A warm welcome to new staff joining Indigenous Initiatives this fall!
Erin Yun was recently hired to work with the Indigenous Initiatives team as the Educational Consultant, Classroom and Campus Climate. Erin joins us from her previous role within CTLT as Educational Professional Developer with the Process Design and Facilitation team, where she spent time coordinating and facilitating TLPD’s core programs and developing resources.
We have also hired two new part-time student staff members to join us working on the “IN/Relation: Educational Resources for International Students Learning Indigenous Contexts and Histories” project. Andrea Dsouza, a fourth year First Nations and Indigenous Studies major, is the Indigenous Initiatives Student Project Assistant and Liz Otero, a Masters of Library and Information Sciences student, joins the “IN/Relation” project team as the Graduate Academic Assistant.
Learn more about Erin, Andrea, and Liz on our Staff & Contacts page. We also asked them a couple of questions to introduce themselves and new roles.
Three fun facts about Erin:
- I eat most things, if not all, with hot sauce.
- Bitmoji is a great thing.
- Kimchi connoisseur.
“Bitmoji is a great thing.” Can you guess who these Indigenous Initiatives bitmojis belong to?
What are some of the things you have started working on in your new role? And what are some areas you are looking forward to exploring?
Some of the things I’ve started in my new role have been getting to know the classroom climate series. More specifically, I’ve been writing about and had the opportunity to interview our most recent classroom climate series facilitators (check out the blog post) and faculty who are talking about how the climate of a classroom impact student learning. I’ve also been working on developing new resources for classroom climate and blogging about what’s been happening within the Indigenous Initiatives team.
I’m looking forward to exploring the opportunities to engage more deeply and creatively with classroom climate. In particular, I’m interested on how classroom climate is impacted by histories, place (the land that we walk on), and institutional/systemic structures. One example I can draw from is my own experience in being a undergrad student and being a second generation Korean settler. I’ve grappled with, and still do, with my identity and my own understandings of belonging on stolen land and third spaces. I’m excited to explore how Korean settler students are talking about their experiences in the classroom, on Musqueam territory as guests and learners, as well as their own understandings of belonging and identity. I am also pretty excited to explore online spaces and the use of film, in the context of classroom climate. I think there are lots of opportunities to be creative.
What excited you about joining this team?
It’s a privilege and life’s gifts when the work that you do gives you meaning. It sounds cliche, but it’s not everyday where you find a kind of work that feeds the fuel to the fire. A lot of the work Indigenous Initiatives team does is about fostering and building relationships, and learning from communities. Although we are situated in an academic institution, I am continually honoured, humbled, and rewarded, by learning from external and non-academic communities the team has built a relationship with.
Three fun facts about Liz:
- I speak Spanish.
- When friends come visit me from the States, I make them bring cans of Hatch Green Chile as payment.
- I do a lot of knitting 🙂
What are some of the things you have started working on in your new role? And what are some areas you are looking forward to exploring?
I’m enjoying learning so much about the culture of teaching and learning at UBC and within higher education in general. I’m looking forward to focus groups and interviews with members of our community!
What excites you about joining this team/working on this project?
I love this team and am so excited to be a part of Indigenous Initiatives. Working to create a better UBC- what could be better?
Three fun facts about Andrea:
- I have been to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan.
- I have swum in bioluminescent water off of Thetis Island.
- I cook a mean butter chicken.
What are some of the things you have started working on in your new role? And what are some areas you are looking forward to exploring?
As an undergraduate student assistant, my role has been focused on engaging with student learning on campus. Since I started my job two months ago, I have engaged in a diverse number of tasks, from data entry to conducting presentations on campus and everything in between. With regards to the future, something that I personally look forward to are the focus groups and interviews that are going to be conducted next term. I enjoy facilitating discussions and the opportunity to listen and learn from diverse student groups is something that I am eager to dive into.
What excited you about joining this team/working on this project?
What excited me about joining this team was that it provided me with an opportunity to bring my academics (I am a student in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program) to the real world. Having worked in different student-staff positions at UBC over the years, I was excited to share what I am most passionate about with my own student community. This is something that excites me and gives me the strength and passion, to do the work that I do.