Episode 7: In this episode, Season 7 host Marcus Herrera chats with Kamilah and Varinder, two current students at the University of Calgary. Kamilah and Varinder speaks on what neurodiversity is, support available for students, advice for prospective students, and so much more!
Welcome to Season 7 of Choose UCalgary, the University of Calgary’s prospective student podcast. The Choose UCalgary Podcast is intended for any prospective student who is hoping to learn more about the University of Calgary. We will chat with key representatives from the UCalgary community to help keep you updated and informed about all things UCalgary.
Episode 7: In this episode, Season 7 host Marcus Herrera chats with Kamilah and Varinder, two current students at the University of Calgary. Kamilah and Varinder speaks on what neurodiversity is, support available for students, advice for prospective students, and so much more!
Learn more:
Student Wellness Services:
Neurodiversity support advisors, Kirstin Kot and Jess Lopez access the Neurodiversity Support Advising website. You can also call Student Wellness Services at 403-210-9355 and ask to book a Neurodiversity Support Advising appointment. You can also self-book online through the Student Wellness Services website.
Free and confidential counselling for UCalgary students can access the Student Wellness Services website. You can also call 403-210-9355 or book online for an appointment.
Student Success Centre:
Visit the Student Success Centre website. You can also send an email to success@ucalgary.ca or phone 403-220-5881.
Student Success Centre main webpage.
Academic Development Specialist and Academic Strategist
New Student Registration (NSRA)
Neurodiversity or NICE meetups: contact heather.thompson1@ucalgary.ca
Sensory-friendly space: contact success@ucalgary.ca
Student Accessibility Services:
Student Accessibility services contact information: Phone: (403) 210-6019 or Email: access@ucalgary.ca
Work-integrated learning or WIL:
Access the Work-integrated learning initiative for neurodiverse students website or email greta.heathcote@ucalgary.ca
Faculty advising
Each faculty has program advisors you can speak to about course planning, course selection, registration, program progression and more. Faculty advising webpage.
Follow us on Instagram @choose.ucalgary, YouTube and the University of Calgary Future Students Facebook page! DM us your questions or any topic you would like to see on the Choose UCalgary Podcast!
Marcus: Hi everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Choose UCalgary podcast. For our returning listeners out there, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode and for our new listeners, my name is Marcus, and I am your Season 7 host for the Choose UCalgary podcast. In this podcast, we bring in current students, staff, and faculty to chat about our programs, admissions, student experiences, and so much more. So, for today’s episode, I am super excited to be joined with Kamilah and Varinder who are both current students at the University of Calgary, where they will talk about what neurodiversity is, support systems available on campus, advice for students, and so much more. So, without further ado, thank you Kamilah and Varinder for being on the podcast today.
Kamilah: Thank you for having us here. As our host said, my name is Kamilah Maudsley. I'm a second-year chemistry undergrad student and I'm also one of the student mentors for the NICE program, where I've been providing workshops for staff and faculty about neurodiversity and making the university more inclusive for neurodiverse students. After university, I would like to become a researcher and eventually attend medical school and my pronouns are she and her.
Varinder: Hi, my name is Varinder, and my pronouns are he/him. I'm in my last year of my undergraduate psychology degree and I'm also one of the NICE mentors with the Neurodiversity Immersive Campus Experience program, where I also designed workshops for faculty and staff about the student experience at the university and also advocate for neurodiverse students and provide some practical tools.
Marcus: Perfect, thank you both for the introduction. So, hopping straight into a few questions here, I wanted to ask both of you, what is neurodiversity and why is it important to understand it?
Kamilah: Okay, so neurodiversity is the many ways that the human brain can perceive, interpret, and work with stimuli and information. Traditionally, neuro types have been identified and classified through medical diagnoses, for example, labels such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, giftedness, and others. And using the term such as neurodiverse and neurodiversity, we want to reinforce the idea that learning differences are inherently neutral, while some may have disadvantages associated with a given neurotype. There are also benefits that come from having a unique way of looking at the world around us. We also want to dismantle value systems that champion neurotypicality at the expense of other neurotypes.
Varinder: Like Kamilah said, neurodiversity has a natural variation among humans that just exists in their learning and the ways that we perceive, process and work with information and I believe it's an important concept to understand or be familiar with because it's like any other spectrum, there are variations that exists among humans. And with more research and considering the social model of neurodiversity, then we can understand it and neurodiversity is just another factor when we talk about diversity and inclusion, like any other thing. So, it's like a shift in perspective and thinking about neurodiversity.
Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. So, thank you both for providing clarity on that topic. You both touched on areas I wasn't familiar with personally, so that's awesome to hear. So, I understand that you are both NICE student mentors. Can you both explain this role and what it involves?
Kamilah: Okay, so our main purpose is to provide a student voice when it comes to initiatives meant to support neurodiverse students. This includes providing faculty and staff with options for making their courses and meetings more accessible, as well as helping students find new ways to address difficulties they may be experiencing. For example, these can include managing time, structuring assignments, and navigating social situations. I also host events during NICE days, which is a program that is being held in August to help students transition from high school to university. We use both structured environments such as presentations as work and workshops, as well as more informal chats, panels and roundtables.
Varinder: So, like Kamilah mentioned, our main role is providing neurodiversity related to workshops, to faculty and staff and also be focused on more of a social model of neurodiversity to explain like several aspects of the university experience, they might express that challenges and especially those who identify as neurodiverse students. For example, I facilitated workshops focusing on navigating academic experiences, which primarily includes administrative services at the university. I'm also a student here and these workshops are designed from students’ perspective to share our experiences and our hope is that the faculty and staff, they take away and implement some strategies and tools that they may seem appropriate for their department that will benefit to make the space more inclusive.
Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's great for incoming students to hear directly from current students as well, and having that student voice, like you mentioned, I think is really important as well. So, I wanted to ask how can understanding neurodiversity help us create a more inclusive and supportive campus.
Kamilah: Well, ideally, we would want to continue to teach and learn from our perspectives and experiences supporting neurodiverse students and to bring learning forward to further develop programming and supports. It's also helpful to have opportunities to share information about supports and community with incoming students and families to ensure that all students feel welcome in our university community and because when we support neurodiverse students, we allow for a more diverse range of perspectives and skills that's to be respected, which in turn allows for greater creativity and innovation in a university environment. It allows for students to reach their full potential and to be assessed based on their knowledge, skills, and merits, rather than their ability to overcome barriers that other students might not necessarily face.
Marcus: Yeah, That's amazing. I love how you mentioned making sure that students feel welcome and included on campus especially that being a top priority for us, which is definitely great to hear and like you mentioned learning from your experiences and taking that as an opportunity to find more ways to develop the supports we have on campus is fantastic to hear. What support systems are available at the University of Calgary to help students?
Varinder: So, there are a number of support systems available at the university. For example, Student Wellness Services and there are two neurodiversity support advisors there. So, we have Kirstin Kot and Jess Lopez. Some examples of this support their provide are finding positive ways to cope, improving personal functioning, enhancing your strength, accessing information on healthy relationships, and navigating systems both on and off campus. There are closed support groups as well that are run for approximately five weeks and meet on the same day and time. Topics will be dependent on the closed group that is being offered. For more information, you can contact, contact Kirstin Kot for more information on that.
Kamilah: We also have just a plethora of programs that are offered through the Student Success Center. Students Success Center, or SSC, provides writing support, exploratory advising, new student registration, scholar’s academy, aspire first and family support, academic turnaround program, thrive and the pass program, the students success center also as academic development specialists and academic strategists that support in the areas of understanding how you learn best, studying, test-taking, helping to identify strengths, time management, organization, transitioning, and working with other campus resources. There is also programming offered for academic success for varsity athletes, international graduate students as well. Students can book with any academic development specialists or academic strategists that they think might be able to help them. Heather Thompson, who is an academic strategists, supports neurodiversity and accessibility, that's her specialty. Heather works to create personalized learning strategies and works with students. Another program we have is new student registration assistance. This is led by upper year students. They teach you how to build a schedule and to navigate the registration system. Yet another program we have are the neurodiversity or NICE meetups, which consists of an informal experience where students can learn about different topics related to neurodiversity. In the first half, we see a presentation about a topic, and then the second half is open for students to share thoughts and questions they have about the subject. Students are encouraged to participate in discussions as much or as little as they feel comfortable with and example topics includes self-regulation, ADHD, creating sensory friendly environments, and creating sensory friendly tool kits. You can contact Heather Thompson from the Student Success Center to learn more about this program. There's also the sensory friendly space for studying. It has options for furniture, lighting and sensory tools such as coloring, spinners, and silent timers and that is located within the Students Success Center itself on floor three of TFDL.
Varinder: We also have the Student Accessibility Services, which works with students to identify reasonable and appropriate academic accommodations for the purpose of increasing access to curriculums. Student Accessibility Services can also help students with connecting to other resources and supports both on and off campus. Current and prospective undergraduate, graduate or continuing education students are welcome to drop by the office and learn more about it.
Kamilah: We also have work integrated learning, which is pronounced “WIL”. If you're thinking about or have been accepted into a program with a co-op, internship, practicum, or some field experience opportunity, the university has launched a new initiative to ensure neurodivergent students thrive in work integrated learning. Work integrated learning or WIL, is a valuable experience for university students and is essentially learning experiences that happen in a workplace that are part of your academic program. Again, like co-op or internship programs. The benefits can include a first connection to a job in your field of study, an opportunity to build skills and career readiness, as well as explore potential career paths. UCalgary is committed to providing these opportunities to students with funding support from the Sydney Family Foundation, a local organization that supports neurodivergent individuals. We are partnering with neurodiverse students at all stages of our work.
Varinder: There's also faculty advisors for each faculty here where students can meet with their advisors that helps with questions related to their program, like course planning, course selection, registration or program progression as well.
Marcus: Awesome, that is a lot of really fantastic information that you provided. I'm sure a lot of our listeners out there will find a ton of value on that as well and of course, for anyone who is listening everything we talked about and these different support systems will be linked in the episode notes as well.
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So, I understand that we have the Neurodiversity Immersive Campus Experience initiative on campus to support incoming first-year students who self-identify as neurodiverse. Can you expand on what this initiative entails?
Kamilah: So, it's a collaboration between Student Wellness Services and the Students Success Center. The Neurodiversity Immersive Campus Experience, or NICE days, is a free UCalgary initiative to help incoming first-year undergrad students who self-identify as neurodiverse. The experience provides students with a supportive environment in their transition from high school to university. It allows you to explore and learn more about the university and university life before joining the additional orientation that is offered in the first week of classes.
Marcus: Awesome. Yeah, that's great to hear and while we are on the topic, I also understand that the NICE initiative on campus provides workshops for faculty and staff. So, can you expand a little bit about these workshops?
Kamilah: Sure. Again, it was a collaboration between Students Success Center and Student Wellness Services and what we wanted to do was to give faculty and staff not only an introduction to the concepts of neurodiversity and Universal Design for Learning, which is also called UDL. But to also provide them with a relatively simple way to start implementing UDL principles in their work. In my case, my workshop was centered around how to better teach and advise students. So, what we did is we looked at ways of making aspects such as communication, course design lectures and meetings easier for greater number of students. At the end of the day, we wanted to emphasize that while one size may fit most, having two or three options for doing some things, such as accessing information about a course, will allow greater number of students to experience the university with ease. We also wanted to provide an opportunity for staff and faculty to ask questions, not just about how to implement universal design in their day to day, but also about neurodiversity and the experiences of neurodiverse students regarding education and student life. We emphasized that there are no incorrect questions and that we just want to hear what's on our attendees minds. Everyone comes into the workshops with different ideas about what neurodiversity is, what life is like for neurodiverse students as well as other neurodiverse members of our campus community. So, I think it's crucial to meet people where they are at and then work with them.
Varinder: During our time as NICE mentors, we worked on three main topics related to the experiences of neurodiverse students and through the students’ perspective with the main focus on UDL, as Kamilah mentioned. My workshop was focused on navigating university beyond just the academic aspect of it because it's also a significant portion of being a university student. Through the social model of neurodiversity, I mainly focus on different experiences of neurodiverse students in context of the standardized admin process that we're all familiar with. For example, it could be the front desk or referrals from departments, and we provided different strategies for staff and faculty to consider applying it into their practice that will not require any extensive changes, but a smaller scale change. For example, allowing students to bring their sensory tools with them or providing some times and days with them, or reduce lightings in their spaces. So just providing different options for students.
Marcus: Yeah, awesome. That's great to hear. Thank you both for sharing some of those experiences with us. So, wrapping up the last few questions, I wanted to ask both of you. How can UCalgary continued to promote and support neurodiversity on our campus.
Varinder: I think looking at how these standardized structural processes impacts student experiences. UCalgary faculty and staff have a very important place in promoting and supporting neurodiversity on campus. So going forward, we wish to have the NICE workshops being offered throughout the year and encouraging this conversation about neurodiversity and neurodiversity outside the workshops as well. So, we can first spread awareness and then also brainstorm some ideas and tools and resources to promote neurodiversity. I believe it is going to be a collaborative effort between the staff and the students, which will have a greater impact like the NICE programs where it's both the faculty and students both working together to promote it. Also, it's very important to have students’ voices present, which is what a role is as a NICE student mentor to advocate and present the firsthand experiences which will impact students eventually. So, I think having this position here being continued so students’ voices are present with a fresh perspective. Also having been NICE program and NICE days, it's a great way to support neurodiverse students and enrich their overall experience. Shifts and changes are brought about through collaborative effort. So, I think continuing that relationship between the staff and students, that would be a great way to support neurodiversity as well. Having their representation from both the faculty and staff will empower their students to own their neural differences by seeing their representation out there.
Kamilah: I agree with a lot of what Varinder said about the importance of representation. I also like his idea of standardization and I think something that would be helpful to have through the university website would be to have checklists and an online quiz type format for students to access when they're deciding which resources on campus are relevant to them or a particular goal that they have in mind. For example, if a student wants to improve their time management skills both in terms of school and life in general, there are several workshops, advisors, and individual access to resources available that can sometimes be daunting or overwhelming if you're not exactly sure what's gonna be the best fit for you. So having a quiz or flowchart that allows the student to identify the category their goal falls into, then the goal itself and then maybe give a brief description of the resources that may be relevant to them with links, it could make the process of accessing assistance much easier. It also helps remove doubt that the student is sufficiently struggling or having difficulties to actually qualify for using that resource. It is there for anyone who needs it and anyone who needs help. Another way to support neurodiverse students is to mention neurodiversity and learning differences during the first-class in each semester. If professors mentioned what specific resources are available, how to find out what is available and that you don't need to wait till you are struggling to access support, then ideally, students would be more open to checking out the support is being offered.
Marcus: Yeah, that's amazing to hear. I love hearing all the different ways our university is trying to grow and promote neurodiversity on campus and finding different ways to be innovative and to continue to support students, so that's really great to hear. So, were there any final pieces of advice for students you wanted to share with our listeners?
Kamilah: I do have a lot of advice to give, but I'll try to keep things that are going to be most crucial. First when it comes to neurodiversity and adapting to a university environment, there's not a one-size-fits-all approach. So, give yourself time to try different methods of coping with student life that could include different ways of managing time, how and what you study and how much to study, as well as modifying your sensory environment. For example, if two people need physical stimulation during lectures in order to pay attention and learn the information, one person may play with a fidget toy, while another person may find drawing or sewing to be more effective. Personally, for me, I do like to doodle or embroider during lectures because it just helps me focus and actually make sure I'm listening to what is being told to me and to actually understand it. Second, you might be hesitant to do something to help yourself, such as putting in earplugs or wearing sunglasses in overstimulating environment because you're worried about being judged in some way. Truth is, you're the only person living your life and you don't need to make it harder for yourself by denying yourself very little things that are going to make you much more comfortable. And third, don't be afraid to ask for what you need from professors, TAs and advisors. They want to help you and collaborating with them can make both your life and the instructors life easier. For example, if you're attending a lab or tutorial and you're having difficulty understanding what your TA is saying, don't hesitate to ask them to speak louder or to have them explain the concept in a different way. Or even jot notes on a whiteboard so that you can read the words and maybe that'll help you. Not only will this help you gain the relevant knowledge, but you'll also help other students who are facing similar difficulties, but we're unsure of how to ask for assistance.
Varinder: Thank you, Kamilah, for the great advice and my only advice would be for every student to explore themselves throughout their university years, like join clubs or attend, attend different events, collect different experiences that resonate with you or that appeal to you. Find your people and find your community or you can make your own community. For example, I just recently saw this quote online. I don't know who it's by, but it said “Finding your people makes you realize there was nothing wrong with you”, so I think that's a great way to show how important it is to find your people, basically. Like make some friends that you connect with. For example, I recently attended this national pride in business conference. It was by the Business Pride Club in Haskayne, but it was a great conference talking about authenticity, connecting people throughout Canada and just like bringing them together in one space, just being surrounded by all these people that you connect with. That was a great way of feeling like the community was there. So, I think with that, that comes from a personal experience, so I would tell everyone else to all also seek out experiences that they connect to and yeah, I just think university is a place where you discover yourself. I know it sounds cliche, but that's how it was for me and so just discover yourself and you find out what the person you want to be and being surrounded by people and your community can help you find that.
Marcus: Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you both for sharing that. That is really great advice for sure. I also really appreciate you sharing those tips for prospective students and I know a lot of our listeners will find a lot of value on that as well. Well perfect, thank you so much, Kamilah and Varinder for being such great guests on the podcast today. I really appreciate you taking the time to be here today.
Kamilah: No problem. Thanks again for having us.
Varinder: Thank you again.
Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. I learned so much about neurodiversity that I didn't know before and I'm sure our listeners out there did too. So, thanks again. I also wanted to send a huge thank you to all of our new and returning listeners out there who tuned in for today's episode. Everything we talked about today will be linked in the episode notes for those who want to learn more about neurodiversity and the different supports we have on campus. If you do have any questions for me, you can reach out through DM on Instagram or Facebook, and our contact information will also be down below. So, thank you so much to everyone again, and I will see you all in the next podcast episode.