The NGDI Provides Opportunities for Student Involvement
In recent years, the NGDI has been working on increasing opportunities for student involvement. Now, in 2013, we have multiple ways to give students the opportunity to get involved and it has been a record year for campus engagement. NGDI Students have been contributing through four main project avenues: Administrative support, the Neglected Tropical Diseases Database, Directed Readings Courses, and the NGDI Student Health Journal. Student involvement has been a huge success and is now an integral part of our organization.
The Work-Learn Program connected us with three students: past students Yilin Wang and Roxanne Leung, and current student Raquel Baldwinson. Undergraduate students Yilin and Roxanne offered general administrative help, including website updates, writing support, and special projects. Raquel Baldwinson, who studies language in health and medicine through the MA Program in English, is the lead of our Database project.
The Arts Internship Program connected us with two interns: Katherine Brown (Psychology and Visual Arts) and Catherine Ryczkiewcz (Geography and Commerce). Katherine and Catherine have contributed to the conceptualization aspects of the database, search programming, grant-writing, back-end planning, and interviews with potential-end users. The Arts Internship Program also connected us with volunteer Oren Newson (International Relations).
The School of Library and Information Science Professional Experience Program has connected us with past students Atulya Bhardwji and Carrie Grinstead. Atulya helped conceptualize the funding information component of the Database project. Carrie participated by beginning the process of devising strategies for programming searches.
Computer Science Interns have included Arianne Dee (Civil Engineering, Computer Science) and Chris Goodfellow (Computer Science diploma program). Arianne initiated the back-end programming of the database and Chris investigated and made recommendations about search-filter page interfaces.
The Directed Readings Courses through the NGDI allows past students to continue to contribute while drawing a strong link between their current program of study and the NGDI. Arianne Dee was able to continue with her contributions as a computer scientist and back-end designer. This semester of fall 2013, Catherine Ryczkiewcz will be using her major in geography to focus on strengthening the database’s offerings on environmental factors and vector control literatures. Katherine Brown will be conducting ethnographic interviews in order to determine key functionality and language features of the database.
The NGDI Student Global Health Journal will be the latest way for students to get involved with the NGDI. See journal page. Students involved include Jennifer Choi (PhD in Biochemistry), Kimberly Girling (PhD candidate in Neuroscience) and Raquel Baldwinson (MA Candidate in English, Language). This journal allows students to connect with professors to write articles on global health issues that are of interest to them. This ultimately helps students work more closely with professors and to make a tangible contribution to the NGDI research community.
Additional UBC community involvement that has been integral to our operations has been with Dr. Kathryn Hornby and Instructor Franklin Sayre of the UBC Health Sciences Libraries. We have utilized Franklin’s database researching series for the training of our students involved with the database project. Franklin has also offered us consulting on database matters. Kathryn is part of our primary database team and has been helping to supervise library students and with ongoing support and consultations.
Students involved with the NGDI have reported increased sense of community and belonging on campus, valuable work experience, improved network relations with professors and mentors, a feeling of having contributed to an important cause, and more. We look forward to continuing with our new commitment to student engagement.