Queen's Research Mentorship Program in partnership with the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre - Winter 2025

| 2 October 2025

A Highlights Summary from our CBG division's Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, Dr. Bruce Elliott on behalf of the whole Administration Team!

During winter term 2025, we were privileged to offer eight weekly sessions in general science and human health to 24 students including Indigenous students from grades 5-12 at the Katarokwi Learning Centre (KLC) in Kingston, ON. The wide variety of projects offered was based on our mentees’ interests, and included roller coaster physics, blood and ABO typing, exploring the human body with plastinated specimens and clay models, a microscope discovery day (viewing human tissues and plant, microscopic aquatic life, assorted bacteria, and other samples), terrarium ecosystems, model volcanos, the chemistry of slime and much more! Our final presentation session had our Indigenous Liaison, Monica Garvie (Biological Sciences), lead a brief discussion on the importance of land to Indigenous culture. Afterwards, mentees made posters of their projects with their mentors, shared their favorite activities, and engaged in reflections.

Finally, our Indigenous mentees enjoyed a field trip on June 11th to Lake Ontario Park where they visited the Indigenous Manidoo Ogitigan spirit garden. The day included a nature bingo scavenger hunt and a paleolimnology (the study of lake sediments to reconstruct past environmental conditions) simulation, using a delicious layer cake to represent different sedimentary layers in a lakebed, led by Moncia Garvie. Great fun was had by all!

Working alongside the Program Coordinator Lead (Bruce Elliott, Emerita Professor, Dept. of Pathology & Molecular Medicine (DPMM)) and Program Coordinators (Cyndi Pruss, DPMM; Qingling Duan, Dept. of Biomedical & Molecular Sciences (DBMS)), our Assistant Coordinators (Doriana Taccardi, DBMS; Yasmine Saini, DBMS; Marie Boddington, DBMS) provided administrative and coordination support. Head Mentor, Jamie Would (Biological Sciences), provided guidance and programming support for our graduate student mentors Marco Buttigieg (DPMM), Nicholas Smith (Biological Sciences), Tai Hunter (DBMS), Bruce Masotti (Neuroscience), Sapphire Newman-Fogel (Neuroscience), and Cindy Wen (DBMS). Monica Garvie provided important Indigenous culture sensitivity training and advice for our whole team and shared Indigenous teachings with our mentees in our last two sessions.

We are excited to plan next year, with Cyndi Pruss stepping in as Lead, and Bruce Elliott (founding member) transitioning to an Emeritus role. Since joining us in 2016 as a mentor, and later serving as Assistant Coordinator and Mentorship Lead, Isabelle Grenier-Pleau has completed her time with the program. We are deeply grateful for her years of dedication and wish her all the best in her next adventures. The entire Mentorship Team finds the QRMP program a very rewarding bi-directional learning experience!

We thank KLC Teachers, Bond Strand (Bridge Aazhogan), Dan Blair (Rise), Josh Vivian (Portage), Megan Tidman (Transitions), Tammy Haferman (Links) and Vice Principal Adam Andrecyk for their strong support and guidance. Our program is supported by the Queen’s Inclusive Community Fund.

If you would like to participate in the 2025-2026 Research Mentorship Program, the link to apply with a current copy of your Resume or CV is here. You can also reach out via email to research.mentorship@queensu.ca.

Queen's Research Mentorship Program in partnership with the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre - Winter 2025

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Queen's Research Mentorship Program in partnership with the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre - Winter 2025

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