The moment I knew I'd become an engineer
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“Women often are taught the narrative of men being better at STEM while women are better at humanities,” Charli Fell said. "So, many young girls who would have made fantastic engineers are discouraged and lose confidence in their abilities.”
Humanitarian engineering, she said, “actively encourages inclusivity and diversity and is therefore much more inviting for women, particularly those driven by a sense of social responsibility”.
You’re helping people with engineering?!
A 4th year student on her way to a Bachelor of Engineering (honours) and a Bachelor of Asian Studies, Fell had originally been accepted to the ANU College of Law.
"I had it in my head that, if I wanted to give back to society, I had to be a human rights lawyer," she said.
Her outlook changed, however, during a gap year stint as a volunteer teacher in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. There, she encountered a fellow Australian working for Engineers Without Borders (EWB). She learned from him about how EWB was collaborating with remote communities on engineering designs for things like clean drinking water and renewable energy and remarked, "Wait, you're helping people as an engineer?"
She immediately began gathering information about the engineering program at ANU. She read about Dr Jeremy Smith, who had devoted his career to an approach to engineering that engages local communities in co-designing solutions to local problems. Since coming to the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS), Smith had launched the first dedicated later-year Humanitarian Engineering elective in Australia. And he was, at the time, in the process of inducting the initial cohort for Australia’s first Humanitarian Engineering minor.
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Fell scrapped her plans to enter the legal profession and reapplied to the ANU, this time at the College of Engineering & Computer Science (CECS). She was accepted again, of course, and during her first opportunity to take a course taught by Smith, she helped design a trailer with a portable power generator capable of bringing renewable energy to remote communities. “I loved it so much that I’m back as a tutor of it this year,” she said.
Within weeks of arriving in Canberra, Fell had joined the ACT chapter of EWB and been chosen for its leadership team. Over the past three years, she has been participating in an EWB Schools Outreach program that delivers engineering workshops to high school and late primary students with the express aim of recruiting more girls, First Nations Australians, and lower-income students into engineering, science, and technology.
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