Graduate student research

Child and Youth Studies master’s student heads to provincial thesis presentation competition

April 11, 2013

Three minutes is not a lot of time.

Just ask Sierra Holtzheuser, who had to condense months’ worth of master’s research about the importance of early literacy for economically vulnerable children into 180 seconds during Wednesday’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) research communication contest at the Mapping the New Knowledges graduate research conference.

Not only that, she had to explain it as simply as possible within the time limit so that anyone outside the world of academia could understand.

Clearly, though, Holtzeuser, a master’s student in Child and Youth Studies, has a knack for breaking things down simply - and quickly - because it landed her first place in the competition.

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Graduate student’s fall prevention research benefits local health organizations

April 9, 2013

The number of fall-related injuries reported in Ontario are astonishing.

A report released in 2012 by the Ontario Injury Research Centre, based on data from 2007 to 2009, put the number of visits to Ontario hospitals due to falls at just more than 750,000. According to the data, those visits accounted for about 72,000 hospital admissions.

These are the kind of statistics that echo through research that Phuc Dang is completing for her master’s degree in Applied Health Sciences. Dang’s study focuses on understanding referral linkages that exist among fall prevention agencies in Niagara.

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Volunteer work leads to master’s thesis for Brock student

Mar 27, 2013

After finishing her undergraduate degree in psychology and child and youth studies at Brock University, Ashley Hobden spent a good part of a year volunteering in impoverished communities in Brazil.

She worked with families and children living in the mountainside shanty towns known as favelas in Rio de Janeiro. The lifestyle and culture of the favela was quite different than what Hobden experienced growing up in Burlington, Ont. The concept of childhood began to interest Hobden as she continued with her volunteer work, particularly what childhood means and how it’s defined.

“I started to question the ideologies and assumptions about what it means to be a child,” she says. “When we think about children, there’s a tendency to subject our experiences, attitudes and views universally - a one-size-fits-all idea of the childhood experience.”

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Aboriginal students recognized for leadership, achievements

Mar 21, 2013

Until three years ago, Jolene Hill knew nothing about the history of residential schools in Canada.

Life on a reserve was foreign to the master’s student who grew up in Arkansas as the adopted aboriginal daughter of white parents. In fact, just about any issue facing Canada’s First Nations was unknown to her.

Then Hill, whose birth family is from the Osoyoos Indian Band in B.C., came to Brock in 2010 to pursue her master’s degree in psychology. That’s when Hill got an education in being aboriginal in Canada.

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