Workshop Facilitation
In the 1st year of my PhD (2017), I found a part-time job working 8-10h/week as a Student Skills Assistant with Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) at McGill, the department responsible for supplementing academic training with professional skills on leadership, financial skills, presentation skills, and time management amongst others.
During my 6 years there, I delivered the following workshops to both undergraduate and graduate students:
Workshops Facilitated
- Designing and delivering effective lectures, AGSEM Teaching Assistant Training
- Skills for success in a professional environment, McGill SKILLSETS
- Engaging students using active learning strategies, Training for Physics TAs
- Navigating emotional intelligence, Leadership Series
- Solving problems and seeing the big picture, Leadership Series
- Motivating and inspiring as a leader, Leadership Series
- Outreach and Engagement 101
- Blogging 101
- Skills for Time Management, McGill SKILLSETS
- Networking for Engineering, Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design
- Giving effective feedback for student learning, AGSEM Teaching Assistant Training
- Building your Teaching Portfolio, Academia Week
I also filled the following roles:
Other Roles
- Moderator of panel discussion for “Strategies for a Successful Thesis Defense”, Academic Careers Series 2019
- Moderator for 3-minute thesis competition (3MT), 2022 & 2023
- Student Lead for Academic Integrity scan of graduate student offerings at McGill and U15 on topics such as data falsification, plagiarism and authorship
- Designed environmental scan survey sent to liaison librarians and graduate program directors at McGill to assess need for academic integrity training
- Led Academic Integrity working group composed of the Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, Dean of Students, Director of Teaching and Learning Services and McGill Research Integrity Officer to design improved academic integrity workshop
- Delivered academic integrity workshops to departments by request
Workshop Development
In 2020, the Student Skills Assistants were offered an opportunity to develop a new workshop that would complement the SKILLSET offerings.
Given the rising concern of mental health issues amongst graduate students (6 times higher than the general population) and the lack of capacity of institutional wellness options (e.g. therapists) to cope with this demand, my friend and colleague, Nicole George, and I developed a peer-led workshop to equip students with skills in resilience specifically tailored to central questions causing distress during the graduate student experience.
Built on the premise that there is a lot of knowledge that each of us carry and that we become resilient both by supporting others as well as receiving support, the workshop was very well received by graduate students and continues to be run by TLS twice a year.
We also presented the results of our workshop at annual conference of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) 2021 and have an approved human ethics protocol to collect qualitative and quantitative data from the entry and exit survey of our workshop for academic publication.
Here were some takeaways from student attendees:
That I am not alone in my stress and worries
Focusing on learning instead of performance!
Failure is not the limit; it is the opportunity to grow
Uncertainty is certain, need to embrace that uncertainty by reframing and resetting our thoughts
Drawing from community knowledge/experience
That others have similar experiences!
There is always someone willing to help.
Look deeper into stoicism, get into the habit of journaling, practicing self care
Read more about our resilience workshop as
Featured in:
McGill Reporter
Read the Reporter’s take on the workshop based on our interview with them.
Gradlife McGill
Read my personal perspective on how the workshop idea came to be!
Teaching Assistantship Positions
MIME 568: Topics in Advanced Materials (January – May 2019, 2020, 2021)
- Graduate course of 20-30 students
- Organized course collaboration between University of Montreal, University of Sherbrooke, Polytechnique Montreal, Laval University
- Held team clinics for group project (42 hours)
- Evaluated final presentations
- Conducted bilingual communication with students and professors
MIME 515: Material Surfaces – A Biomimetic Approach (September – December 2018, 2019)
- Undergraduate/graduate course of 36 students
- Taught part of the course with Prof. Marta Cerruti, organized group work and evaluations, led laboratory training and graded lab reports, evaluated final presentations and reports (47 hours)
- Designed and delivered lecture on idea generation and teamwork
MIME 317: Analytical and Characterization Techniques (September – December 2018)
- Undergraduate course of 48 students
- Created and delivered case studies (developed evaluation rubric, handouts, answered questions during class time) with Prof. Marta Cerruti on characterization techniques as a complement to the traditional lecture approach under the Farnell Teaching Scholarship
- Our case study approach was presented at the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG19) Conference 2019 (see below)