Greetings from the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA)!
As WUSA’s Vice President Education, I am delighted to be serving on OUSA’s Steering Committee this year. I’m looking forward to working with a great group of passionate student leaders to make meaningful change.
I recently graduated from Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Throughout my degree, I’ve held co-op positions in the manufacturing sector working in project management and continuous improvement. My passion for advocacy stems from my desire to listen to people and do what I can to help them. I’ve spent the past five years as the academic representative for my cohort, working with instructors, the department, and my peers to improve our academic experience. I’ve also dedicated countless hours to the Waterloo Engineering Society running events for students.
With OUSA, I’ve previously worked as an author on our International Students and International Education paper. I think that we have an exciting set of papers coming up this year from Student Health and Wellness to Housing, Transit, & Community Development and our new Racial and Religious Equity paper. I can’t wait to see what I get to work on!
The University of Waterloo is a unique school with programs including our extensive co-operative education system. On an institutional level, this year I’m hoping to continue to advocate for affordability for students and teaching/course quality. I’m also interested in looking into the manageability of students’ workload during their studies.
I think that the workload students are expected to manage is a significant contributing factor to negative mental health outcomes. As a student, there were days when I couldn’t get myself out of bed for class. I would just lie there being overwhelmed by everything I needed to do. Mental health is not always transparent, even among our leaders and advocates. From an individual, institutional, and governmental level, a continued focus on reducing mental health stigma and increasing available supports is critical to our students’ wellbeing.
Although government relations and policy development are about as far as you can get from chemical engineering, I’m looking forward to new experiences and broadening my skillset in the year ahead!
Warm regards,
Megan Town