“Most engineers, including myself, believe it’s important for the profession to foster the next generation of professional engineers: those who will become the builders of our future society,” said Dr. Sandra Ausma, P.Eng., President of the Ontario Professional Engineers Foundation for Education (OPEFFE) in an interview for National Engineering Month.
The Ontario Professional Engineers Foundation for Education is a charitable organization dedicated to supporting engineering students who demonstrate academic excellence and leadership. Through scholarship funding and recognition, the foundation helps shape the future of the engineering profession in Ontario.
For the 2026-27 academic year, the foundation will be providing funding for scholarships to all 19 CEAB-accredited schools in Ontario, and distributing $325,000 in scholarships to 130 students. This broad reach ensures that outstanding students across the province benefit from their support.
Their impressive scholarship record demonstrates the Ontario engineering profession’s commitment to its future leaders and highlights the remarkable bond among engineers at every stage of their careers.
According to Ausma, investing in young engineers in Ontario not only supports individual students but also helps develop the leaders of tomorrow. By offering these scholarships, the foundation empowers recipients to pursue their goals and contribute meaningfully to the profession.
An engineering education in Ontario can cost between $40,000 and over $90,000. By alleviating some of this financial burden, scholarship recipients are able to focus more on their rigorous academics and participate in extracurricular skill-building activities, such as varsity sports, debate clubs, volunteering, and more.
These experiences help develop well-rounded engineers who bring more than technical expertise to their careers. They foster leadership, communication skills, empathy, diverse experiences, and adaptability—traits that make tomorrow’s engineers valuable not only to the engineering community, but to society as a whole.
In celebration of National Engineering Month, Sandra Ausma sat down with NEM Ontario to discuss the foundation’s activities and the importance of investing in engineering education.
Here are excerpts from their conversation, edited for clarity and flow:
How do students receive funding from the foundation?
We have agreements with all Ontario engineering schools that are accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board, we are currently working with 19 universities and colleges.
Within our agreements we provide the schools with funding along with broad guidelines. We let them how the number and value of scholarships they’re receiving, and then we let the universities decide who to give the scholarships to.
Each school receives funding for two entrance scholarships, along with funding for a number of undergraduate scholarships that is determined by the number of students in the program.
How does the foundation connect with the students who receive the scholarships?
One way that we connect with students is through the Foundation’s Gold Medal. Each school receives a Gold Medal that is given to the student who graduates with the highest grades across the school’s engineering program, the Gold Medal is a symbol recognizing the work and effort that they have applied to get to graduation.
I had the opportunity to attend a gold medal ceremony last year at the University of Guelph, and the award winner had his parents there, it was obviously very meaningful to the individual to receive that gold medal and to be recognized by the Foundation for their accomplishments.
We are also actively reaching out to past scholarship and Gold Medal recipients to gather more stories about the students who have benefited. We have one student who received an undergraduate scholarship, and we are proud that she has graduated with a Gold Medal as well! By reaching out to past recipients we’ve heard inspiring stories of accomplishment, ingenuity and the development of future leaders: we are looking forward to sharing more of these stories on social media.
What are the criteria for earning a scholarship from the Foundation?
For the entrance scholarships, students need to have demonstrated academic achievement, and they must have an Ontario Secondary School Diploma or and achieve the designation of Ontario Scholar.
We leave the final selection up to the schools however, we provide criteria. We hope that by providing fairly broad criteria that isn’t based solely on academics, that funds are distributed to touch students with qualities in a variety of areas or may have financial need.
A student could show this through a commitment to participate in extracurricular activities in school or the community, like student government, clubs, teams or sports.
We ask that when the schools are administering these, the student should not have received more than $10,000, including our scholarships. We also encourage schools to nominate from a diverse group of candidates, and that they should endeavour to include at least one student who identifies as a woman and ask them to meaningfully consider non-binary and gender diverse students in their nomination decisions.
For undergraduate scholarships, it’s very similar, with the added criterion that the student has high engineering aptitude. That may not necessarily translate into high marks, but a professor can highlight a student whom they consider to have what it takes to be a leader in engineering.
What kinds of leadership qualities do schools look for in recipients?
I’d like to think that the universities are trying to pick the future leaders. So not just the future engineer, but the future leaders in the engineering community. People who are well-rounded and who aren’t just after the highest salary, but people who are going to be leaders in society and create positive change.
How have you seen the work of the foundation change over time?
In 1959, when the foundation started, there were only four schools that were provided with funding for scholarships, and I believe it was one scholarship per school. At that time, $500 would cover a full semester’s tuition.
The tuition rates have, of course, gone up, but over the years, we have risen to meet the needs of the community of engineering students. We’ve expanded to work with every accredited school in Ontario, and starting next year we will be giving out funding for 130 scholarships a year up from 106 this year. That is a big change from where this started.
Why is now an important time to donate?
In 2025 – 2026, Canada has invested over 60 billion dollars in new major infrastructure projects, like the Darlington New Nuclear Project, LNG Canada Phase 2, and the Contrecoeur Container Terminal, to name a few.
All these projects have become more meaningful as they are part of the country’s self-determination and leadership on the world stage. Along with this, we are facing a shortage of graduating engineers within Canada to meet the increasing needs for engineering talent for large infrastructure projects.
This makes now an important time to support the next generation of engineers who will be contributing their fresh ideas to major projects that will define Canada in many ways.
Is there anything looking to the future of the foundation that you’re excited for?
In 2026, we will be awarding our first self-administered scholarship. We opened applications for our Engineering Student in Sports Scholarship last fall and received over a hundred applicants. Recipients will be selected this spring.
We picked sports because to be successful in sports, you also have to have drive, determination, and leadership qualities. There are a lot of engineering students who might be student athletes. So, we thought this was a good place to start with self-administered scholarships to identify and support more future leaders. These will be larger scholarships, we will be awarding up to three $5000 scholarships.
We hope that once we have a model built for administering scholarships ourselves and volunteers dedicated to the work involved in screening applications, we’ll be able to offer other self-administered scholarships, create an even bigger impact and promote engineering as a career while we do that.
To support the work of the Ontario Professional Engineers Foundation for Education, you can donate through their website and sign up for their mailing list.
