A Sudbury student is able to fully pursue a career in electrical engineering after Cambrian College made accessibility improvements to meet their needs. Flower Lee is a second-year electrical engineering student. At one point, they thought full-time post-secondary education wasn’t an option. Lee lives with a condition that affects the body’s connective tissues and was forced to drop out of a southern Ontario university years ago due to a lack of accessibility. “I thought that my secondary education journey would look more like taking maybe two-credit courses over the course of like 12 years,” they said. “I thought that that was just the only way that I could do it.” Cambrian professor Serge Levesque said he saw a family member struggle with accessibility while in school. So he and the electrical engineering team built custom workstations so Lee could participate fully in labs, ensuring mobility challenges wouldn’t be a barrier. “It was the standing and being able to reach all aspects of it -- that was the biggest thing,” Levesque said. “Once we were able to focus on what those issues were, then we came about trying to find a solution. And that’s what it was all about -- finding the solution so that any individual is empowered to be able to reach and do the work.” Levesque said Lee is one of his top students, who is deeply passionate about the field. “It’s just such an electrifying experience,” Lee said. “You hear the hum of the machines and just the knowledge of the things that they’re doing there is what makes life work.” Lee plans to earn their electrical engineering degree and work in the field, with an ultimate goal of eventually taking that experience into the classroom to become a teacher.
