Engineering scholarship for Black students at McMaster breaks new ground
She searched for faces that looked like hers, entering the amphitheatre on the first day of class, taking her place among 300 first-year engineering students at McMaster University.
I'm the kind of person who counts," said Feyisayo Enuiyin, who is Black, which puts her in rare company in a Canadian university's engineering department.
I only saw about eight others. I was like: wow."
It's hard to imagine, given how passionately Enuiyin expresses herself, but that experience four years ago made her turn inward; she became shy and closed off.
And today? Today, the news is that Enuiyin, as president of McMaster's chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), has helped launch a scholarship for first-year Black engineering students that is likely the first of its kind in Canada.
She believes it represents a big step toward encouraging Black high school students to enrol in engineering at McMaster - or to at least put that possibility on their radar.
A scholarship brings awareness, so to have an academic institution like McMaster support Black students in STEM (the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics) is so valuable," she said.
It's unbelievable that it's happened and it hasn't quite sunk in yet. Helping to create this scholarship with the NSBE team is the most important thing I've done in my academic journey."
The scholarship will provide $2,500 per year to a Black student entering McMaster who demonstrates strong leadership skills and valuable contributions to their community." The recipient will also be offered a position on the NSBE executive.
There has been talk at other engineering schools in Canada about creating similar scholarships, but McMaster is almost certainly the first to do it, said Ishwar Puri, the dean of the department.
We have a desire to pursue equity and inclusion and provide access to Black communities," said Puri.
Puri and Enuiyin told the Spectator that while the scholarship idea had been discussed among McMaster faculty members and the NSBE chapter in recent years, it was the ripple effect of protests over George Floyd's death last year, and the Black Lives Matter movement, that gave the initiative a spark.
This is a milestone, but one scholarship is not enough," said Puri, adding that they need to make sure the student (recipient) thrives and becomes part of our fireball family" - a reference to the engineering department's nickname and logo.
The department will fund the scholarship for the first three years starting next fall, and in the meantime, McMaster and NSBE are raising money through donations to support the scholarship beyond that, with a goal of $62,500.
They are about one quarter of the way toward endowing it.
Enuiyin laughed admitting that she checks the online fundraising total every four hours" to see how much has been raised to date.
She was born in Nigeria and moved to Canada as a little girl, growing up near Toronto. In Grade 12, she said nearly all of her classmates who hoped to attend post-secondary education never even considered engineering.
But Enuiyin, Black, and a woman - a demographic also long under-represented in engineering studies - knew of the possibilities, and where she wanted to go, because she had family members who had studied and worked in science-based fields.
I saw the career path, I was fortunate," she said. It's about representation, about showing students that if we can do it, so can you; that it's challenging, but not impossible."
At McMaster, by the start of her third year she was involved with NSBE, and had hit her stride. One morning, she was helping volunteer during Welcome Week, and saw the waves of new students on campus.
As always, she found herself counting, and this time liked what she saw.
I thought it was amazing to see the presence of Black students growing stronger ... Things have been changing, slowly but surely."
Jon Wells is a Hamilton-based reporter and feature writer for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jwells@thespec.com