Although we all strive to do well on our midterms this should not occur at the expense of our physical and mental well-being
With exam season fast approaching, many students are slowly starting to forget about their own well-being. All-nighters, avoiding breaks and skipping meals will be the daily norm as libraries are filled to the brim with students focused on achieving one goal - getting a good grade.
Under the pressure of succeeding in rigorous university classes, students are forced to prioritize their GPAs above everything – but at what cost?
Under no circumstances is it okay to place your academics above your mental well-being, especially during high-stress periods like exam season. In fact, during times like these, it’s important to prioritize yourself to avoid psychological distress.
Under no circumstances is it okay to place your academics above your mental well-being, especially during high-stress periods like exam season. In fact, during times like these, it’s important to prioritize yourself to avoid psychological distress.
You should not be pushing through deteriorating mental health for the sake of an exam. By doing so, students are making themselves susceptible to psychological distress, academic burnout, and isolation from the damaged relationships. Indulging in these typical exam activities infrequently may be okay for the time being. However, when consistently making these activities common practice many long-term adverse health implications accompany that.
For example, you may have skipped lunch today because you have an exam at 4 p.m. You may think that using this extra time to study might help you do better on your exam than if you were to grab lunch.
In the short term, you are now starving during your exam which may distract you and make it difficult to concentrate on the exam. However, if you continue to skip meals you are putting yourself at risk for health issues such as mood swings and brain fog. Over time, more concerning consequences can arise too, like fainting and muscle loss, contributing to more illnesses that can cause you a trip to the emergency room.
Experiencing these extreme health implications will only worsen over time if students continue to study all night and isolate themselves from friends and family.
Even though exam season is riddled with anxiety and stress, it is important to understand that the habits we develop during these academically critical periods will have long-term negative impacts on our health. When our health is impacted, our performance on exams is also negatively impacted.
So, what really are the benefits of neglecting our wellbeing?
Although skipping study breaks may help you perform well on your first exam, it’s very likely that continuing these habits will prevent you from performing well on future exams. Additionally, you may begin to experience insomnia, psychological distress, and increased stress levels. Overall, these short-term practices not only have negative health implications in the long term, but they also impact your performance on exams as December progresses.
As hard as it may be, students should not sacrifice their well-being temporarily for exams as the consequences follow us well after. We must recognize that regardless of the intentions for indulging in these practices, there are very minimal benefits to experience during exam season.
We must recognize that regardless of the intentions for indulging in these practices, there are very minimal benefits to experience during exam season.
In fact, prioritizing our well-being can demonstrate academic benefits that will allow us to excel during exams. For example, eating nourishing meals throughout this stressful period can increase mental alertness and stabilize your energy levels allowing you to perform better on exams.
With exams quickly approaching, it's important to remember that sacrificing your well-being to upkeep an ideal GPA can lead to unhealthy habits appearing in the long-term concerns. Taking care of your health, such as eating well and taking breaks.
Integrating Indigenous knowledge into all McMaster faculties would open opportunities for moving beyond symbolic gestures of reconciliation
Education is a necessary component of reconciliation, which cannot be achieved without acknowledging the uncomfortable truths about Canada's past and present actions. Education is a key call to action outlined in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report. One way to improve education is to build Indigenous knowledge into university courses and curricula.
Indigenous knowledge systems are complex bodies of wisdom and skills developed over centuries and passed down through generations. Unlike Western knowledge, where humans sit at the centre, Indigenous knowledge considers everything in the natural world to be an essential part of an interconnected whole.
Integrating Indigenous knowledge into every faculty and department at McMaster would open new opportunities to learn things through traditional perspectives. Shifting beyond only discussing reconciliation to taking real action would also help students learn lessons about colonialism, residential schools, intergenerational trauma, and Indigenous resurgence among many other topics.
Dawn Martin-Hill, the chair of McMaster's Indigenous Education Council and a Mohawk of the Wolf Clan, spoke about how the integration of Indigenous studies could be realized at McMaster.
“The university students that I teach are incredibly enthusiastic, but they just want this information, especially the environmental students and the natural science students. I get frustrated because we could conquer the world if we actually had a path to work together,” said Martin-Hill.
The university students that I teach are incredibly enthusiastic, but they just want this information, especially the environmental students and the natural science students. I get frustrated because we could conquer the world if we actually had a path to work together.
Dawn Martin-Hill, chair, McMaster's Indigenous Education Council
Currently there are two significant barriers to the distribution of Indigenous information.
First, because students pay for their education, they may not support the integration of Indigenous studies if they don't think it will be relevant to their degree. However, learning about Indigenous ways of life is a moral obligation to remedy our relationships with those native to Canadian lands. And, Indigenous knowledge is applicable to all subjects within both the sciences and humanities.
“I didn’t know I would love engineering so much because I liked the way they think. It’s similar to Indigenous thinking in a weird way because they just want to solve problems. They want to execute things in a way that is efficient,” explained Martin-Hill.
The second barrier is a more structural one that Martin-Hill has been working to resolve for many years. Indigenous peoples are relied upon to lead the integration of their knowledge into university curricula, but there are not yet enough academics available to do this work at McMaster.
“It’s a lack of human resources because we were in residential schools and not in mainstream schools. There’s a lot of reasons why they’re just now populating these spaces,” said Martin-Hill.
Martin-Hill expressed that students have the power to make demands to resolve these barriers. McMaster is depriving students of opportunities to learn about the land they study on and the locally based Indigenous ways of knowing.
“Students have a lot of agency and authority and what frustrates me is I feel like they don’t know. They could change this space in a minute if they just got together, mobilized, and said, ‘Look, we demand. We want this information. Why is it not being given to us?’” concluded Martin-Hill
Students have a lot of agency and authority and what frustrates me is I feel like they don’t know. They could change this space in a minute if they just got together, mobilized, and said, ‘Look, we demand. We want this information. Why is it not being given to us?'
Dawn Martin-Hill, chair, McMaster's Indigenous Education Council
In the face of contemporary issues like the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a lot to be learned from Indigenous peoples. Although they make up about five per cent of the global population Indigenous peoples protect 80 per cent of the Earth's biodiversity. Their knowledge and work plays a critical role in the maintenance of a healthy planet.
To learn more about Indigenous knowledge, McMaster's Indigenous Health Learning Lodge is facilitating a series of lectures called Sharing Notable Indigenous Pedagogy & and Education. The SNIPE lectures are all about Indigenous ways of thinking in relation to interdisciplinary subjects. The first lecture in the series, covering how Indigenous knowledge can mitigate health and wellbeing, was hosted Wednesday, November 15. The date for the next lecture has yet to be determined, but more information can be found on their website.
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Do grades have to be everything?
By: Hadeeqa Aziz, Contributor
This one is for all the first years. So you’ve heard your grades will drop and you’re rather terrified of what the next couple of years will bring. And rightfully so, because according to data collected by the University of Waterloo, the average Ontario high school student’s grades will likely drop by a factor of 16 percent. Some of you may not worry too much because you’re confident in the way your high school conditioned and prepared you for post-secondary education.
After all, you’ve earned your way into your program, haven’t you? The feeling of accomplishment is even more incredible now, especially since admissions averages have been steadily increasing over the last few years. For example, according to student observations on r/OntarioUniversities, McMaster’s life sciences gateway program has seen an increase in cutoff averages since 2019, from high 80s to low 90s.
There’s nothing short of a plethora of reasons to explain these increases, from larger applicant pools to better overall student performances, especially in light of online learning. There’s one factor, however, that remains prominent — one that we all know exists but seldom find the courage to thoroughly talk about: grade inflation.
It’s a sensitive topic because implying the existence of grade inflation is an implication that not everyone sitting in your lecture hall has rightfully earned their way into their program. The onus, however, is not on the student, but seemingly on the high schools they come from.
All Ontario universities value grades when assessing high school seniors for undergraduate admissions, taking the form of an average of your top 6 courses in Grade 12. It appears to be the most plausible evaluation tool, as it’s supposedly designed to gauge your competence as an academic. Here’s a shocking revelation though: not all students have been to the same high school. What does this mean? It essentially implies that a 95 percent average at one school may not hold the same value as a 95 percent at another.
Grade inflation is often rooted in a decrease in academic standards or when faculty don’t have clear expectations of their students. This leads to grade inequality, meaning that equal qualities of work are assigned different grades across schools, departments or courses.
Many speak to the problematic nature of grade inflation, while others outright deny that it’s even a problem. When inflation leads to increased admissions averages, it sets grade standards to an all-time high, so much so that some career prospects may be taken away from students who fail to reach those standards.
The process of achieving the ridiculously high grade requirements for the University of Waterloo’s engineering programs, for instance, is not the same for all students. Those who don’t reap the benefits of grade inflation would have to work much harder than those who do. Here, universities risk being unfair to the students who have more rigorous marking standards. And we haven’t even touched upon other factors that contribute to student issues such as socioeconomics, race or geographics.
Entering university with inflated grades isn’t all that fun either. If inflation leads to misinterpretations of a student’s competence and studying habits, perhaps it can lead to similar misinterpretations on a student’s fitness for their program of entry. Students unprepared for the demands of university education may be more vulnerable to mental health issues such as stress, anxiety and depression.
In an attempt to be fairer to high school applicants, the University of Waterloo used data from their engineering program to develop a list of what they call “adjustment factors” for each high school. This factor uses a student’s admission average and their first-year average to gauge the effects of grade inflation by measuring the “gap” between the two grades. Essentially, the higher the gap, the higher possibility that the student’s grades were inflated in high school. The faculty supposedly take this adjustment factor into consideration during the admissions process.
Schools at the top of the list argue that Waterloo’s student sample is too small to reflect the hard work of their teachers and students. From their perspective, it’s quite difficult to collect robust data on inflation and adequately prove such a claim.
Instead, more individuals wish to see a discussion on whether or not standardized testing can play a role in the solution. Standardizing students, however, comes with its own set of issues and instead, I think most students would appreciate more individualized assessments of their accomplishments. If universities continue to treat grades as “everything,” they’re effectively missing the bigger picture.
The Hamilton-based project Filipinas of HamONT is using interviews and surveys to find and connect the community
There are not enough spaces in Hamilton where BIPOC feel that they belong. BIPOC in the Steel City often feel disconnected from their heritage, their history and their community.
This is a problem that Anabelle Ragsag and Jessica Vinluan are hoping that folks in Hamilton with Filipino heritage will one day no longer have to face. They are helping to tackle the problem with their community-engaged project, Filipinas of HamONT.
Ragsag is an author and educator with a background in politics who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines in 2009. Vinluan is a teacher, the founder of BIPOC youth organization Redefine Twenty and a second-generation Filipina-Canadian who was born and raised in Hamilton.
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With their different backgrounds, they have made their project Filipinas of HamONT for all Filipinas in the city of Hamilton, whether they were born and raised in the city, a naturalized citizen, a long-timer, a newcomer or just passing by as is the case for many students.
They have made their project Filipinas of HamONT for all Filipinas in the city of Hamilton, whether they were born and raised in the city, a naturalized citizen, a long-timer, a newcomer or just passing by as is the case for many students.
The pair met in early 2020 at a Reaching for Power workshop, an initiative that teaches BIPOC women and non-binary individuals how to make a positive change in their communities. After the workshop series ended, Ragsag and Vinluan began in June 2020 to think about creating a project for the Filipina community. In fall 2020, they received a microgrant for the project and began sharing it with the larger community in November.
The project initially consisted of a survey designed to map where Filipinas in Hamilton are located. The survey asks for participants’ demographic information including: their highest completed education level; the province in the Philippines that any member of their family is from; if they are working, the industry in which they are employed; and the effect that COVID-19 has had on their livelihood.
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The survey results will be shared to show where Filipinas in Hamilton are. As Filipinas began immigrating to Hamilton in the 1960s to build the health sector, Ragsag and Vinluan anticipated that many of the Filipinas that participate in their survey will work in this area. However, they began to find Filipinas outside of this sector when they decided to complement their survey with interviews with Hamilton-based Filipinas.
“[E]specially being born and raised in Hamilton, I didn't really think that I could see Filipinas in different spaces and I think to be able to see that . . . like, “oh, you're not just in the health sector, there's other avenues that maybe I can take if I see myself in them” . . . [The project is] validating that it's not just in the health sector, but like other aspects as well and other spaces that Filipinos are taking up,” said Vinluan.
"[The project is] validating that it's not just in the health sector, but like other aspects as well and other spaces that Filipinos are taking up," said Vinluan.
Ragsag and Vinluan have completed eight of the 10 interviews that they aimed to do. They shared the first interview on Nov. 13, 2020 and will continue to share them until March 2021. The interview series neatly exemplifies the intention behind the project: they want to share stories of leadership, empowerment and living between two cultures.
“I grew up and it was very white-dominated spaces. I think that, as a Filipina, I felt like I didn't belong in a lot of the spaces . . . I felt like I couldn't have these kinds of conversations around dual identity and things that I feel like I had difficulties navigating. So, when Anabelle brought up the idea of starting Filipinas of HamONT through the YWCA project, I was so excited because I know there's a lot of these kinds of community collectives in Toronto . . . but I also feel like I don't belong because it's Toronto and I'm from Hamilton,” explained Vinluan.
Based on the feedback from some of their interviewees, Ragsag and Vinluan are working towards running online events that will enable them to continue the important conversations they began in the interviews. They are considering running a book club where they would read works by Filipino authors and hosting workshops on the history of the Philippines.
“I saw that a lot of second and multiple generations of those with Filipino roots have this thirst to know more about what it is like. What does it mean if I don't speak Filipino, if I don't speak Tagalog, am I still Filipino? Because of my teaching background . . . I thought that's something that I can do. That is something that I can contribute to the community,” said Ragsag.
“I saw that a lot of second and multiple generations of those with Filipino roots have this thirst to know more about what it is like. What does it mean if I don't speak Filipino, if I don't speak Tagalog, am I still Filipino?" said Ragsag.
However, in starting this project, Ragsag and Vinluan do not intend to take away from the work done by established Filipino organizations in Hamilton. They recognize the importance of churches, cultural gatherings, all-Filipino sports tournaments and student organizations such as the Filipino McMaster Student Association. They aim to work alongside these organizations to connect the Filipina community.
Despite the name, Ragsag and Vinluan are not completely closing the project to woman-identifying individuals. The project is intended to evolve with community needs.
“We see that our being here in Canada is rooted to that history of a feminized migration . . . So I think it started from there but at the same time, the project is an evolving one – it's not set in stone — and we are aware that identities are fluid, as well . . . the role of those who don't identify as male or female have been there in history but they [were] erased by colonization. That is one of the topics that we want to discuss: what is it in our history that was erased? Can we uncover them?” said Ragsag.
Ragsag and Vinluan hope that this project will enable them and other Hamilton-based Filipinas to continue learning more about their history and heritage. By having these conversations with their community and connecting with established organizations, the project will help ensure that every Filipina in Hamilton feels they belong.
A list of ways for students to adjust to online classes
The start of the 2020-2021 school year has been an adjustment for many students. This adjustment period may continue into the winter semester now that classes are confirmed to be online. As you start to prepare for midterms and major assignments, here are some tips to help you move forward in a virtual learning environment.
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Creating the ideal study space
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Attending virtual classes
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Keep up your good study habits
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Ask for help
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Cultivate community
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Take care of yourself
This year is going to be strange. We’re all learning how to manage this new situation and it’s not going to happen overnight. It will take the time it takes, so be patient and kind with yourself as you navigate your virtual university experience.
By Kayla Freeman, Contributor
Each year of university can feel like a new beginning, culminating in a gruelling session of final exams. Final exams are customarily used to test students’ comprehension of course material over the course of the semester. However, many students study for exams by cramming as much information as they can the week, or sometimes even the night before the final. This trend has birthed what is commonly dubbed ‘exam culture’. Habits such as pulling all-nighters and drinking excessive amounts of caffeine are shared on social media and amongst friends, sometimes in an attempt to justify these unhealthy behaviours. Promoting these behaviours amongst peers and friends by sharing your poor habits can cause students to believe that these practices are acceptable, or even commendable.
The realistic approach to approaching education, on social media and otherwise, is to understand the repercussions of these exam habits. Rather than shaming friends and followers across Instagram or Twitter, I opt to lead by example. Refusing to contribute or engage with this type of behaviour on the internet may dissuade friends from posting these habits online due to lack of engagement. Also, encouraging positive habits will hopefully have the same impact by influencing others to adopt improved means of coping during exam season.
After I finished my first year, I learned how to study for exams in a way that was not detrimental to my mental or physical well-being. Students are often overwhelmingly stressed during exam season, as due dates for final papers, projects and exams approach. This can lead to issues such as insomnia, anxiety and lower sleep quality. The stress felt during exam season can lead to poor sleep quality and push students to consume excessive amounts of caffeine.
It is easy to see that these habits that are built over the years of undergrad, or even high school, often translate into normalized behaviours that negatively impact both physical and mental health. I believe one of the biggest problems that students face today is that these poor habits are being shared across various social media platforms in an attempt to normalize them. Sharing your unhealthy habits can encourage others to follow these behaviours, which is harmful.
It is easy to see that these habits that are built over the years of undergrad, or even high school, often translate into normalized behaviours that negatively impact both physical and mental health.
Often, I see students compete on social media about who stays up the latest, who drinks the most caffeine or who buys the most snacks. When these mindsets are shared online, they become accessible and may incite a trend, leading others to partake or post similar photos or videos. Along with this, it has become increasingly common to see students indulging in unhealthy foods, easily accessible via UberEats or other delivery methods.
This can be dangerous, especially during exam season when these poor habits often are used as distractions from studying and can lead to a mentally and physically vulnerable state.
Overall, exam season is a time when students are most at risk in terms of their health. Rather than normalizing poor behaviours by posting about your unhealthy habits online, it is more beneficial for these behaviours surrounding studying to be called out and given direction. If we all begin to conform and assimilate to “exam culture,” it will simply lead to more harm for students.
During the upcoming semester, it is essential to address and confront negative habits that cause more harm than good. It is also imperative to understand personal limits, rather than conform to the habits of the crowd. Through knowing and understanding individual capacities, poor habits can be substituted for more healthy ones. Investing time in discovering new and improved coping strategies for stress management may encourage students to prioritize their health alongside studies and education.
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By Katie Brent, Contributor
It is undeniable that planning is essential for any university student to succeed. With a multitude of courses and a bundle of assignments per course, careful scheduling is one of the most valuable tools to stay ahead. What happens, though, when you can’t plan ahead and when assessments come out of the blue?
In some courses, students are faced with this issue. Dreaded “pop” assessments are extraordinarily stressful to students, and they do not keep the diverse needs of students in mind.
In essence, assessments like pop quizzes are employed in order to keep students on track with their learning. The idea is that if the thought of an assessment is always lurking in the shadows, a student will keep on top of their work and not leave everything until the end.
I am sure many students, myself included, can attest that leaving work until the very last minute isn’t the greatest idea — so, on the surface, the idea of pop quizzes seems like a decent idea. However, trying to keep students on track for the sake of their learning actually takes agency away from students.
Each student has a unique schedule that in addition to school may include work, clubs and other commitments. In reality, students won’t always be on top of all of their classes at all times, and trying to keep the entire class at the same pace with pop assignments isn’t realistic.
Furthermore, surprise assignments are not entirely equitable. For example, pop quizzes and tests for students that use Student Accessibility Service can cause undue stress.
At SAS, assessments must be booked in advance, and this is difficult to do with pop quizzes. As such, alternative arrangements usually need to be made with instructors. For students with any sort of anxiety, the constant threat of a pop quiz can distract from focusing on learning. Even for the most well-adjusted student, pop assessments are daunting — they require a tolerance of uncertainty that, frankly, many people do not have.
Although pop quizzes may seem to reward consistent studying on the surface, this is not always the case. You will be hard pressed to find a student who hasn’t had an off week, who hasn’t had a lot on their plate at once and who hasn’t played the catch-up game.
When a pop quiz falls during one of these periods, it’s pretty unfair to a student who may otherwise be on the ball. So, instructors — think twice about putting surprise assignments on the syllabus. Do what’s best for learning, and plan it out.
A new study led by McMaster researchers may change the medical treatment of heart attack survivors.
The COMPLETE study, led by Dr. Shamir Mehta, staff cardiologist at Hamilton Health Sciences and professor with the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University, investigates reducing survivor’s risk of future heart attacks.
Heart attacks occur when arteries supplying the heart with blood are blocked. Doctors typically open up the artery responsible for the heart attack and treatment proceeds with medications such as blood thinners, beta blockers and low-dose aspirin. The COMPLETE study, however, aims to investigate whether opening up more potentially problematic arteries is preferable to medication-focused treatment options.
“Given its large size, international scope and focus on patient-centered outcomes, the COMPLETE trial will change how doctors treat this condition and prevent many thousands of recurrent heart attacks globally every year,” said Mehta in a McMaster press release regarding the study.
Arteries are “opened up” through a procedure known as percutaneous coronary intervention, a non-surgical procedure in which a small structure known as a stent is put in place to widen blood vessels supplying blood to the heart. Blood vessels that require this procedure are usually narrow due to a buildup of plaque.
Beginning in 2013, the COMPLETE study has enrolled over four thousand patients with acute heart attacks from 31 countries. Upon arriving at collaborating hospitals, patients are quickly installed with a stent to widen the narrowed artery. If cardiologists discover one or more arteries that are more than 70 per cent blocked during the procedure, that patient becomes eligible for the COMPLETE study.
Patients are randomized to one of two groups: one returns 45 days later to install more stents while the other heads home with normal medication centered treatment.
The study found that 7.8 per cent of patients that had additional stents installed either had another heart attack or died. By contrast, 10.5 per cent of patients receiving conventional care experienced these outcomes.
“This study clearly showed that there is a long term benefit in preventing serious heart-related events by clearing all of the arteries. There was also no major downside to the additional procedure,” said Mehta.
The COMPLETE trial earned international attention after being published in the New England Journal of Medicine early last week, and was presented at the World Congress of Cardiology in Paris. Whether the study’s findings will convince more doctors that partially occluded arteries should also be opened up, or result in a change in medical practices remains to be seen.
The study may prove to be of special importance to Canadians. Heart disease is the second leading cause of death in Canada and cardiovascular diseases account for approximately 30 per cent of all deaths worldwide. Making changes to improve the treatment of patients with multivessel disease may help to save lives in the future.
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By: Donna Nadeem, Anastasia Gaykalova and Matthew Jones
At the McMaster Students’ Union Student Representative Assembly on Nov. 25, the SRA passed a number of policy papers, including “Tuition & Student Financing in Post-Secondary Education,” “On-Campus Infrastructure” and “Student Engagement & Retention.”
Rising tuition is one of the most pressing issues affecting post-secondary students in Canada.
Once enrolled, OSAP provides a number of grants and loans to students with financial need to lessen the costs of tuition.
While not mentioned in the policy paper, it should be noted that Ontario government’s recently announced changes are expected to reduce tuition by 10 per cent but also scrap OSAP grants for low-income students and remove the six month grace period that students were previously given to pay off their loans following graduation.
The policy paper argues that restrictions to the current OSAP deny many individuals access to its services, pushing back these students’ entry into post-secondary education.
It also notes that tuition increases by a substantial rate each year, continually surpassing the rate of inflation.
According to the paper, currently, 53 to 70 per cent of student financial aid through OSAP includes loans.
Although offering loans to pay back tuition later may appear to help with accessibility and enrollment, the more tuition rates increase, the greater the amount students will have to pay back.
During student interviews included in the policy paper, students said that they have noticed tuition rising, but not at a specific rate, and acknowledged that they were unsure of the details surrounding tuition rate.
However, students also said they felt strained financially and found it harder to pay off their debt each year.
The policy paper also points out that McMaster has one of the lowest budgets for entrance scholarships in Ontario.
McMaster’s automatic entrance awards are lower than those offered at Queen’s University, University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto and the University of Guelph, for instance.
The MSU recommends that McMaster consider a monthly tuition payment plan.
Recommendations for the government include re-evaluating interest rates on student loans and making OSAP cover a larger percentage of tuition for low-income students in some programs.
Major themes in the Infrastructure policy paper include campus accessibility, transparency, deferred maintenance and student study spaces.
The SRA’s first recommendation is for facility services to oversee a new campus accessibility review with a new action plan, examining infrastructure concerns in more detail.
Regarding accessibility, the SRA believes elevator issues and the installment and repair of automated doors should be seen as priority areas for maintenance.
The policy paper also affirms that “bad weather should not be a deterrent for students to access their education.”
Another concern addressed is the lack of air-conditioning in some residences. Currently, only five out of twelve residences have AC.
During warm weather, the heat poses a risk for students’ health, as many reported experiencing heat stroke symptoms during Welcome Week this past year.
The paper recommends that all residences have AC and that Residence Life provide more fan rentals.
Another infrastructural problem is that buildings at McMaster are not as well maintained as they should be, creating a non-ideal learning environment for students.
For instance, many older buildings have broken seats and tables.
The policy paper also touches on insufficient and inefficient on-campus workspaces.
For instance, the university does not have enough group study facilities for its growing student population. Many such places are often full or completely booked.
These issues are planned to be resolved by introducing more compact book stacks to free up space.
Some on-campus spaces also lack reliable wifi.
The policy paper explains that the university is planning to create a self-reporting network tool for students to report “dead zones,” which can be fixed.
To ensure future buildings consider the needs of students, the SRA suggests that some MSU members sit on a design committee for the coming Peter George Centre residence.
This policy paper highlights key issues regarding student engagement and retention, including student dropout rates and off-campus students’ engagement within individual faculties and services.
At McMaster, 10 per cent of first-year students do not continue onto pursue their degree. The policy paper notes that marginalized students are more likely to experience barriers to completing post-secondary education.
“[The] policy aims to utilize evidence-based research to identify gaps and targeted opportunities for particular focus groups of students, including first-year students, first-generation students, racialized and marginalized students and student groups, and commuter students,” reads part of the paper.
The MSU paper emphasizes that marginalized students should have “equitable access student success and satisfaction on campus” in response to structural barriers.
The policy paper makes several recommendations, such as the incorporation of prior-learning assessments for students who want them.
The paper also raises concerns regarding off-campus students’ engagement with respect to public transit, volunteering and community engagement.
“The MSU advocates for greater transparency and efforts by the university towards student engagement on campus and within the broader Hamilton community,” reads part of the paper.
According to the paper, commuter students face a higher risk of dropping out when they feel disengaged and disconnected from campus.
Commuter students may be restricted from developing social connections or a sense of belonging on campus.
The paper recommends creating a “centralized social hub” to address the disconnects faced by commuter students and the campus.
Additionally, the document advises the off-campus resource centre to work more to encourage campus opportunities to bolster social events while also increasing the number of resources for students who commute.
All of the policy papers be found in the “SRA documents” section of the MSU website.
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By: Areej Ali
The Trudeau government has granted over $3.4 million to McMaster researchers to fund a study that aims to identify and combat systemic causes of domestic violence.
Andrea Gonzalez, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at McMaster, is currently overseeing the “Triple P” program, which stands for the positive parenting program.
Triple P is a public health parenting intervention initiative that aims to improve the “knowledge, skills and confidence of parents” while working to reduce the pervasiveness of emotional and behavioural problems in children.
The Triple P program is part of a larger project that originally began in Australia over 30 years ago.
Gonzalez will be evaluating preventative intervention of child maltreatment, leading one of the first Triple P program studies to be conducted in Canada.
“We have a number of main objectives but really we are looking at the impact of the Triple P in promoting family relationships and improving parenting practices and prevention of child maltreatment,” said Gonzalez. “The Triple P has been widely evaluated in multiple countries actually around the world, but it has never been evaluated in Canada.”
According to the Triple P program’s website, the program does not advocate how to be a parent, but rather provides tools and strategies to promote healthy families, focusing on children who are in the age bracket of three to eight years old.
The program is being implemented in Ontario and Manitoba.
It is anticipated to entail a multi-method evaluation network and will most likely also consist of a ‘quasi experimental design’ in Ontario, according to Gonzalez.
This involves choosing various communities and areas that fit the age bracket and particular population sizes.
Community agencies will be asked to participate in the program and the evaluation will be facilitated in these specific communities.
There is one study to date that focused on efficacy of early intervention of child maltreatment. The McMaster researchers will be drawing information from and referring to this particular study.
Gonzalez hopes to study the impact of Triple P in fostering healthy and sustainable family relationships and and preventing child maltreatment at its roots.
McMaster students will have the opportunity to participate in the program.
For instance, Triple P will rely on “environmental scans,” specific type of data collection, regarding existing parental programs in Ontario.
Once the project is launched, there will be opportunities to contribute to the researchers’ collection of questionnaire data.
In addition, there will be opportunities to contribute to behavioural data and to be trained in techniques that will be used in the project.
Many teams on campus that work on family violence prevention, partner violence and other aspects of violence will also be able to aid in the evaluation.
For instance, the Triple P will be partnering with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative, an organization that has a site on the McMaster campus.
“They have all the data linkage,” Gonzalez said. “We will certainly be partnering with those investigators as well as the ones in Toronto.”
For more information about the project, students can contact Gonzalez directly at gonzal@mcmaster.ca. Students can also visit the Triple P website to learn more about the program.
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