Hi there! My name is Stephanie Ye-Mowe, and I'm the Vice President Education of the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA). This is my 2nd year on OUSA's Steering Committee and so— Welcome! To Intro Blog 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I'll be the first to admit that my post-secondary career has been anything but straight-forward. Still —I'd like to think that in all the ways it has seemed to go sideways, upside down, and inside out, I've come out of it with insights and experiences that I never would have otherwise had my path been uncomplicated.
I've been involved in student advocacy for some time now, sitting on WUSA's Student Council for two-and-a-half years (yay by-elections), attending five (now seven???) OUSA General Assemblies and doing a bunch of work at the faculty level (including overseeing a $1M endowment fund) before eventually taking on my current role. I said this last year, and I'll say it again, but I don't think anything ever really prepares you for these types of positions. Even one year in, I'm still figuring things out. And so as thankful as I am for the work OUSA does as a provincial advocacy body, I'm even more grateful for the community and mentorship it offers student leaders.
I'm very passionate about issues around accessibility and disability inclusion; I think it's a largely under-examined and forgotten area of advocacy that warrants closer inspection and, as a student with a disability, I think it's important to use my position to advance that awareness. Beyond that, I'm also very interested in complex systems, and understanding when programs/policies don't work as intended. If you ever want to have an in-depth conversation about Strategic Mandate Agreements (SMAs), I'm your gal.
Outside of my job, I enjoy reading analytic essays on pop culture, video editing, and creative writing. At the University of Waterloo, I study Knowledge Integration (which can be roughly described as an arts-and-science program with a UW twist). Through the program, I’ve gotten to do a lot of cool stuff, including designing, and building a physical museum exhibit for my third-year capstone project. Key research interests of mine include:
- The role space and place play in shaping economic systems
- How individuals experience work, and its impact on their sense of self
- Examining cities as socio-ecological systems
- The societal and personal implications of technological innovation
- The DIY movement