MCYU in the City is a year-long community engagement initiative that invites undergraduate and graduate students from all Faculties at McMaster to apply their research interests to public issues (namely those inspired by the needs of Hamilton’s priority neighborhoods). Students are trained to create and facilitate inquiry-based workshops in multidisciplinary teams to children and youth in the Hamilton community. Importantly, the program provides McMaster students with training in community engagement, knowledge translation, inquiry-based learning along with significant teaching and outreach experience.
We would like to present results of our pilot study, and to discuss our research design as we move into our second year. We successfully executed our first ‘MCYU in the City’ event in May 2015 in the Hamilton community of McQuesten with much acclaim from families. Approximately 20 McMaster undergraduate and graduate students presented their inquiry based workshops to approximately 60 students from neighbourhoods across Hamilton.
This is a new model of outreach for conducting community engagement, as we are the first Canadian university that is apart of the European Children's University Network. MCYU in the City is the also the only institution in the network to train students to develop and deliver their workshops as an outreach initiative. Our program is working in collaboration with MIIETL, to develop our research design. As MCYU in the City moves into its second year, the program will be expanding into more Hamilton neighbourhoods, increasing McMaster student involvement, with a vision to empowering students by demonstrating the value of their education using workshop development and community engagement.
