PhD Community Initiative

The School of Graduate Studies is looking for mentors to guide teams of PhD students who will be working with a community partner as part of the SGS PhD Community Initiative. Organizations in the Kingston community present a challenge or issue that they are facing and an interdisciplinary team of 3-5 PhD students, under the guidance of a mentor, apply their creativity, talent and scholarly know-how to developing and presenting possible solutions, strategies or approaches to address the problem. The students gain a valuable team experience where they can translate their learning and skills beyond the academic environment and the organization benefits from the deliverables supplied by the team of students working with them.

The role of mentor is to provide guidance and advice to the team as they learn to work together and manage a project with a partner – essentially, to help your team unlock their full potential.

Mentors typically commit to an average of about an hour a week throughout the project period (October through to mid-March). Mentors and teams will develop their own meeting schedule. Teams will present monthly progress reports, and mentors are not required (or expected) to attend all those meetings. However, mentors do need to be available to attend an initial meeting with the community partners and students and also participate with your team in a workshop on project management and team building. The capstone event, where all teams present their work to their partners and the community at large is usually held in March followed by a reception.

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Heahter Merla heather.merla@queensu.ca