kcorlett, Author at The Innovation Hub

Stories Through Research Spotlight: Impact of COVID-19 on the Mental Health and Vulnerability of Sexual and Gender Minorities (SGM) Living in Toronto

This guest blog post is part of our Stories Through Research Series: Learning from UofT Researchers on How Students are Impacted by COVID-19. Each post in this series highlights three UofT research projects helping us understand student experiences and challenges in these unprecedented times. Each spotlight includes a blog post and scheduled zoom session for individuals from all areas of the University to come together as we listen, learn, and share important elements that must be engaged through conversation. Learn more at uoft.me/storiesthroughresearch.

Centering SGM voices for inclusive models of care.

Project Team: Jessica Fields (UofT), James Gibb (UofT), Sarah Williams (UofT), Ali Greery (UofT), Leela McKinnon (UofT)

To get in touch with and meet the team, come to our live zoom session next week, August 27th.

Stories Through Research Spotlight: Our Languages, Our Lives and the Global Pandemic

Thinking deeply about how language in students’ lives has shifted during a pandemic.

Project Team: Dr. Maya Abtahian (University of Rochester’s Department of Linguistics) and Dr. Naomi Nagy (University of Toronto’s Department of Linguistics)

To get in touch with and meet the team, come to our live zoom session next week, August 26th.

Stories Through Research Spotlight: Going Viral – COVID-19 and Risk in Young Adult Health Behaviour Models

This guest blog post is part of our Stories Through Research Series: Learning from UofT Researchers on How Students are Impacted by COVID-19. Each post in this series highlights a UofT research project helping us understand student experiences and challenges in these unprecedented times. Each spotlight includes a blog post and scheduled zoom session for individuals from all areas of the University to come together as we listen, learn, and share important elements that must be engaged through conversation. Learn more at uoft.me/storiesthroughresearch.

How are young adults experiencing fear and being brave as their worlds, online and offline, transform in the pandemic?

Project Team: Dr. Madeleine Mant (UTM), Dr. Alyson Holland (McMaster), and Dr. Andrew Prine (Groves Memorial Community Hospital)

To get in touch with and meet the team, come to our live zoom session next week, August 25th.

The Innovation Hub is Hiring for the Fall/Winter 2020-2021 Work Study Term!

The Innovation Hub is Hiring: Work Study 2020-2021; white text on a purple background with an icon of a hand holding a post it note.

This Summer at the Innovation Hub we have been so grateful for continuing our work by students, for students. We have had opportunities to continue to grow ongoing partnerships, while also engaging in new work and ideating projects. In a time where we are uncertain about many things, we want to offer our potential team members the opportunity to both contribute to the university and learn new skills.

Julia smeed smiling at the camera, wearing a striped shirt — Julia Smeed – Manager, Innovation Projects

We’re looking for dedicated students who are interested in improving campus life by focusing on student needs, who want to work with design thinking inspired methods, or are passionate about engaging with communities and want to support students in a variety of ways. Individuals considering applying to a role must have the ability to work remotely and engage in virtual project work and in collaborative online environment.

Centering Hope, Action and Change for National Indigenous History Month at the Innovation Hub

Written by Terri-Lynn Langdon, Editor and Writer

June is National Indigenous History Month and The Innovation Hub wishes to celebrate this month and Day (June 21st) by celebrating the lives of Indigenous communities and acknowledging the richness and diversity of Indigenous knowledge, histories, and world views.¹

In recent years, our work with Indigenous Student Services (also known as First Nations House) has focused on engaging with spaces, services, and needs for Indigenous students on campus. Through these projects, we collaborated these spaces from 2018-2019 to foster spheres of community on campus. The Innovation Hub then explored the core needs of services that are needed on campus for Indigenous students to feel supported and engaged throughout their respective studies. It’s through these integral community partnerships and our design thinking processes and resources that we continually work to address realities that Indigenous lives, spaces, and communities face in a Canadian context (and beyond).

#DisplayYourPride 2020: Celebrating Pride and Intersectionality at the Innovation Hub

Written by Terri-Lynn Langdon and Kaitlyn Corlett

#DisplayYourPride 2020 at the University of Toronto. More colour, more pride! Theme is Intersectionaly LGBTQ+ identities. — Celebrate this year’s #DisplayYourPride! Image provided by the University of Toronto

Happy Pride Month, 2020! From all of us at the Innovation Hub, let’s celebrate love and affirmation for everybody. This is especially important in a time where many of us may feel disconnected from our communities, spaces, and activities that ground us for celebrating this important time of year. At the Innovation Hub, we often celebrate #DisplayYourPride in a collaborative activity to connect with one another and express how we are celebrating. Since we can’t connect in-person this year, we are celebrating by acknowledging the important history of Pride and inviting readers to think about how to celebrate in a commitment to anti-racism and intersectionality. We are centering the lives of Black LGBTQ2SIA+¹ folx², who continue to be catalysts for significant change in the LGBTQ2SIA+ movement.

A Physical Space for Student Well-being

Zahira Tasabehji, Design Research Team Lead

Editor’s Note: In light of COVID-19 and social distancing, we would like to note that the insights expressed in this post were developed prior to the COVID-19 crisis. We acknowledge that imagining student spaces physically looks very different at this time, and we hope that some of these insights provide value to virtual spaces for students.

Students often spend long hours on campus. Throughout the day, they move around to accommodate their busy schedules. Classes eat up big chunks of time, but in the spaces between, students look for comfortable places to relax or be productive. They find many formal study spaces , but are those the only places they seek?

To provide more student-friendly spaces on campus, the Innovation Hub partnered with the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) for the Fall-Winter 2019/2020 term to redesign the Benson Pool Gallery. We wanted to turn the Gallery into an accessible student space. Moreover, we wanted to ensure it was truly student friendly. Thus, we interviewed other students about what they need in community spaces. Our ultimate goal was to answer the question: “How can the Benson Pool Gallery be redesigned to offer an innovative multi-use community space for students?”

The Redefining Traditional Backstory: How Design Thinkers Created a Virtual Community of Student Parents and Supporters During COVID-19

Redefining Traditional: Making Higher Education Family Friendly

By Celeste Pang, Sauliha Alli, Sanja Ivanov and Heather Watts

Design thinkers at the Innovation Hub share the backstory of the Redefining Traditional virtual community of student parents and their supporters.

In Solidarity with Black Lives: Centering Black Communities and Committing to Anti-Racism in our Lives

By Terri-Lynn Langdon, Editor and Writer

Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.
– Maya Angelou

At the Innovation Hub we honor our commitment to design with and for students. This work intersects with a scope of communities, faculties, and voices to ensure that we can co-create a university that works for all. Recently the University of Toronto has addressed a commitment to anti-black racism in solidarity with Black lives, communities, and spaces. Through conversations, protests, and movements we are experiencing a critical moment in time to end racialized violence. This is a centuries-long movement that must be joined, loved, and actively acknowledged.

In these conversations we have also recognized that it’s important to name racism and support anti-black racist efforts. Compounded by the reality of COVID-19, many Black communities are disproportionately impacted by racism in education, health care, and law enforcement. These experiences are present in many spaces we are a part of – in Canada and beyond. We must continue to acknowledge and address by resisting these types of discrimination in the foundations of the work we do.

The Innovation Hub is Hiring for the Summer 2020 Work Study Term!

We are hiring!

Julia Smeed – Manager, Innovation Projects

As we work and learn in these uncertain times of COVID-19, the Innovation Hub has been thinking deeply about our projects this summer, and how they can truly benefit the UofT community and beyond. We want to offer our potential team members the opportunity to both contribute to the university and learn new skills during these times. We’re looking for dedicated students who are interested in improving campus life by focusing on student needs, who want to work with design thinking inspired methods, and also have the ability to work remotely and engage in virtual project work in collaborative environments. We hope to put together a diverse team that enjoys the challenges of our work!

Please note that job postings go live April 30th, 2020.

The deadline for applying to positions is Monday, May 4th, 2020 at 11:59pm.

Read below for job descriptions, and go to the Career & Co-Curricular Learning Network and search for the work study job board to find the positions and apply.

Author: kcorlett (page 6)

Centering SGM voices for inclusive models of care.

Thinking deeply about how language in students’ lives has shifted during a pandemic.

How are young adults experiencing fear and being brave as their worlds, online and offline, transform in the pandemic?