The month of June — recognized both as LGBTQIA+ Pride Month and National Indigenous History Month — marked the launch of “We’re Engineering Physicists,” the latest in a series of educational comics designed to introduce disciplines in engineering for youth. The fifth in the series, each one features sketched representations of Indigenous graduates from engineering programs at Queen’s.
The comics are published by Indigenous Futures in Engineering, the student support and youth outreach unit at Smith Engineering.
“We’re Engineering Physicists” focuses on two Engineering Physics graduates, Maranda Cherry and Jay Swanson. Cherry graduated from Queen’s in 2022 and is currently studying at the graduate level at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she intends to launch her career in the aerospace industry.
Jay Swanson graduated in 2017 and completed a graduate degree in Physics at Royal Military College in 2020. He currently lives in Nova Scotia where he works as an Electro-Optical Modelling and Simulation Engineer for the Royal Canadian Navy.
He moved to the east coast with his spouse who is in the Navy as an officer. “Listening to my wife’s experiences, I recognized a need for a greater technical understanding of the ships, informing everyone of what the state of the ships really was, to make things safer for the naval officers and non-commissioned members on board,” he says.
“It includes a lot of our friends and family and community, so I wanted to be involved in some way.” When he saw a job posting to be an embedded contractor for the navy, he applied.
“Being a part of The Naval Engineering Test Establishment, NETE, means I play a third-party advisory role to the Navy,” he says. “I get to build a unique expertise and technical skill set for the Navy and use that to help inform how the ships operate and are developed into the future.”
Swanson is also transgender, having set in motion a few years ago his “gender journey” away from Deborah, as he was known at Queen’s. “It’s been really wonderful to connect with myself on that level of understanding who I am.”
“I like being an openly queer individual because I didn't have those role models when I was a kid. Now, I hope a young person can see me living my life, finding success, and enjoying myself and know that, hey, this is an okay way to be.”
Reflecting on the experiences at Queen’s that have supported the development of his career, he credits the department and faculty for recognizing the value in knowledge translation.
“The Engineering Physics program set me up with the skill set to be comfortable exploring something that's leading edge,” he says. “And Queen's had me go through a lot of different presentation scenarios that helped me really develop my technical communication skills. Now I understand how to communicate with counterparts that have in-depth technical backgrounds, and I know how to engage key stakeholders in uniform who may not be technically inclined at all.”
Jay Swanson is a non-status First Nations person with family history from Muskoday Cree Nation. “My great-grandmother was a member of the Muskoday First Nation community,” he says, “and lost her status when she married my European immigrant great-grandfather, which the law required at the time.”
“When I got to Queen’s, I really wanted to be involved with Aboriginal Access to Engineering, as it was called at the time,” he says. [The student support unit was renamed Indigenous Futures in Engineering in 2022]. “I got to find part of my own identity within that. I found ways to be involved, mostly in youth outreach programs. I went on an outreach trip to Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug in northern Ontario, and another with Dr. Jordan Morelli [Professor in the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy] to Saskatchewan First Nations communities and schools, doing physics activities with elementary and middle school students. We got to visit Muskoday.”
Use of old photos and deadname published with express consent of Jay Swanson.
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