The Faculty of Engineering is collaborating with youth and teachers in high-school settings to support experiential, relationship-centered, responsive learning opportunities to create accessible pathways to higher education for diverse populations. 2021 marked the launch of our Action xDesign: Enhancing Access to Learning Opportunities through Design project (pronounced: action by design), which establishes long-term pathways for the McGill community (students, staff, faculty) to lead dynamic equity-based learning experiences with youth in local communities.
We see youth engagement as a long-term commitment, which cannot exist in isolation from students’ home and extracurricular lives. Our programs and projects are integrated with the classroom teachers’ desired learning outcomes, and we work to cultivate sustainable, ongoing partnerships within and beyond McGill that foster critical thinking and active citizenship for everyone involved.
We partner with community schools to design and support hands-on, playful learning explorations that weave interdisciplinary subject matter together. By intentionally creating structures of support to include equity-seeking student groups as volunteers, we are able to employ students in paid positions to help bring our Action xDesign program to life. We emphasize the importance of ongoing, consistent relationship building and strong communication with our partners both on and off campus by working with teachers to bring resources together, from both the local communities as well as McGill. Ultimately, we create spaces where students can see themselves as active agents of change within their community and society at large.
We would like to thank McGill's Sustainability Projects Fund (SPF) for providing support in the 2021-22 academic year, allowing McGill students to take part in this project.
