Since the inception of the Schull Yang International Experience Awards in 2013/2014 more than 120 McGill students have benefited from the program. Here are just a few of their incredible stories:
Thanks to a Schull Yang International Experience Award, Chemical Engineering student Emma Hemus spent two months during the summer completing a research project at École Polytechnique de Lausanne.
A Schull Yang International Experience Award allowed McGill Law student Maria Rodriguez to participate in a Human Rights Internship at Equality Effect in Kenya.
“While at law school, I learned about substantive law and procedure, but in Kenya I learned that being a lawyer is not only about what you know, it is also about the relationships you are able to build with the people around you.
Indeed, it is through my fieldwork that I had the opportunity to interact with police officers, magistrates, prosecutors, and other relevant stakeholders. These relationships allowed me to engage in meaningful discussions about the law in Kenya, the value and place that children should have in society, and the different challenges that these stakeholders are facing when trying to seek justice for these girls.”
Faculty of Arts student Sara Gold is working toward an honour’s undergraduate degree in International Development Studies and Women’s Studies. She spent a summer in Buenos Aires interning in the Public Affairs section at the Embassy of Canada to Argentina and Paraguay.
Nicky Tam, currently enrolled in McGill’s physiology and physics joint major program, was awarded a Schull Yang International Experience Award to participate in a month-long summer program at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.
“Together with 22 other students from all around the world, I explored various topics surrounding academic research, with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches to ethics, methods, ownership of knowledge, dissemination, and the application of good research.
This whole experience has been invaluable, as I hope to enter into graduate research in an interdisciplinary field. What I have learned has really helped ground my appreciation of conducting research for the good of society, and the value of academic knowledge.”
McGill Engineering student Michael Chadwick received a Schull Yang International Experience Award to take part in a four-month internship at a nuclear research laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland.
With the support of a Schull Yang International Experience Award, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences student Pierre Tulk participated in two research projects in Panama.
Glenn Li, a McGill Biochemistry student whose main research interest is discovering biological mechanisms, received a Schull Yang International Experience Award to participate in a four-month research internship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California.
“My time at the Guttman lab served as an invaluable learning experience. My main goals for this summer were to learn how to research independently, and how to better communicate my results and thinking to lab mates. Through my work on the Malat1 project, I learned to plan my own experiments, and to troubleshoot my own issues through reading literature and discussing problems with other lab members. Initially it was difficult to convey my thinking, and to explain the data I had generated during lab meetings, but my communication skills improved with the constant practice.
Aside from these learning experiences, this summer was also undoubtedly an academic success: my results have contributed to an upcoming paper that the lab will publish. The research environment at Caltech was perfect: Dr. Guttman was a great mentor and my lab mates were great to work with. The lab was well funded, so new instruments and reagents were readily available.”
