Webinar for Newly Admitted Graduate Students 2024 - Mentorship, Accessibility, and Health & Wellness

Hi, everyone, and welcome. I don't want to say anything too important as I see that the numbers of participants are still ticking steadily up. Uh, but I will give you a very brief and warm welcome to today's webinar, uh, which is going to be on health and Wellness accessibility services and the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision. Uh, before we get started, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto operates.

For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron when bat, the Seneca and the Mississaugas of the credit. Today, it is still home to many Indigenous people from across the continent and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live, work and learn on this land.

Umm, the numbers are starting to stabilize, so I'll just give you a quick introduction to our speakers today. Uh, we're going to be starting off with Sean Martin from Health and Wellness, then Suzanne Horn from Accessibility Services, and then Lauren Pace from the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision.

Terms of format, we're going to go through a fairly steady 3 presenters in a row, not really stopping for questions and answers. We'll be doing an extensive question and answer session at the end. Student participants are able to type questions into the chat, but those won't appear to the general chat unless they're approved by one of the four presenters today. We're going to hold off on those until the end because I want to give the presenters a chance to get through their material and I do have to give a warning, there are questions that we will not answer.

Umm, I know that students are impatient to get started and want to know about how they can select their courses and enroll, but that's all handled by your home program office, not by anyone here today, so those questions will be ruthlessly blocked. Similarly, we're not able to help international students who have questions about applying for study permits or about any other immigration issues, because nobody on this call is a licensed advisor. In Canada, only a licensed advisor can actually give advice on immigration questions.

If you have those questions, Yep, they're important. We're not trying to dismiss them, but you want to contact the Center for International Experience if you're not sure where to find them. We will be putting that link into the chat later, and that link is also available on the page where you signed up for today's webinar. We put it there very deliberately, so students going and looking for answers on those questions would be able to find it. Finally, we will be recording this session. You don't have to ask us. It will be recorded. It is being recorded right now.

But the system that we use takes a few days to finalize videos and match up all the media, so we won't be able to post this until probably the end of next week, possibly even the start of the week of July 7th. We'll be posting the videos on exactly the same page where you signed up for these webinars, so there's no need to go hunting. And Yep, we'll be dropping that link in the chat later on as well. So for now, I'm going to switch off my camera and microphone because you don't need to hear from me, but you do need to hear from Sean about health and Wellness services.

Hello, everyone, and welcome. I'm happy to be here with you today to share with you information about the different resources and programs and services that we offer at Health and Wellness.

I'm going to try to cover as much as that information as I can today. And again at the end, I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. So my name is Sean Martin. I'm a social worker by training and I'm one of the.

Counselor therapists here at Health and Wellness. I'm actually located at the School of Graduate Studies. We have a system of on location sort of counseling services here and that's where you can find me most of the time.

So health and Wellness is the primary.

Medical clinic, I guess on campus that provides you with health services, that we take care of your physical health.

As well as your mental health. And this picture just illustrates what the 12th floor reception area in our clinic looks like. The 12th floor is where you would find all of our counseling services. We occupy the 14th floor as well. That's where you would find our medical clinic.

And I'll go through a number of the different programs that you might need to access if you come to see us. Oh, this, this photograph shows you what our front door looks like. We're located at 700 Bay St. but the entrance is actually on Girard. So it's at the corner of Bay and Girard and on the South side of Girard. Umm, it's the, it's where the building is located. It's right beside the Shoppers Drug Mart there at the corner of Bay. And, uh, Gerard, and this is how you would enter the building.

So again, we're located at 700 Bay St.

The third floor occupies the sort of admin resources and our peer support team, the 12th floor, all our counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists and the 14th floor nurses, dietitians, doctors, the medical side of things. We're open Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, but during the summertime.

We close 1/2 hour earlier. We're opened until 4:30 PM and normally during the school term of the fall term and the winter term we open late twice a week. Tuesdays and Wednesdays we stay open till 7:00 PM.

That's not the case in the summertime.

OK.

If you've never received service from Health and Wellness before, the first thing you need to do is to register as a client, and the easiest way to do that is by calling the Health and Wellness line and speaking with one of our.

Colleagues on the administration team, they can get you set up and I'll explain what the phone number is. I'll put that up in a second.

UMM appointments are offered in personal, in person and also virtual.

You can cancel appointments, uh.

Online or by phone, but not by e-mail.

And all of our services are free of charge. Now they the way they get paid, you know, are different like so most of the services that we offer are covered by your student fees and our healthcare services are are covered by.

OHIP or if you're an international student that would be U Hip. There are some unique circumstances where there might be a minor fee.

And sometimes this is about forms or particular kinds of immunizations, there might be a small fee. Otherwise, our services are free of charge. They're already covered.

So just a little bit about the different types of appointments and how to prepare for them. If you're going to have a telephone appointment with one of our staff, you've got to keep in mind that the call might be coming through as a blocked call or a private number. So if you've already made an appointment through our with our secretaries and you're anticipating that it's coming close to the time of that appointment, you've got to assume you should answer all private calls.

At that time, 'cause it could be, it could be us. If you made a video appointment with us, you'll receive a link to join that time, that session.

Umm, the day before could even be on the same day, it'll be before the scheduled time of the appointment. So make sure that you're in a private space when, uh, you're accepting that video call. Uh, it's important for us that you are not in a public space having a session with us.

We want to make sure your health care information is kept private and confidential.

And if you're going to have an in person appointment, please come to the appointment with your health card as well as your your O Hip card, your U hip card, as well as your T card. You'll need those two things for an in person appointment.

So sometimes during the school year we might ask you to wear wear a mask and those things will be.

Sort of relate to you just prior to the appointment. So here is what you need to know that the phone number you need to know 416-978-8030. It's a central number for all of our services at Health and Wellness. Call that number and use Ext 5 to get to the mental health side of things and extension 2 to get to the medical side.

So our medical team consists of nurses, doctors, dietitians and they provide a number of services.

Umm, you know, ranging from, you know.

Support with allergies, gender affirming care, immunization, completing some medical forms that are required for the school, especially on accessibility forms. If you're looking for services from that side of the, you know, student student life or if you need, you know, confirmation of a medical illness, those forms are there's no fee for those forms, but there are some forms that they do charge a fee for.

So we do TB testing.

We can talk about.

Sexual and reproductive care, Birth control, Abortion counseling.

We even have dietitians so if you're having umm, food related complicated relationship with food you could access.

You know, conversation support from a dietician at Health and Wellness. Here are a number of other services that we offer on the medical side of things.

We have been offering same day services for a while now in our counseling.

Services, but we've recently started offering same day service on the medical side of things as well.

So this is about offering timely.

Care to students when they need it and so you can get same day appointments for things like a cough, cold, any kind of physical injury, any kind of physical ailment.

We umm, it it. It looks like they offer those kinds of in person appointments during the week. Uh.

We've always offered that for our mental health services, but we're, we've just started piloting that for medical side of things. So you can access that if you need to. Again, for our mental health services, you're going to dial 416-978-8030 and then you're going to, you know, go to Ext 5.

And that gets you to any one of these services. We offer a number of different services that help at medical and the mental health side of things and we have an Open Access approach to our mental health support.

And this allows students to be the one sort of at the center of their Wellness journey. You decide which service you want to access. Maybe you want to come for our workshops and that's all you need from us right now. Or maybe you just need our resources, reading material and you're going to take a more self help approach. Maybe you want to have individual counseling and that's where you want to start start Talk to one of our counselors. Or maybe you already have a psychiatrist.

And you're from, you know, you have medications, but you know, you might run out and you just need.

You know, care while you're here, you, you want to go straight to a doctor or psychiatrist for that kind of support, you can do that as well again.

We offer a number of different people come to see us at at Health and Wellness for a number of different reasons.

In my clinical practice as a social worker here, I see mostly anxiety, depression as a lion's share of my work.

But I do a number of counseling sessions supporting students who are seeking gender affirming care, for example. They've decided that this is when they want to start looking for that kind of support. Certainly the same is true for identity students seeking to clarify their identity around LGBTQ issues. Sometimes you're at school and you experience a loss, so we're supporting students who are grieving or maybe now is when you want to address.

Some substance misuse that's been going on in your life for a while. You want to see something change in that area of your life.

So you reach out for support in that area.

We support students with a number of different issues. Again, if you like to speak to someone and you don't want to wait a long time, umm, our model allows for us to have same day appointments available to students. Umm, most of the students who call in for a quick appointment usually schedule something within a few days or within the week. Umm, it's rare that they need to see one someone right on the same day, but.

You don't have to wait long for our counseling appointments.

And if you needed more intensive care, we're going to make sure we connect you with that care either with our clinic, one of the psychologists, they can see you for a longer period of time than the on location counselors can, or we, we connect you with longer term support in the community.

When I say on location, I mean that while the building is located at 700 Bay.

Mental Health Services is set up so that we are also spread out across campus. Our counselors are located at engineering, at architecture, at Rodman, at I School. I'm located at the School of Graduate Studies on 63 Saint George Street, so we're spread out across campus to provide easier access to students. We can meet you in your community. You don't always have to go to Bay Street. Again, that choice can be up to you. You can do that if you'd like.

There's just more options for you. We also offer bipod counseling support because we know that racialized students experience, you know, can be quite unique here at UFT. And we want to make sure that we're supporting students and meeting them with the issues that are of concern to them.

So when I talk about navigation, we can provide you with support here, but all our services in the mental health side are brief.

Services, we don't offer long term counseling here at UFT. So if that's what you need, if you're needing something that's longer term, we have a team of navigators who are dedicated to supporting you with finding the right kind of fit, the right kind of counselor.

Umm, in the community.

And many graduate students have access to a healthcare funding. All of you have at least about $750 of of money set aside for counseling through your insurance here. And if you have a QP contract or ATA or RA, you may have access to even more mental health funding that you you can use to have a counselor in the community.

That offers you longer term many more sessions than you would ever get from.

Health and Wellness here. So during the fall term, we also offer peer support. Sometimes students don't want to access mental health or medical model kind of support. You, you want to talk to someone you know about what's going on in your in your academics or in your life. You can talk to a more senior student, usually a senior undergrad or a master's student. All of our peer support.

Staff have gone through around 50 hours of training before they start working with students. But they're not doctors, nurses, social workers, they're they're just other students who have a an interest in supporting and providing counseling support.

Peer support to their to their colleagues. They can help you navigate academics, any personal life issues, relationship issues, conflict, stress that you might be going through.

Feeling overwhelmed? And when necessary, they may refer you back to health and Wellness if they feel you need you know more professional support.

One of the options that we offer here are a number of workshops. Sometimes students want to access support just by getting the information and going on making use of it yourself. So beyond the clinical and peer support, you can tap into a range of different workshops that we offer throughout the year.

To support students from uh, like workshops around breathing, umm, you know, just mindfulness, sleeping well, sleep hygiene, how to improve the quality of your sleep, managing emotions, BIPOC or Wellness dialogues, a number of different workshops. I encourage you to check out our website. You can do that by tuning into this.

I guess it's called QR Code and you can sign up for our newsletter.

Umm, if you ever see the term CLNX, that used to be the way students connect to UMM.

Signing up for workshops now it's called folio. It's like a central source of information and umm, you know, helps you connect with opportunities here at the university and, and all of our workshops, the way to register for them and and attend them is by use using folio. It's really helpful way to navigate.

We also offer a number of additional mental health supports when health and Wellness is closed right so we're we're open 9:00 to 5:00 during the week or 9:00 to 4:30 during the summer. But when we're closed, you'll always have access to support. You could use Navi, which is a chat based virtual assistance that provides information about mental health resources around campus and in the community. You can use on Telus Health, which supports University of Toronto students specifically with.

Any issue that that may be coming up for you. So it's open 24 hours, seven days a week. Certainly when we're not open, you always have access to someone who you could talk to a talk through any kind of mental health concern that you're having.

You can check out our website and and check out some of the other resources we have. Good to Talk is another valuable resource for college university students. Open 24 hours, seven days a week. You can try them and.

Bounce Back is a free sort of skills building or skills based program offered by the Canadian Mental Health Association. They offer some coaching through phone sessions and online videos with lots of different tips around.

Mental health, important things for you to support your own mental health. So the Healthy Youth crew is a team of dedicated undergraduate and graduate professional students who who sort of, I guess, undergo some training and, and it's a work study program. So they, they work through health and Wellness.

To provide outreach to students right across the campus on all three campuses really, and they're offering.

Information Workshops.

Well-being.

Tabling and and and resources to support students, your Wellness, your health.

And you might see them across campus throughout the summer, definitely in the fall and during frost week, they'll be out and about supporting students.

And we also have an advisor committee, which is another way.

That our students get involved at health and Wellness, that we like to hear from students, we like to have students involved in helping us develop our programming and umm, our Wellness initiatives. And so we look for insights and opinions from students on how to improve our programs and ensure that we ensure that our policies and programs and services reflect, you know, the, the, the feedback and the interests.

Of students, we want to make sure that we're accessible, anti oppressive and promoting a sort of a culture of safety across campus. And so that kind of student feedback is really, really important to us. It's another way to get involved if you're interested in contributing to Wellness on campus.

So again, this is AQR code for getting more involved with us, signing up for our newsletter, and learning about what we offer. And I'm going to stop here.

Hand it over to my colleagues again, I'll be here for questions at the end if you have any.

I think I'm handing over to Suzanne now.

Yes, fire away, Suzanne.

So we need you to turn on your mic.

Sorry everyone, I was muted there. You would think I would know better by now.

My name is Suzanne. I am one of the accessibility advisors and we have an on location model where we are located in the different colleges and programs across campus. We also do have a central office. Let me just go to our first slide here.

OK. So Accessibility services is who I am with. And as I said, we have a central office and that is located at the corner of Spadina and College. That is where the majority of our team works. But as mentioned, we do have an on location model and I am located in the School of Graduate Studies as is Sean.

So you might wonder who can access our services and the next couple of slides have a nice overview of who is accessing our services. So in 2023-2024, we had over 6000 students that were registered with us and of those students, 36% had more than one disability for which they were seeking accommodation.

In terms of why students register.

As you can see from this slide here, there are a lot of different issues that bring students to accessibility services, with the predominant one being mental health. Uh, this one here in the orange. I'm sorry, I don't know why my slide is showing up this way. I believe accounts for ADHD. OK, but as you can see, we have students with autism, different mobility and functional issues.

Low vision.

Chronic health, which again can be a variety of things, various learning disabilities, uh, deaf, deaf were deafened and we also have acquired brain injuries. So things like.

Concussions or more significant brain injuries.

In terms of what we do here at Accessibility Services, we work with students, faculty and staff to provide access for our.

Oh thanks. I see Rory is just confirming the orange was at ADHD on the previous slide. So we work with students, faculty, and staff to provide access for students with disabilities to learn and to be able to demonstrate their knowledge, what they know. So we helped to put in place academic accommodations and plans for tests and exams in courses, assignments, and experiential learning opportunities. And those can be things like.

Practicums or placements and some of the professional programs or internships.

Some of you may have some familiarity with the process of accommodations if you had accommodations in elementary or high school or perhaps at a previous post secondary institution. And sometimes there are some variations, especially coming from high school, as to what they may look like at the university level. But we can help students and support them with a transition to U of T.

So as a general rule, students are still expected to meet the same academic or essential academic course requirements with their accommodations as their colleagues at are working without accommodations, and we must also maintain the academic integrity of the learning experience.

In terms of how to register with our services, there are three steps to the process. So the first one is to complete an online registration form and then to submit some documentation that is provided by your treating healthcare practitioner. There's a lot of information on our website that outlines what sort of documentation is required depending on what you are registering for with us. So it may be a certificate of.

Disability that's filled out by your family physician or umm, health practitioner. It could be something like a psychoeducational report. Umm, So there's a very variety of information that we are looking for. And as I mentioned, you can find that on our website. It's pretty well laid out there. And the second step, you would have an intake appointment with your accessibility advisor to talk about the nature of.

The disability that you're experiencing.

Any functional impacts on your academic experience as well as we might talk about or we will talk about the essential requirements of your program.

Based on that meeting, we will talk through the accommodations that may be appropriate for you and following that you would have access to an accommodation letter that you can share with your professors or supervisors or other people within your program that may need to have access to that, like graduate coordinator.

For example. And then finally, the third step is that we are available on an ongoing basis as needed, especially at the graduate level. Programs can change over time. So while the first year or two or three may involve more course heavy learning, the nature of your accommodations may change as you move into more of the thesis based components of your program. So where you're not working in in.

In courses and doing lots of reading and attending classes and the exams, but rather you're working with supervisors, there's a lot of independent work and you're doing other research or writing up your thesis. We can also help to support you by connecting you with other team members within the department. So for example, we have access to learning strategists, we have adaptive technologists, we also have a front desk admin team.

And different peer mentors and peer advisors that have a lot of information to share as well.

Again, this is some general information in terms of how to contact our team. You can reach us in person at 455 Spadina Ave. on the 4th floor in its Suite 400. You can see the e-mail address there, or you can reach us by phone. So these contacts are all for the central office, but if you are connecting with myself or another colleague that's working on location, they will connect you with us directly.

Now, I believe that is our last slide, so I'll be around for questions as well. And I will pass the microphone over to you, Lauren. Thank you.

Thanks, Suzanne.

Thanks, Suzanne.

Rory, do I have?

Click click, click on the button at the top with two arrows.

Control over the slides. I'm not. Oh, OK, I do. Yes. I see it now. OK. Thank you so much, everyone. Welcome to Graduate School at U of T My name is Lauren Pace. I'm the case coordinator with the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision. I'm here to present on our very exciting service. So we're a small but mighty team. It's just myself. Aziza Kayan is our director.

We're housed in the School of Graduate Studies, so our academic lead is the Vice Dean of Students, who's Professor John Peaver.

So the Center for Graduate Mentorship and Supervision were a fairly new service. We were actually founded in November of 2021 as a lot of as a result of lots of reports from the graduate community. So students, faculty chairs, graduate administrators, that there needed to be more support for the supervisor relationship. Once you start Graduate School UFT, you'll notice there's a lot of offices to support a lot of the academic components of graduate research. So there's research offices, there's ethics offices, there's a writing center.

There's no office that supports the interpersonal dynamic that exists between graduate students and their supervisors. And so that's where we come in. Aziza and I have a background in social work, and so we focus on these interpersonal relationships because they're very important. Research has shown that students completing a research degree at the graduate level, that degree, the time to completion, the quality of the research is really impacted by the quality of the relationship that a student has with their supervisor.

And so we want to make sure that you experience a relationship with your supervisor that is respectful, that's inclusive, that's supportive of the whole person. We want to make sure that there's continued learning and collaboration between you and your supervisor. And you'll hear this a lot from the School of Graduate Studies. Good supervision is a shared responsibility. And so ideally, we would like to see you, your supervisor, and your committee collaborate on great research together and achieve academic and professional goals.

So all our services start with a confidential consultation by Confidential. We're not a health service, so we're not collecting any personal health information. There's no forms to sign. Basically, it's our promise to you that if you reach out to CGMS, we will not contact your department. We will not contact your chair, your administrators in any way without your permission. We are housed centrally in the School of Graduate Studies for that reason, to allow all graduate students to access their services with a promise that it could be confidential.

And so during a consultation with us, you can expect us to unpack, debrief any situations, begin the process of identifying what's unique about your situation and what a path forward could look like.

So what do our services include? I think you'll you'll probably agree with me that all relationships in your life, whether they be romantic, whether they mean professional friendships, they all start with having good communication with the other person.

So if at a baseline you feel like you could improve your communication skills or if there is a challenge, interpersonal challenge between you and your supervisor and you're not sure how to resolve it, we find that the most effective way to approach any concern with someone is to first try to talk to them. And as a graduate student, we understand that there can be a power dynamic between you and your supervisor. And so that's where we offer a lot of interpersonal skills coaching. We don't only meet with graduate students, we also meet with faculty who reach out to us because sometimes they don't know how to talk to their students.

And so we really encourage you if you have even early on in the relationship, if you were not sure how to set expectations with your supervisor, if you're not sure what you should look for in terms of a productive supervisory relationship, we really encourage you to reach out to us for some coaching in terms of system navigation. Once you start Graduate School, you're going to realize UFT is quite, oh, can someone not see my slides?

Borrie, are you?

See the slides.

Oh, OK.

Lauren, I couldn't see. Maybe it's just me. I couldn't see her slides.

Ah, maybe.

I can see them.

OK. Looks like you're in unique outlier here.

It's just me. I'm the outlier. OK, Sorry about that.

OK. Thank you.

Oh.

No, I, I will say one of the students has said that they had to refresh the screen to see the slides. So there, there may be, there may be a bit of a glitch that's happening for some people and not for others.

OK.

Thank you.

Ah OK, well hopefully I am such a good talker that you can understand what I'm saying without seeing the slides but.

And the slides will be posted to the website afterwards.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll give you our contact information at the end as well. Like if, if anything sparks your interest in this presentation, please reach out. I'm happy to discuss further. So I think I was talking about system navigation. So UFT is can be quite decentralized. It can be quite siloed. There's lots of offices and sometimes there's multiple offices that address the same thing.

And sometimes there can't, there's not a lot of good communication between these offices. And so if you reach out to us and we can do that system navigation for you, because if there might be other relevant offices, other relevant folks on campus who might be able to address your concerns, we can make a referral to these other offices or services. We can make a connection. We try to make that a very warm handoff. We're not just going to send you a link to a website. We try to introduce you to the person who might be relevant. And sometimes we also offer to attend meetings with students or faculty just to keep everyone in the loop.

The next three, case management, mediation, facilitation, these are I would say only for escalated cases. They're quite rare, maybe only like less than 1% of the cases that come through our office become escalated. But it's something like that out of curiosity might be interested in sometimes like supervisory relationships can be quite challenging. There can be a breakdown in that relationship and sometimes it makes sense for the student and the supervisor to move forward together. And what we can do is we can offer mediation and facilitation to repair that relationship.

To talk about what happened, what can be done moving forward, and what's some next steps and goals are. In terms of case management, we work closely with the vice Dean of students. And so the vice Dean of students at SGS tends to get involved in any case that has an academic decision. And so this could look like a sanction or a recommendation for termination, say. And so sometimes those cases can be quite complicated. Lots of folks could be involved and so we can offer some case management to make sure everybody is kept in the loop, everyone is attending meetings together or.

The relevant information is being shared appropriately.

We also offer workshops. We haven't posted our workshop schedule for fall as yet, so stay tuned. Please visit our website and we offer workshops on having difficult conversations and understanding and managing conflict in the in the supervisory relationship. We offer a workshop standing at the School of Graduate Studies. But if you're part of any student groups and you'd like us to present at one of your student group meetings, we really would welcome your like a message or a call to invite us to attend your group. We're very happy.

To arrange something that would work for your student group.

So some examples of situations where we can assist. As I mentioned, we're kind of a unique service in that we meet with, we're not just student facing, we meet with everybody involved in a supervisor relationship. So not just students, faculty, graduate chairs, graduate administrators, anyone is welcome to come to us and consult about the concern or get some ideas of how to manage something. And so when graduate students reach out to us, it tends to be around concerns regarding a lack of availability from their supervisor maybe.

They've had, they need to have a difficult conversation with their supervisor, their supervisors had a difficult conversation with them and they don't know how to navigate that. And so we can support around some of the communication skills that might come into play there.

In addition, when like a faculty member reaches out to us, sometimes it's to report concerns around a student's progress and they're not sure how to address it. They attribute it to interpersonal Wellness issues, and they're not sure what they're allowed to say and how to say it to a student. And so we coach a lot of faculty on how to respectfully.

But empathically bring up concerns with their students. Similarly, graduate chairs also reach out to us to receive some support on how to address concerns that a student might bring to their attention about a supervisor.

Also want to highlight some resources that the School of Graduate Studies has for supervision. So there are two sets of these supervision guidelines, one for students and one for faculty. If you are new to graduate research, I highly recommend you read through these documents. If you're in a program where you weren't admitted with a supervisor, the Choosing a Supervisor section provides some really interesting questions for you to reflect on as well as to bring to a potential supervisors as you're considering who might be a good fit for you to work with.

These guidelines, they are general in the sense that they are applicable to all graduate students at UFT. So they might not be specific to your discipline, to your department. And so in addition to these guidelines, I highly recommend that you reach out to your graduate office, your associate chair, a graduate administrator, as well as senior colleagues in your department just to get a sense of what the culture is in your department, what the expectations are, the more folks who talk to about what you can expect.

The better it is for you. But then you get a sense of like how things work in your department and what are the norms as well as.

Where where you can receive more flexibility. And so these supervision guidelines are a very good start for you to get a sense of what sort of topics should you raise with potential supervisors or if you have a supervisor, what sort of what sort of areas should you set expectations around.

Similarly, there's a guideline for faculty. I highly encourage you to read read this if you'd like to understand what's communicated to faculty about graduate supervision in particular. I always find the supervisory styles quite interesting.

I think a lot of graduate students as well as faculty, they approach graduate supervision as maybe A1 style fits all sort of sort of situation. And I often see that there is no correct style. There is no correct way to go about supervision. There's nothing that's inherently good or bad about how faculty and students sometimes interact with each other. Some faculty prefer to have frequent meetings, some don't. At the end of the day, all of this.

Play.

Comes down to what your needs and expectations are as a student, as well as with the needs and expectations of your supervisor, having an open discussion about them, clarifying what's reasonable, and really tailoring supervision to each other as a unique sort of relationship that you have. So if you'd like to get a sense of like what's communicated to faculty, like what these different supervision styles look like, please have a look at these guidelines.

Play.

And this is my last slide. So this is how to contact us. So step one, you can reach out to us by e-mail at CTMS at utoronto.ca. If you still use phone, we have our phone number there it goes just to me, our e-mail goes to just Aziza and myself. So it is confidential amongst the, the CGMS team. We will reach out to you to book a confidential consultation. We usually do that really quickly because we understand sometimes concerns can feel quite urgent. So expect a response to from us between one to three business days.

We offer consultations in person and virtually, so we're quite flexible and.

We highly encourage you to reach out to us early in your supervisor relationships. I think sometimes students view our center or service as something only to access when there are challenges that might arise or when a conflict feels quite escalated. And to that we say like no, reach out early. Like understand how to set expectations, understand where you're good at communicating and where you could improve.

Because the earlier, the more proactively you sort of address these supervisory relationships, the better it is for you. But sometimes, like if you're completing APHD, that's a long haul program, it's a marathon. And so we want you to enjoy that experience and have a productive relationship with your supervisor. So that's it for me. Happy to answer any questions, but thank you so much for your time and attention. We look forward to seeing you in September.

Thank you so much, Lauren. And in fact, to all three speakers, I would just like to pick up on something that Lauren said, 'cause I think it applies to all three services. And that is if something could be a problem, John, as early as possible. Uh, they tend to start small and then grow sometimes very quickly. So the sooner you get on a problem, the better off you are. Umm, we've got a whole bunch of questions that have started off in the chat and I apologize.

If you're putting in something about seeing slides, I'm going to reject it ruthlessly. But Alicia has a very good question. She's already already registered with UTM Health and Counseling. Does she need to register again with Saint George Health and Wellness, or does her information get transferred? That's assuming that she's starting a program downtown.

So I don't think the programs are linked. Each clinic kind of operates as its own separate clinic. Although the policies that guide the clinic, the forms that we used, even our recording system, those are all the same across all three campuses. We try to maintain the same service, the same service, but they are different reception different, you know.

Umm, files. So I think it would be you'd have to, if you're going to access servers from downtown, you've got to come to 700 Bay to do that. You've got to call the central number for downtown to do that.

You know it's not going to be LinkedIn that way.

And I want to answer a question that was approved earlier. Kim asks a question that's kind of neat. We're, we're at a very interesting inflection point in where and how services are delivered, uh, on Saint George campus. Uh, usually health and Wellness is in the Koffler Center at the corner of Saint George in college. So if you're a returning student and you're surprised to hear that it's at 700 Bay St. uh, that's a temporary move while we renovate the Copler Center to provide better services for students.

So it's a bit more of a hike than usual to health and Wellness, unless you're a dentistry student, in which case good on you. But for everyone else it's a bit further to get. So again, make sure you know where you're heading for your appointment so you can plan the travel time.

We have a question from we've got two separate questions from this House. I'm going to, we're going to handle them separately, if that's all right. And the first is whether health and Wellness is specific for graduate students or for all U of T students.

I'm going to answer that part of that, and that is that the center itself is for all U of T St. George campus students, but the services are slightly separated. Sean, do you want to talk a little bit about the embedded counseling model?

Yes. So the embedded counseling model has to do with the clinic recognizing.

We need to provide easy access to students, be more accessible and so we.

Literally have our counselors from health and Wellness located at the different sites across the campus where students are located so that they can easily access the service, for example.

We have a health and Wellness counselor at Victoria College. We have someone located within the law building for law students. We have someone located at architecture, umm, engineering, dentistry, uh, we, we are spread out across many, many sites across the campus to allow for that easier access. Umm, and it just so happens, umm, Suzanne is located at, uh, you know, umm.

Yup.

3063 Saint George with me at at the School of Graduate Studies. So accessibility Services adopted this model as well. And, and it's a model that many student life services are now adopting. And and so that we're in these little communities of student life support across the campus for different students at different locations. So graduate students have specific support at the School of Graduate Studies if you need that.

And from another perspective that graduate students sometimes have, this means if you're sitting in the hallway waiting for your appointment with Sean, you're not going to be awkwardly sitting next to the undergraduate whose TAUR, umm, simply not a thing. Uh, But the second part of Najat's question, I suspect, is a bit more complex. They're asking, is it possible to access services this summer, or do you have to wait until September?

Are we talking about services if we're talking about services for health and Wellness?

OK.

Each individual, I think each of you is going to have a different response. So let's let's start with Sean.

At Health and Wellness, we're open for business. It's good to go. In fact, another thing that's changed, Kim, from when you were here last, we now have a same day appointments that never used to be the case. So it's quicker access, easier access. We're not assuming everyone needs a, you know, intensive mental health support. So we don't do a social history for every single client coming through. We just want to meet you where you're at, talk about whatever's on your mind right now, and then we decide whether or not you need ongoing care or just maybe that was all you needed, that one conversation.

Don't forget the number 416-978-8030 is the central number to call. Dial 5 for mental health, Dial 2 for medical health. You can have access today, right now, this week, next week if that's what you need, or you can schedule it for later in July.

Very accessible and open for business right now.

Sounds good, Suzanne.

'Cause I think you have some deadlines coming up.

We do have some deadlines coming up and off hand it's in July and I want to say July 17th, but I better just confirm that and we can put it in the chat. So we want students to register with accessibility services in advance of their classes or programs starting and this will give us the opportunity to make sure that you have all of the appropriate documentation that we require as well have an opportunity to connect with your accessibility advisor.

And get those services and accommodations set and in place before starting UMM. We can also connect you with different team members, as I mentioned earlier, whether that be a learning strategist or an adaptive technologist, if you need to have some support from them before starting as well as September obviously is a very busy time for our office and so if we can see you, the sooner the better, that would be great.

And I will confirm the deadline and pop it into the chat. Thank you.

12 Thank you.

I've just checked, I've I've just checked and put it in there. So, so as a warning, it was slightly earlier than what Suzanne said. July 12th. Yeah. So didn't want any mix up on that. Everyone, the date to remember is July 12th, Lauren.

Ah, I'm worried you're gonna have to help me. We we meet with students when they're officially registered? I'm not sure. Like, I think that date depends on payment of something.

Oh, OK.

Mm-hmm.

So you're that's a tricky question. Students are considered registered once they've paid or deferred their fees, but they're registered for a particular start session. So they register for the fall as early as July 15th, but then they're registered starting September 1st.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, Like it, it, there isn't really no, umm, I guess just because of the nature of our services, umm, most students don't reach out until they have a supervisor or until they're like looking for a supervisor and so.

We don't actually tend to meet with a lot of students who aren't registered in general or who are newly admitted. That being said, like if if if it's August and you want to just get a head start on some discussing some concerns or like how to set expectations, happy to meet. We're not super formal in the sense of who who can and can't access our services. As long as you are a registered student is is usually how we go about it.

Suzanne, go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to mention we have the the deadline of July 12th, but I, I do want to just share that students can register throughout the year. Sometimes students know in advance that they're going to need accommodations. Sometimes this becomes more apparent as they get into school or they're thinking they may not need accommodations and and come to realize that those actually are required. So the reason for the deadline is to ensure.

At accommodations are in place and particularly if there are issues around exams and exam accommodations. So throughout the year we do have different deadlines for registration and that's to ensure that you have access to the accommodations in a timely manner because without those deadlines, we cannot guarantee that they will be implemented in time for you.

As Suzanne was saying, late summer and early fall are a very busy time for accessibility services get gearing up for the new year. So that July 12th deadline is to make sure that from the start of classes you're ready to go. If you break your wrist in October, they're not going to say sorry, you're past the July deadline. You'll still need an accommodation for for your broken wrist. So please also bear in mind that as was implicit in some of the examples that Suzanne was giving.

Disabilities can be temporary or required. Umm, so you may enter the year, meaning no accommodations and part way through suddenly the wheels fall off and something needs to be arranged. They're, they're not going to say, but it's not to lie. Umm, this is actually for this Camilla's question I had chosen 'cause it followed up very nicely on Lauren's last answer, but I'm going to make it a bit more general. So Camilla is in an engineering department which has a research based Master of Applied Science and a primarily course based.

Master of Engineering, but you can also do a major project in the image. Is CGMS open to students in all programs, or is it just open to students with a particular supervisory relationship?

Yeah, it's a good question. Like we, we try not to turn anyone away. Like that's where the system navigation comes in. If there is if, if we're not that we try to be quite mindful of our scope. Like if we're not the right office, we would meet with you and maybe discuss briefly and direct you to the correct people. Like if you are completing a a course based project, I imagine that involves some level of teamwork, maybe some level of supervision from somebody and then that kind of qualifies as a supervisor relationship to us even if it's not a formal faculty student relationship.

Play.

Sometimes graduate students reach out to us with concerns about other graduate students and they don't know how to navigate it. And we can do some coaching. And so there are we can offer relevant services depending on the concerns. And if we're not the right folks, we do know how to connect students to the right folks. And sometimes that might be going to your department. But yeah, I hope that answers the question.

Yeah.

It does for me. So Owen has two related questions and I'm there for Sean. So I'm going to put them all at once. And the first question is whether or not counseling appointments ever take place over the weekend. And the follow up to that is which of those online chat chat services are available on the weekend?

I.

A health and Wellness Center is only open Monday to Friday and right now 9:00 to 4:30. In the summer time we're open 9:00 to 4:30 and we'll be open till five in the fall and winter term. Sometimes we may have evening hours Tuesdays, Wednesdays in the winter term or fall term till seven. We are not open on the weekends. However, you can access like you said those.

Other services like Telus Health would be a good go to service.

To access for students, umm, they provide, they're available to you on the weekend.

And umm, they're ready to talk to students about whatever dilemma you might be facing. Good to Talk is also another resource that's available to you on the weekends. Umm, and these two supports are really catering to students that post secondary experience, so go ahead and give them a try.

Umm, you can also show up at any emergency room at any hospital in Toronto, and you'll be able to speak to a counselor if that's what you're needing. There's always someone that's available to talk to you.

I've got two related questions about health insurance and I'm going to hog the spotlight and talk about them because it's very important to remember the three different kinds of insurance that students at U of T have. If they're graduate students, the 1st and basic insurance that you have is if you're a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, you have your provincial health insurance. Now the classic example being in Toronto is OHIP for Ontario.

But you also have coverage from your home province. If you are, for instance, from Quebec, you have your Cal Soleil. If you're from BC, you'll have that insurance and that covers very, very basic medical services. So Hassan and was asking as an international student, do they need to register for you HIP or is it automatic? How does it work? And the answer is that U HIP is included on your student account. It's posted automatically to your student account if you're injured on September 1st and have not yet paid you HIP because you're still waiting for some money to clear.

You're still covered by you. Hit that, get those fees paid as quickly as possible.

But also remember that some providers will not accept U-Haul directly. They'll ask you to pay out of pocket and get reimbursed. So if it's not an emergency, always check and see if you can get a provider that's in the preferred U HIP network.

As far as international students arriving very early, you should reach out to the office directly and see if you need to arrange additional coverage, uh, in August if you're arriving very early. The other health insurance that graduate students have are the two plans operated by the Graduate Student Union. One is the supplementary health plan, which covers prescriptions, vision care, physiotherapy and related care, and the other is the dental plan, which does what it says on the 10th.

These workout to between 300 and $400.00 per session for fall, fall session and winter session. So if you are coming in with insurance from a partner, with insurance from your parents, you really need to look into, uh, whether your existing coverage allows you to opt out of those two programs. You may be able to opt out of one, but not the other. You may be able to opt out of both. It may be that your existing coverage isn't good enough and you can't opt out.

The important thing to remember about this program is that you could only opt out if you're starting in the fall before you have to do it between September 1st and September 30th. That also means for everyone in the program, that usually means you have to pay out of pocket and get reimbursed after September 30th for any services you access in that period.

And I'm going to post a link to the GSU Health and Health and Dental opt in and opt out information. I'm going to put that in the chat in just a second.

Buy me some time while I'm doing that, Felix Housing has asked a fairly open-ended question, wanting to a little bit more about what to expect from the workshops that are offered by CGMS. And what what what can he expect to learn and what skills can he expect to develop in those workshops?

Oh, great question. Thank you for asking. We, we tried to make our workshops very skill based because at the end of the day, communication is a skill you need to practice. And so it's not it's not necessarily an intellectual skill. And so sometimes workshops at UFT can be quite.

Focused on research and ideas we try to make it quite skill based so we we will really break down what it means to have a difficult conversation we try to put associate steps with how to have conversations so that.

If at a baseline, you feel like really uncomfortable having these conversations, I'd be surprised if anyone is excited about having a difficult conversation. But it's a necessary skill in Graduate School because academic debate disagreement is part of what doing graduate research involves. You are likely going to disagree with your supervisor, supervisors likely going to disagree with you. And so you'd have to know how to navigate those situations. And so when we offer a workshop, we have like steps on how to have a difficult conversation and so.

Maybe I can give a brief overview. Like step one is how to invite that conversation, how to not ambush somebody. Step 2 is how to engage in some self reflection on what you need to how you want to present yourself during the conversation, whether it's worth it to have a conversation altogether, what your responsibility is for a concern versus what the other person's responsibility is. Step three, you're like how to have that conversation exactly like what? What does it look like to start with small talk with somebody to move on to asking questions, to move on to sharing your perspective, to move on to solutions.

Ideally, we want all difficult conversations to be solution focused, not just to be a litany of complaints or accusations. We want folks to have solutions on how to address things and move forward together. And then step, I forget what step I'm on, Step 5. The last step is how to summarize that conversation and document it. Maybe if there's one tip I can leave you with, it's you're going to have to have a lot of conversations with your supervisor, make a lot of decisions, and sometimes those can get lost in conversation.

Faculty members are really busy and they might not remember what they told you or what was agreed upon. And we always encourage students to summarize like important meetings over e-mail, not to be litigious, but to just ensure clarity. And so this is a practice we do when you reach out to us, we will summarize our conversations, our consultation over e-mail to you. And we encourage you when you're having important conversations with your faculty, group members and projects, summarize them. Just have them documented and something you can refer to if things feel unclear in the future.

So that was maybe I already gave the workshop to you in this answer, but basically what I'm saying is that it's quite skill based. And so we will break it down, we will practice it, we'll go over case studies. And yeah, I hope that answered that question.

We're going to create a new award for Briefest Workshop at U of T.

I know.

Yeah.

That that was that was useful. I'm I'm coming away from this with additional skills and information.

I have a question that I'm going to have to sort of bounce on 'cause it's we won't be able to provide the answer in this session, but Zinnia is asking about finding a supervisor for which describes as the research course.

Yeah.

We can't answer the question whether or not someone in teaching stream can be a supervisor, and the answer is that's going to depend a lot on what they're supervising. So from a PhD thesis, a supervisor needs to have full graduate faculty membership, and usually there's a few exceptions, but usually a teaching stream faculty member won't have that.

But you described it as a research course, so if this is a smaller degree component than a thesis, your program will have its own rules about who can supervise and who cannot. So you'll want to chat with your with your home graduate unit.

Mm-hmm.

Murray's got a big question and I would actually like, I would like all three of you to weigh on on this 'cause I think it's it's something that you'll have. I've seen Maurice concern 'cause she has heard that many PhD students burnout and suffer real stress.

So I'm going to flip this and say what tools do you have for preventing stress? What tips and tools do you have for managing stress when it arrives? Because it's it's not graduate study without some stress.

And what else do you have for for bouncing back after a period of stress?

Lawrence, you want to start?

Ah, yes, like when when you reach out to us, like every student situation is so unique. And so if a student were to reach out to us saying that you're experiencing burnout, I'd like to understand why, like what is going on in your life? And we really try to look at you as a whole person. You're not just a student. I imagine some students are parents, some students are working multiple jobs. And so we want to really understand where this stress is coming from. And depending on like what comes out of the consultation, we can sort of tailor Taylor's situation to you, like.

I don't know if you know about this, but student graduate students are allowed to take leaves of absence.

To take some time away from studies if they're not able to make progress because they're feeling so burned out. You can reserve your hold your place in your program through a leave of absence. Take some time away to address those concerns and come back at the same time. Like if it's a supervisor relationship that is causing so much stress, we can offer support around that. So we can do coaching, we can do mediation, we can do facilitation with you and your supervisor with your permission because we don't want.

The components of the graduate degree like that are in your control to be so stressful that you're burning out. We want to see if we can come up with some solutions. I hope that answers maybe what is relevant to what comes through CGMS.

Just just to follow up on that, I'm gonna put a link to the SGS Leaves of Absence. We've got a guy called Understanding Leaves of Absence and I'm just gonna put that link in the chat while Sean and Suzanne offer their their take on this.

I can go next. As you can imagine, this is like a central issue that we deal with that health and Wellness. And so I could go on for an hour and a half on on this particular question, but just as a as a basic that you're coming in, you're, you're coming in.

Think about balance, you know, think about.

Not trying to put all of your energy just into academics, I know that's.

Intuitively, that's where. That's where you go intuitively or what you think is really, really important. But exercise is important. Eating well is important. Maintaining connections to people, especially if you're new to this place and you don't have a lot of connections right away. How can I get myself grounded here, connected here?

Even outside of my program, even outside of the work that I'm here to do, that's going to be important balance.

I know that many students think that I don't have time for that. Sean, what are you talking about? I'm so busy. I can't go to the gym. I can't talk to a friend. It's that stuff that helps you to prevent burnout, right?

Making sure that you're staying healthy, physically fit, you know, feel good chemicals to the brain, all that stuff is clinically proven to keep you healthy while you know and prevent burnout.

Making sure you are not isolated and alone, which is a straight path to depression. Isolation and loneliness. Not a good thing. Connection. Making sure you're leaving your apartment and meeting other people and maybe going to the library on purpose to study or studying with other folks. Study groups.

You know, make taking care of your your nutrition, drinking water, lots of things to maintain balance. Always think about that balance. How am I taking care of myself?

How am I keeping balance while I'm here? Really important. I'm going to stop there because I could go on forever, but that's a that's a good place to start. If you're thinking about how do I take care of myself? How do I maintain Wellness?

Excellent. Thank you.

That's a great search on and obviously we want to look at the whole person. So you are a student, but you have lots of other roles and responsibilities. So managing all of the things that that John talked about and things like sleep. I know health and Wellness does offer quite a number of different workshops on these topics, things from, you know, how to get some good sleep, how to maintain your sleep hygiene different.

Nutritional ones, I believe there's also workshops on finding a therapist if you feel like that's something that would be useful to you. Academic success, and I apologize, their new name is not top of mind for me right now, but they offer lots of workshops for students that if you're struggling academically or feel like you could use some extra strategies, that might be a place that can help help you if you're registered with us at Accessibility Services.

We do also have a number of different.

Resources and groups that can support students. We have different peer mentor and advisor groups. If you are registered and you're having functional impacts on your academics then we can work with you or you can work with your academic or sorry your accessibility advisor to put the appropriate accommodations in place whether that be for.

Handling your coursework or your exams and to go back to Lawrence Point about the leave of absence, so you can take a leave of absence from from one session or one semester up to three.

At a time and essentially that puts a pause on your studies. So you're not paying tuition, you're not losing time in this sort of clock of your.

Program, you can opt in and still pay some fees so that you do have access to some campus resources like the libraries, etcetera. But definitely there is an option to take a break if that's what you feel you need to do. And obviously health is of paramount importance, so students do use that option.

MMM.

Yeah.

There is also an option in its recent relatively recently introduced of personal time off 15 business days in in the academic year determined by the program in the case of professional stream masters and determined by the student and supervisor in research stream programs. So I'm also going to put that I'm putting a lot of links in the chat. So I'm going to actually sort of do a, I'm going to do a reverse of what I have put in the chat starting from the bottom.

Thanks for.

I've got the Understanding Personal Time Off link on the SGS website above that the Division of Student Life office that Suzanne was referring to as Academic Success has very recently renamed itself the Center for Learning Strategy and Support. So I put a link to their workshops in the chat. Another student had asked about health and Wellness workshops, so the link above that is for the health and Wellness workshops, and then the two links above that are Leaves of Absence. So that's all waiting there in the chat for you.

I'm starting to see people dropping off. We have we have a lower number of.

I have a lower number of people than we did before. We've got one question from Owen that I'm not sure we're going to be able to answer, but we'll try. He's signed up for a service at the University of Waterloo called Amadeo, which I've never heard of. Can this be carried over when using counseling at U of TI? Suspect not, because it's not one of the systems or one of the services that Sean was referencing. I would connect with your current service provider to ask about how they can transfer over information that you think is relevant.

To a new service provider.

Oh, Dylan has an excellent suggestion, umm, about working out a way to allow students to ask questions anonymously. That's not built in on this platform, but I do know that there are third party tools that we could possibly use for that. So I will absolutely look into that for the next time we run these sessions. Thanks, Dylan. That's a great suggestion.

And I really appreciate it.

I would, yeah. And I would just say that.

This may come up around accessibility and students may not want to identify themselves.

You have our information. You can either reach out to me if you have specific questions, or you can reach out to the front office and they can connect you with somebody to address any questions or concerns that maybe you were.

Not able to address today.

Can I ask each of the presenters to put an e-mail, not necessarily yours, if you think it's best for students to go through the front office but put an e-mail contact address in the chat before we go and do that as the last thing.

While they are typing, the only thing left is for me to thank all three presenters. We really do try to treat students as whole people at UFT, not just researchers over here and course learners over there. And so the services that are provided by these three offices are really quite, the offices are really quite essential for helping us provide the support that we know students need. I said inevitably there's always going to be some stress in Graduate School.

High performance is being demanded of you and we're there to help make sure that you can meet those demands.

So Lauren, Sean, Suzanne, thank you so much as always.

And I think we will sign off as soon as those are they, are they in the chat yet?

Can you see mine?

I'm not sure. Yep, I've got Shawns.

OK, awesome.

I I put mine in worry. I'm not sure if it's.

Oh.

It's not coming through, Lauren, which is interesting because your slides also have some problems. Do I just want to dictate it to me and I will type it out?

Yeah, it's CGMS iutoronto.ca.

It went through.

That was easy. Now let's see if my message will go through. It went through. So there we have it. In the chat, you have contact information for all three offices. Thank you everyone. I want to say you're making the smart choice coming up to these webinars and getting the information in advance. If you're watching this on recording, also a smart choice. So have a great rest of your day and we look forward to seeing you in September.

Nice to be with you all.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you to Rory.

Thank you. Good luck everyone.