All-Girls* Events

Our Saturday Events are exciting opportunities for youth to explore how they can use their creativity to help the world. Attendees will learn about engineering design and will enjoy fun, hands-on activities led by current university students and meet inspiring mentors. Connect with other like-minded students and talk to current engineering students and professionals who will share their stories and experience.

Geering Up hosts a number of All Girls* events throughout the year. Girls* and women* bring value and diversity to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics), and through providing a girl*-focused space, we hope to encourage and inspire the next generation of women* in STEM. More information about why we do All Girls* programming can be found here.

  • Events Run from October 2023 – April 2024
    See the Events Schedule below for specific dates
  • Saturday Sessions: Times vary, see info below
  • UBC Vancouver Campus + Greater Vancouver Area
    See the Events Schedule below for specific locations
  • Cost:
    All Events are FREE

*We use the words “girls” and “women” inclusively. All trans*, genderqueer and non-binary folks belong at and are welcome to attend our All Girls* events.

UPCOMING EVENTS SCHEDULE:

Date & TimeAudienceThemeRegistration StatusLocation
September 23, 2023
10AM - 3PM
Girls* in Grades 10-12Women* in Engineering: Career ExplorationsRegister to secure your spot

Event now complete. Sign up for our mailing list for notifications about our next career-based events.
UBC Vancouver
October 21, 2023
10AM - 3PM
Grades 7-12
(not limited to all girls*)
Engineering Design Competition x Parent Info SessionRegister to secure your spotUBC Vancouver
October 28, 2023
10AM - 3PM
Girls* in Grades 8-12Code World: A Race to WinRegister to secure your spotUBC Vancouver
November 18, 2023
10AM - 2PM
Grades 9-12
(not limited to all girls*)
Engineering x Arts: Charting Creativity Register to secure your spotUBC Vancouver
November 25, 2023
10AM - 2PM
Girls* in Grades 7-9Women* Developers: Game Design x CybersecurityRegister to secure your spotVancouver
December 2, 2023
10AM - 2PM
Grades 7-10
(not limited to all girls*)
Global Goals x STEM: Call to IdeateRegister to secure your spotUBC Vancouver
...stay tuned for more events in 2024!

2023 EVENT DESCRIPTIONS:

Engineering Design Competition x Parent Info Session

Explore your creative and critical thinking skills in a one-of-a-kind event! We’re proud to co-host our latest Engineering Design Competition in partnership with BGC Engineering, an international consulting firm specializing in solutions for complex earth science challenges. Work in teams to apply engineering principals and develop innovative solutions to the competition’s key challenge (to be revealed on the morning of the competition!), which will be judged by a panel of field experts.

For parents and legal caretakers, we have an afternoon Parent Info Session where UBC recruitment & application representatives from the Faculty of Applied Science will be here to answer questions on pathways to UBC Engineering!

Register individually to select your team. (Don’t have a team? Don’t worry! Simply let us know in the registration form and we’ll find the right team fit for you.)

WHEN: 2023 October 21

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 7-12

Engineering x Arts: Charting Creativity

Engineering and the Arts are inherently connected. That’s why we’ve created this event to get you thinking about how we can apply technology to arts (and vice versa!) in inventive new ways. This day is based on the “9 Evenings of Theatre and Engineering” series that took place in October 1966, where 10 artists and 30 engineers joined forces to help enhance the performing arts. (This series saw the first time that a screen projection was used a theatre stage!)

Explore our specially curated “Arts Hubs” to study how that station’s facet of art feeds into and is strengthened by engineering principles. Tinker, create micro-art projects, and chat and network with mentors coming from an arts, engineering, and dual arts-engineering backgrounds! From photography to fashion and beyond, this is your platform to push the spectrum of what’s possible!

WHEN: 2023 November 18

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 9-12

Women* Developers: Game Design x Cybersecurity (All Girls*)

Dip your toes into a career in cybersecurity and game design!

As the gaming industry continues to expand and become the world’s largest entertainment sector, we need secure gaming platforms more than ever. From protecting personal data to building security directly into the game development process, we have a lot of ground to cover and a wide range of possibilities for how we can make safer entertainment. We’re also seeing a rising number of women* entering the workforce in and adding to a more well-rounded knowledge based for both cybersecurity and game design. At our event, you’ll get to pick the brains of industry professionals and teachers AND traverse new worlds by injecting security principles into a game you’ll build.

We’re excited to host this hands-on day in collaboration with Vancouver Independent School for Science and Technology (VISST), Vancouver’s first STEM-dedicated high school.

WHEN: 2023 November 25

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 7-9

Global Goals x STEM: Call to Ideate

Tackle one of the 17 Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) developed by the United Nations with interdiscplinary knowledge at this Global Goals x STEM event! As the world changes in ways we haven’t ever witnessed through written or oral history, engineers and scientists will need to work alongside politicians, activists, and global citizens to act!

Dive into your SDG of choice to understand why issues—and their potential solutions—are so complex and why it’s nonetheless important to address the SDGs step by step. You’ll have the help of our mentors to brainstorm and/or create a STEM-driven plan to achieve your goal. Tap into your imagination to transform tomorrow’s reality!

WHEN: 2023 December 2 

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 7-10

Real Problems, Digital Solutions (All Girls*) [ONLINE]

Technovation Girls is a global competition for girls* that form teams and compete to identify a community problem, learn app development skills, and create a tech solution over four months! This year, even an AI-driven app solution is on the table.

Join us for an online introductory workshop that will enable you to identify community problems that need addressing while equipping you with basic coding principles for app development. This will be your glimpse into what participating at Technovation Girls can look like!

Open to girls* in Grades 8-12. This workshop will be held on Zoom.

WHEN: 2024 January 27th

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 8-12

Clean Currents Challenge: High School Engineering Design Competition

The world is facing an environmental crisis driven by our overreliance on fossil fuels. By using cleaner electricity in place of fossil fuels, we have an opportunity and solution to lower greenhouse gas emissions and lessen our impact on global climate change while also supporting, collaborating with, and growing with all our community and industry stakeholders. BC Hydro and Geering Up both understand that we have big problems to solve and we’ll need to work together to ensure a cleaner, brighter, and more sustainable future.

Join us as experienced professionals from BC Hydro collaborate with our expert team members to draw out the curiosity in our future change-makers and explore innovative solutions for harnessing clean energy for generations to come. Participate in hands-on learning, apply critical thinking skills to address real-world challenges, and walk away with info about the many career pathways you can take with BC Hydro and in STEM.

Please note that although each participant will register individually, participants will be given the opportunity to form their own respective teams on the day of the event. However, the maximum number of participants within each team is maximum five.

WHEN: 2024 March 9th

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 8-12

VenturEng: Envisioning STEM Dreams [SFU BURNABY]

Careers in STEM can be self-built! Join us for a day’s worth of exploration in what entrepreneurship in STEM fields looks like. What is a real-world issue you are inspired to address? You will work with mentors to ideate a STEM-based venture solution and will participate in rapid-fire pitching rounds as you compete for the best pitch of the day. We will end the day by charting community resources that are available for tapping into your entrepreneurial dreams.

This event is a collaboration between UBC Geering Up and SFU Science Al!ve and will be hosted at SFU Burnaby. Please keep an eye out for future announcements relevant to this event.

WHEN: 2024 March 16th

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 10-12

Life in Sciences: A Day to Explore

On the cusp of spring, it makes sense to be outside for our final event of the season! From flora to fauna, we will learn about life that is native to the ecosystems of traditional and ancestral lands of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.

Join us for a land-based adventure tour around UBC campus with experts and UBC students as you explore life sciences through a passport book

WHEN: 2024 April 6th 

GRADE LEVELS: Grades 6-9

Have more questions?
Reach us at events.geeringup@ubc.ca.