Working Towards Inclusivity in Chemistry Toronto

On January 27th, 2024, WICTO hosted our second annual WICTO Symposium: Connecting Through Chemistry in the Earth Sciences Building at the University of Toronto campus. More than 150 undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdocs from chemistry and STEM departments from across Toronto participated in this event! The symposium was designed to provide accessible professional development opportunities to students through a day of workshops, learning about equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), sharing research, and networking. To foster a broader sense of community, the symposium brought together students from the University of Toronto (UofT), York University (YorkU) and Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).

The day began with a plenary lecture by Dr. Imogen Coe. Dr. Coe is a professor of Chemistry and Biology at TMU and an award-winning scholar-activist in Canada with regard to the integration of principles of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) into research cultures in science. In her talk, Dr. Coe discussed how EDI-infused science not only elevates the scientific enterprise, but also enhances the capabilities of scientists, which raises the standard for the science that is conducted in the scientific community. She also encouraged attendees to reflect on how they could make their own research environments more inclusive.

Following the plenary lecture, there were a series of flash talks from students from UofT, TMU, and YorkU. These five-minute research talks covered a broad range of disciplines, from environmental and analytical chemistry, to inorganic chemistry, to organic chemistry, and beyond! The flash talks were also evaluated by a panel of judges. Congratulations to our flash talk winners: Dusty Cadwallader (honourable mention) Huy Nguyen (3rd place) Casey Lenart (2nd place), and Sara Ziadat (1st place)!

The day also included several workshops. Munaam Naveed and Annie Fang from the UofT Division of Career Exploration & Education delivered a Networking Workshop. This session helped to define networking and to understand the value, importance, and critiques of networking. Attendees also had the opportunity to develop and practice delivering their own elevator pitch during the workshop! Our second workshop of the day was an EDI workshop delivered by Prof. Anthony Wensley from the Toronto Initiative for Diversity and Excellence (TIDE) and Katie Lye from Medicine by Design. This workshop introduced students to a variety of EDI related concepts, such as unconscious bias. The workshop included discussion of several case studies on EDI, which students had the opportunity to discuss in both small and large groups.

Our programming concluded with a career panel featuring chemistry alumni from UofT and York University: Matthew Gradinski (PhD), Paniz Pahlavanlu (PhD), Brandon Khan (MSc), Melanie Mastronardi (PhD), Yanxin Yang (PhD), Anastassia Pogoutse (PhD), Teles Furlani (PhD), Julia Pia (MSc), and Kim Chan (PhD). Each panelist gave a brief introduction about themselves, their educational background, and their current career. Symposium attendees had the opportunity to ask panelists questions about their careers, work/life balance, advice for students, and more.

Following the alumni panel, our panelists and attendees relocated to The Smith House for a Networking Night! This informal event allowed attendees the opportunity to practice the networking skills that they learned in our workshop earlier in the day by interacting with other attendees, as well as our career panelists.

WICTO would like to thank all of our fantastic partners and sponsors for supporting and funding this event. We are grateful to The University of Toronto Department of Chemistry, Medicine by Design, CIC Toronto, The University of Toronto ChemClub, The Student Initiative Fund, Working Towards Inclusivity in Chemistry at York University (WICYU), The University of Toronto Career Exploration & Education, and The Toronto Initiative for Diversity & Excellence (TIDE). We'd like to extend our gratitude to the CIC for awarding us the Chemical Education Fund that further supported this symposium.

We would also like to thank all of our attendees, flash talk judges, speakers, workshop presenters, and alumni who took part in this event. We are blown away by the positive feedback that we received on this event and we look forward to connecting the Toronto chemistry community through this symposium for years to come! We hope that our attendees formed new connections, gained new skills, and feel equipped to continue engaging in discussions and initiatives related to EDI in STEM.

For more information on the plenary lecture and the career panel, please visit this article written by The Varsity, the University of Toronto Student Newspaper! Additionally, read this great reflection piece by TMU participants Osemudiamen Ibazebo and Aaliya Pathan written by Sharon Aschaiek here

Blog post written by Alex Gabbey.