"ARIA creates compelling duets…between Arts undergrads and researchers"
When Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi established the Arts Undergraduate Research Awards (ARIA) in 2010, his goal was to enhance the undergraduate experience for his Faculty’s students. Now in its third year, and having funded some 85 opportunities for undergrads to work closely with professors, it is safe to say that ARIA has achieved that goal.
For more information about ARIA
Around the World in 270 Internships
Six months ago, Geneviève Hill, was in the home stretch of her academic year and getting ready to work as a language lab supervisor for McGill’s School of Continuing Studies. Good for paying the bills, for sure, but perhaps not the most horizon-broadening work experience for a Political Science and International Development Studies undergrad.
However, Hill’s plans changed significantly when she won an Arts Internship that enabled her to spend the summer in Accra, Ghana.
A New Perspective on Development
Just eight days after his final exam, David Meredith was stepping off a plane in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As one of the five Carol and Lloyd Darlington Internship Award recipients, Meredith had been accepted to intern at Grameen Bank, a microfinance organization and community development bank that makes small loans to the "poorest of the poor" in rural Bangladesh. " My notion of what an economy is, what poverty is, what development looks like, what I think the causes of poverty are, these things have all changed for me. Now they're real. And it's sort of scary."
Read the full story: Perspective 2011: Technology and Innovation in the Arts [.pdf]
Far and away
At McGill, the world is within every student's reach. On any given day, there are international club events to take part in, visiting professor lectures to attend and, if you're really lucky, a samosa sale in full swing in the halls of Leacock. But beyond the hubbub of the university's diverse campus, students have the unique opportunity to face a whole other landscape: reality. How? Taking their studies to the real world, whether it be downtown Montreal or rural Kenya.
Lina Kalfayan: No choice but to have an impact
She may have won a Canada Corps internship, received the Forces AVENIR award and made the upcoming list of L'Actualité magazine's top-30 most socially engaged individuals, but Lina Kalfayan doesn't care whether you know it or not. In fact, if her staunch modesty had its way, you'd know very little about the doctoral student in immunology save the one project she just can't keep quiet about: her mission to get as many McGill students as possible experiencing humanitarian aid efforts abroad.
Where there's peace, there's hope
If it is to succeed, the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa must also be a war on war. This is one of the lessons that 27-year-old African native Frédéric Samvura, a U4 Economics and International Development student and HIV/AIDS educator, learned first-hand while living for three years in a Kenyan refugee camp before he came to McGill.
Changing lives, one internship at a time
Most of the awards are funded by private donors like Kenneth MacKinnon (B.A. '80) and Laura Santini MacKinnon (Honours B.A. '82). In it's first year, the MacKinnon Initiative Award provided $2,500 worth of financial support to Sarah Fortin-Langelier, U3, BCom, Desautels Faculty of Management and Elizabeth Sully, U2, International Development Studies and Political Science during their irespective internships in Argentina and Kenya.