Tag: Equity Diversity Inclusion (page 4)

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).

Written by Terri-Lynn Langdon and Kaitlyn Corlett

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. 

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.

By Danielle Lum, Project Assistant & Mia Sanders, Storyteller

What does Pride look like to you?

By Margaryta Ignatenko, Innovation Hub Team

At the core of the Innovation Hub is the desire to make the University of Toronto a place where all students experience a sense of community and connectedness. In our work, we use a design methodology that takes inclusivity into consideration. We are thrilled about events such as #DisplayYourPride which celebrate the diversity of our University of Toronto community!

By Bonnie Jane Maracle, Integrated Learning Experience Team

Being a student at the University of Toronto means that this person has been deemed capable of doing the work required, meeting the challenges of the coursework, and achieving success in career goals they may have in their sights. A student in studies at U of T is to be congratulated on gaining entry, and others in upper years, they too need to be congratulated for their success in managing to hang in there, or as they say, “surviving the rigors of academia.” Students at U of T might soon learn, or in some cases, not learn soon enough, of all the support services available to them. This may include the services of a learning strategist, or their registrar, or an academic advisor, or even a TA. Available to students are also career planning and accessibility services. Ultimately, there is certainly a wide range of services and supports to assist students in getting through their coursework.