Convocation: Anna Cox

When BSEng grad Anna Cox went to class, it was a given that her peers will be wearing more facial hair than lip gloss. But the reality that males outnumber females in engineering has never given Cox a second thought.

“It never really factored into the decision I made to go into engineering. I chose to do something that I’m good at.”

The recipient of this year’s IEEE Victoria Section Gold Medal in Software Engineering for having the highest graduating GPA in her class, Cox is a role model for women considering entering her field. For her, gender is not a precursor to academic success, nor did enrolment statistics keep her from studying what she excelled at.

Since the day she discovered her knack for computer programming during a high school information technology course, she has been hooked, and her UVic experience prompted her further.

“I really enjoyed the programming courses, so I decided to go in that direction rather than a more traditional engineering field.”

Although she says she is not a “typical computer nerd,” she has no problem admitting she has always been good at math and science.

Cox chose UVic specifically because it offered an undergraduate software engineering program. Many of today’s software engineers have degrees in computer science, due to the lack of post-secondary software engineering programs. New BSEng degrees, however, are now being introduced at the undergraduate level, and UVic is leading the pack.

In addition to benefiting from a focused BSEng curriculum, Cox also honed her skills via the mandatory co-op component of the program.

From collaborating with a team to administer the provincial government’s Blackboard software application, to graphing data from NEPTUNE Canada’s undersea observatory, Cox sampled some fascinating ways she might contribute to the software engineering field.

“Co-op gave me insight into what jobs in my field are really like, which I think is very important. Enjoying something in theory is quite different from enjoying the day-to-day tasks that you do at work.”

Eager to join the workforce instead of pursuing graduate studies right away, Cox is searching for her dream job. As she graduates at the top of her class, she reinforces the idea that women indeed have a relevant place in the engineering-related careers of tomorrow.