONCWIC flourish and grow throughout the years!
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