McGill Graduate Funding Working Group
image: Ushra Khan | figure: Bruno Tremblay
- I am passionate about fairness and equity, and when I noticed that things weren’t going well around me, I got organized, spoke up, and mobilized an action plan with others who were committed to making things right. -
In 2018, I spearheaded an effort within my cohort to survey students on their financial well-being to better inform policies around existing funding procedures. The report resulted in a clawback amendment to ensure that grant winners would be guaranteed a baseline annual award of 28K in addition to guaranteed tuition coverage.
I took my advocacy to the next level when I volunteered to join the Funding Working Group (FWG) to raise awareness and craft policy towards more equitable and informed graduate funding practices at McGill University.
FWG was formed by graduate students at McGill in the Summer of 2020 to survey Canadian graduate students about their institutional funding practices and costs of living. The survey report was completed in Spring of 2021, and the results and recommendations are currently making waves across the graduate community at McGill.
FWG is committed to surveying funding data every 2 years, and is currently in dialogue with allied graduate labor unions, administrators, and professors to apply instrumental change toward funding structures for the benefit of all graduate students.
advocacy roles
- digital content creator: visuals, posters, copywriting- organizer and facilitator of public town hall meetings
- qualitative data analytics, report writing, editing
- social media management: facebook & instagram
︎︎︎projects