We are very excited that our program at the Katarokwi Learning Centre has grown this year to ~24 mentees, ranging from grades 5-9.
This current year is one of the most successful for our program, since its debut in 2016!
We have a total of 7 mentors and one Head-In-person mentor, all of whom are graduate students in DPMM, DBMS, CNS or Biology.
The Research Mentorship Program consists of:
Bruce Elliott - Program Coordinator Lead* (Emeritus Professor, DPMM)
Cynthia Pruss - Program Coordinator (Assistant Professor, DPMM)
Qingling Duan, Program Coordinator (DBMS)
Jamie Would - Head In-person Mentor
Monica Garvie - Indigenous Liaison Person
Yasmine Saini, Doriana Taccardi, Marie Boddington - Assistant Coordinators
This year Monica Garvie (PhD student in Biology) is serving as our Indigenous Liaison person, who is helping us in culture sensitivity and planning for our mentorships. We also have input from Sarah Funnell, Vice-Dean of Indigenous Health, who has helped us in recruitment of mentors, and provided advice regarding our project activities.
Weekly sessions began on February 26th with three whole class activities (roller Coaster Physics, Blood types (forensics), and Microscopes: Hidden worlds! Mentees are now divided into 5 groups, according to their interests.