Improving the campus experience at the University of Toronto through student-led design
By Betelehem Gulilat, Lead Writer and Editor
What makes the international student experience different from those of domestic students? Since the pandemic, a new set of challenges has emerged on top of the pre-pandemic realm of campus life that international students are valiantly navigating. In turning to our vibrant and diverse community at UofT, we hope to spark discussions by bringing student stories to light.
This is a re-post from Redefining Traditional in acknowledgement of Orange Shirt Day, a day to honour the lives of children impacted by the residential school system and its continued effect in Indigenous communities across the country. Our Design Researcher at the Innovation Hub, Heather Watts, has shared a thoughtful piece on the significance of this day – one that every individual should deeply reflect on. We also recognize that our learning about and with Indigenous folx and histories does not and should not be located only on specific days, and should be ongoing.
Last year around this time, I wrote the following post on my Facebook page:
A lot of feelings as I dropped Nico off this morning, sporting his orange shirt. Today is Orange Shirt Day, a day designed to educate people and promote awareness about the Indian residential school system and the impact this system had on Indigenous communities for more than a century in Canada, and still does today.
This system was assimilation and erasure packaged and tied as ‘education’. What do we mean when we use this word? What are we teaching? What are we intentionally leaving out? What narrative are we working to maintain?
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.
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.
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.
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.
By Terri-Lynn Langdon, Lead Editor and Writer
Questions around how the University of Toronto can support international students using an intersectional lens in the best ways possible are critical. We need to support students who have not been traditionally supported in their educational and skill development. In this role as a Lead Editor and Writer, I take great care to capture stories that need telling. I had the privilege to sit down and talk to Ngoné about what is going on in her life as a U of T student.
Written by Terri-Lynn Langdon, Lead Writer and Editor
I am a wheelchair- using mother and a PhD student at OISE in Social Justice Education. When the lockdown in Toronto began we lost access to daycare and we also lost more than one support person (Nurturing Assistants) who felt that their own lives were too disrupted by the pandemic to continue to provide ongoing support to us. Without this direct support neither myself nor my child can shower safely, and I have no means of taking my twenty-one month old outside on my own. On top of which our building has been plagued with significant apartment maintenance issues all summer which has meant I have had to solve big family pandemic issues for 4 months and counting….
Written By: Terri-Lynn Langdon, Lead Editor and Writer, Innovation Hub
At the Innovation Hub one of our projects focuses on engaging International students. International students currently make up 25.4% of the undergraduate and graduate student population at U of T.1 Questions around how the University of Toronto can support this group in the best ways possible and how their needs differ from domestic students is extremely important to the work that the Innovation Hub is engaged in, not to mention that, student engagement and a project by and for students is our bread and butter.
Meng Xiao recently wrote a book titled Student Engagement in Practice: Chinese International Graduate Student Engagement Handbook which is a book inspired by her own doctoral research from OISE’s Doctorate of Education Program at the University of Toronto.
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.