This program provides opportunities for retired faculty scholars to provide mentorship to current graduate students. Initiated by YURA Past President John Lennox, himself a former Dean of Graduate Studies at York, scholarly presentation skills workshops provide advanced graduate students with an opportunity to rehearse their conference presentations in conditions similar to those of scholarly meetings.
A sympathetic multi-disciplinary panel of retired faculty researchers from the Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences provide feedback on the substance of their papers and on the effective communication of that substance. The responsibility of retiree participants is to set the expectations and formats of their workshop, take part in the two-hour event, and provide feedback following the session on what worked and what did not. Both graduate student presenters and audients participate in this experiential learning event.
Workshops are scheduled by the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS) at the common convenience of all retiree participants. One workshop per academic year is generally offered, although there have been one per term in some years.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, YURA has collaborated with the Faculty of Graduate Studies to organize a Zoom workshop, given that graduate students may, as things evolve, need the skill of presenting via Zoom or other on-line means. An on-line workshop was therefore organized for the spring of 2021 with emeritus scholars Ron Pearlman (Biology), Bill Whitla (Humanities) and David Leyton-Brown (Political Science).
It is the hope of YURA that a strong pool of retired faculty scholars can be established to participate in this program. Those interested in participating, either in an on-line format or in-person, once the campus re-opens, should contact David Leyton-Brown whose e-mail is dlbrown@yorku.ca