Faculty of Community Services

RU Interprofessional

Student Engagement Projects

With special funding from the Office of the Dean, FCS schools carried out the following student engagement projects:

Child and Youth Care

• The School of Child and Youth Care promotes student engagement and community through the student-run CYC Connections.  With assistance from faculty member Kiaras Gharabaghi, CYC Connections organized several social events for students and faculty, four presentations on field-related topics and fundraisers. In addition, CYC Connections organized orientation sessions for new students in the fall, a multicultural food festival and an adventure-based experience through Camp DARE, which offers outdoor education programs to troubled youth in the Algonquin Park area. Ten of the student volunteer coordinators of the program, in conjunction with Gharabaghi, attended the National Child and Youth Care conference in Winnipeg, where they presented a workshop on student engagement in post-secondary institutions.

Disability Studies

• The Canadian Disability Studies Association held its annual conference at Carleton University in Ottawa, on May 25-26, 2009. Several School of Disability Studies students, alumni and faculty attended and presented at the conference. One panel consisted of Disability Studies students Joanne Bacon, Morgan Ineson and Helen Henderson, along with alumna Jennifer Paterson and professor Esther Ignagni. Their panel was entitled The Spacing In/Between Disability Studies Scholarship and Practice. Using critical autobiographical techniques, the panellists examined their common experiences of forging new connections with disability studies scholarship and practice. Patterson has also been building a network list, which is intended to help students and alumni find each other for networking and mentoring opportunities. To date, many students and alumni have signed on from as far away as Florida. The list and instructions for signing on can be found in the DST café in the “general discussion” section and the "ask a grad" forum.
• Two Ryerson Alumni of Disability Studies (RADS) events were held in Fall 2009: in Toronto in October (at Ram in the Rye) and down the 401 in Chatham in November (at Glitter’s Fun Eatery). These followed a successful RADS get-together at the Art with Attitude event in July 2009. Join the RADS network by sending an email to Jennifer Paterson (jpaterso@ryerson.ca).
• The School of Disability Studies published two issues of its newsletter RADS Roads: Exploring the Lives of Ryerson Alumni of Disability Studies and Beyond.
• DST alumna, Jennifer Paterson, published a review of the Out from Under exhibition in the Journal on Developmental Disability.

Early Childhood Education

• The School of Early Childhood Education is focusing on career options education for students as part of its student engagement initiative. Building on its success during the previous year, the Career Mentor program was re-established for 2009-2010. The students involved in that program developed a career fair in March 2010 that included ties to the newly revived Early Childhood Education alumni group, another area of focus for the school’s student engagement efforts.
  

Midwifery

• The Midwifery Education Program (MEP) enabled both beginner and advanced students to create a variety of videos exploring core midwifery concepts and inter-professional relationships. This project engaged the participating students and their videos will be used at various points in the program to engage other students in the learning process.
• Another initiative entailed completing the set up of a student room and self-learning lab wherein students have access to a variety of modules that can be used to learn and practise various midwifery skills.
• In September 2009, students from all three sites from the MEP consortium (Laurentian, McMaster and Ryerson) initiated and mounted a successful conference at Ryerson, during which students and faculty presented their research. The conference began with Orgasmic Birth, a film that champions normal birth. During the rest of the conference, faculty and students explored the following topics: non-OHIP clients; household objects to learn and teach midwifery skills; integrated maternity care for rural and remote communities; midwives’ belief in normal birth; experiences of women living with HIV/AIDS who seek perinatal care; clinical outcomes of women with a history of caesarean section who are cared for by Ontario midwives; nurturing home birth in Ontario; and the future of the pelvic exam and Ontario and Quebec birth centres.

Nursing

• Linda Liu, a year 3 nursing student, received funding for a URO project in the summer of 2011. Her supervisor was Dr. Jennifer Lapum. Linda led a research project in which she explored the use of music as an interpretive lens in an arts-informed narrative study. In the project, she used the components of music (e.g., rhythm, harmony, tone) to understand patients' experiences of discharge following open-heart surgery. This approach to research is novel and through Linda's work, she has further expanded understandings of aesthetic knowing in qualitative research. Upon working with the research team, Linda has completed a number of presentations and a manuscript submission to a peer-reviewed journal.

Occupational and Public Health

• In November 2009, three students from the THRILL (Tools for Holistic Ride Inspection Learning and Leadership) program presented posters – and several others attended – the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Inter-University Workshop. Participation in this event gave them an opportunity to meet and network with fellow Human Factors undergraduate and graduate students from Canada and the United States.

Social Work

• The school employed a teaching assistant who provided tutoring for first-year students, with a particular focus on offering them support and feedback on their assignments. The teaching faculty for first-year courses reported that this has enabled many of the students with weaker grades to raise their assignment marks by at least a full letter grade. The school also hired a graduate student teaching assistant to provide students in the required third-year research courses with support related to enhancing their understanding of course material including assignments and exams. Students also benefitted from the support offered by FCS’s learning strategist, who offered in-class workshops for first- and third-year students in the Foundations and Research courses, respectively.
• The SWSU organized several student engagement events, including meet-and greets, pub nights, a fundraising bake sale for Haiti relief efforts and joint events with student unions of other FCS schools. The SWSU also created a newsletter for the students. 
• The school offered two events during National Social Work Week: one for field instructors (a workshop) and one for students. The student event featured lunch and a speaker. It was co-sponsored by the school with the Central Ontario Branch of the Ontario Association of Social Workers (OASW) and the SWSU. Lunch was followed with a presentation by Rhonda Teitel-Payne from The Stop Community Food Centre. The event ended with door prizes, including a free OASW student membership.

Urban and Regional Planning

• In 2009-2010, the Ryerson Association of Planning Students, together with the School of Urban and Regional Planning, developed a Professional Speaker Series as its major student engagement initiative. This project was intended to enhance students’ academic, social and professional experience. The series kicked off in October 2009 with a session featuring Adam Vaughan (councillor, City of Toronto), Dina Graser (People Plan Toronto) and Steve Zaken (Aird & Berlis LLP). They addressed the topic City Building without Credentials: The Value of Non-Professionals in the Planning Process.  Subsequent sessions focussed on Planning’s Role in International Development and The Role of the Campus in City Building (with Ryerson President Sheldon Levy). The final event in the 2009-2010 series was an alumni networking event, during which approximately 15 planning alumni met in a workshop setting with students across all years of the program to share their experiences on diverse career paths and on getting started in the profession.

What is the Writing Skills Initiative?

The Faculty of Community Services (FCS) Writing Skills Initiative (WSI) was initiated in Fall 2008, in response to an examination of NSSE ‘06 data for FCS students which revealed that only 69% of respondents indicated that the University contributed either “quite a bit” or “very much” to development of skills in writing clearly and effectively.  Given the fundamental importance of writing skills at university and in the workplace after graduation, the WSI’s primary objective is to improve the writing skills of first-year undergraduate students in the Faculty of Community Services.

The target group for the WSI is undergraduate students in the full-time programs offered by the Faculty of Community Services: Child and Youth Care, Early Childhood Education, Midwifery, Nutrition and Food, Nursing, Occupational and Public Health, Social Work, and Urban and Regional Planning. 

The WSI consists of weekly writing support provided to students as either a part of one of their required courses or in workshop format.
 
Resource persons, mainly teaching assistants, work with the teaching teams to conduct small group activities and to assist instructors in providing timely and helpful detailed feedback on the written assignments.  The support and tutorials offered to students are tailored to (a) the individual needs of each school in the Faculty that is involved with WSI and (b) student writing abilities in order to ensure that students whose writing is already very good are able to derive benefit.

In preparation for 2012, the WSI team has engaged stakeholders from all levels and has implemented the following new procedures: (a) a Lead TA will join the leadership team to offer support and expertise to teaching assistants, (b) transition to a program evaluation model to ensure continued success and improvement of the Initiative, and (c) continuing to work with Faculty to increase the presence of the WSI TAs at the classroom and departmental level.

Who is the 2012-13 Writing Skills Initiative Team?

Project Lead:
Janice Waddell, FCS Associate Dean

Project Coordinator:
Sonya Jancar
sjancar@ryerson.ca

Lead Teaching Assistant:
Nathan Wilson

Faculty Members:
Linda Cooper – Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing
TBA – School of Child and Youth Care
TBA – School of Early Childhood Education
Nicole Bennett – School of Midwifery Education Program
TBA – School of Occupational and Public Health
Fiona Yeudall – School of Nutrition
June Ying Yee – School of Social Work
TBA – School of Urban and Regional Planning

Teaching Assistants:
Nathan Wilson – School of Child and Youth Care
Laura Hartenberger – School of Early Childhood Education
Samantha Stevens-Hall – School of Midwifery Education Program
Samantha Stevens-Hall – School of Occupational and Public Health
Meredith Wright – School of Nutrition
Scott Martenette – School of Social Work
Jessica Wilczak – School of Urban and Regional Planning

Adminstrative Support:
Alison Finney, FCS Community Relations Officer
Liz Leman, FCS Business Officer

Links and References

Cadwallader, M.L. and C.A. Scarboro. 1982. “Teaching Writing Within a Sociology Course: A Case Study in Writing Across the Curriculum.” Teaching Sociology, 9: 359-382.

Kuh, G.D., J. Kinzie, J.H. Schuh, and E.J. Whitt. 2005. Student Success in College: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco: Wiley.

National Survey on Student Engagement. http://nsse.iub.edu/