That is a very important question, so thank you.
About six years ago we started a portfolio in the dean's office. The associate dean for outreach, Professor Mary Wells, has been working on a program for seven or eight years now on how to improve gender representation in technology. One thing we've done is we've collected data. We run a program called engineering science quest, in which 2,000 students from all over Ontario come to campus to learn about technology, starting from wee young all the way to grade 12. What we've learned is that girls are very excited up to grade 7, but in grades 8, 9 and 10 something happens. I don't know if it's hormones, but something happens.
We've also learned that physics is the showstopper. I think physics teachers are extremely important. All the schools in Ontario require students to take science, which includes some physics, but they do not necessarily enrol in physics classes at grades 11 and 12. In most universities in Canada, you cannot really enrol in an engineering program without physics. Physics needs good teachers. Physics needs a lot of support. Mathematics is not the showstopper. In fact, female students are topping a lot of the mathematics competitions.
I do think it takes years. After six or seven years of effort.... She's also the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering chair, and is helping all the schools of engineering in Ontario to promote engineer education. For the first time at the University of Waterloo, the first-year entrance class is 27% female. The limit, I believe, is 33%, simply because of the physics enrolments. We launched a biomedical engineering program last fall for which we had 900 applicants for 50 seats. We turned away hundreds of very strong female candidates, so it's a tough situation. We have to keep working at it.