Author: Mina Mazumder

About a hundred protestors stood in solidarity to bring awareness to women’s issues

Despite temperatures of 20 to 30 below zero, with a snowstorm just around the corner, about 100 protestors, a majority of women and some men, gathered at Place Émilie-Gamelin to march for women’s rights on Jan. 19.

Protesters held posters and signs that read “We are in this together,” “I am a woman, not a womb,” and “Girls just wanna have fun-damental rights.”

Before the march, speakers shared their experiences of oppression, domestic violence and marginalization. There were a few performances that made the crowd jump to their feet to combat the cold. The march only lasted 20 minutes due to the weather.

Simi Bhagwandass, a protestor, said that women’s rights should be seen as equal to any other rights. “We believe that women’s rights are fundamental human rights,” she said. “We have gone a long way in women’s rights but there are still a lot of changes that need to be done.”

Bhagwandass also said there should be more funding for women’s health in Canada. There is an “inequity and inequality of women’s health issues and they are deprioritized because they are underfunded, undertreated and underrecognized,” she said.

The march, the third of its kind in Montreal, was hosted by March on Montreal, a community organization. According to the Women’s March website, this event is held in multiple cities every year, including Washington D.C., Berlin and London.

Samantha Ilacqua, an activist at Fightback, an organization that focuses on educating workers and youth on Marxism, said her organization attended the march to fight against all forms of oppression towards everyone, including women. “Sexual assault and harassment is something that [women] face everyday,” Ilacqua said.

Sonja Matschuck, a women’s rights activist, hopes people will start to take women’s voices more seriously, especially when it comes to sexual assault cases. “Society still has a problem with accepting to believe women and survivors,” she said. “I think we have to work a lot on this discussion.”

As a domestic violence survivor, Matschuck advises women who are victims to try to safely find resources to protect themselves. “Seek help safely,” she said. “Seek people you trust.”

According to Statistics Canada, the rate of police-reported violent crime in 2017 was higher for victims who were women aged 24 and under, in comparison to their male counterparts.   

Gabriel D’Astous, another attendee, said this form of solidarity should be happening all around the world. “I think it’s so important to go out and march for solidarity with women across the world,” he said.
With the CAQ government currently in power, D’Astous believes Legault’s policies will create some resistance from women. “I think around the corner, there will be some important issues in Quebec with a right-wing government that just got elected and a lot of discussion about fairly racist policies that are both in the intersection of racism and sexism,” he said.

Photos by Alex Hutchins.

CSU talks to students on how to organize a strike against unpaid internships

“The next step is within the hands of each department,” said Camille Thompson, the Concordia Student Union’s (CSU) external affairs and mobilization coordinator. Students “are the heart of a strike. If they don’t do anything, we cannot help them.”

The five steps on how to organize a strike were explained on a flyer at the CSU’s information session for student strikes against unpaid internships on Friday.

The first step is to find and learn about the student association’s policy around calling a strike general assembly. The second step is to set a date for the general assembly, where a ballot vote is usually cast to decide on a strike. The third step is to organize the assembly and count the number of attendees to make a quorum. A quorum is the percentage of students in the department required to make binding decisions at an assembly. The fourth step is to plan and to execute the strike. The fifth and final step is to celebrate and have a post-mortem.

Many students and executives across multiple departments such as political science, School of Community and Public Affairs (SCPA), and women’s studies were present at the information session.

Thompson understood that some students may be confused or scared about the idea of a strike. She advised these students to inform themselves before making a decision. “Talk to other people like your fellow students,” she said. “Ask them what is happening and what they think. Check the information that is available.”

Lou Taj, a social work student at l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), was present to familiarize Concordia students with the steps revolving around a strike, following one that was held by numerous student associations at UQAM from Nov. 19 to Nov. 23.

With the new Quebec government, Taj said that making all internships paid is a difficult issue to tackle. “Now we are under the CAQ government—they are not as open,” Taj said. “We went to speak to them once but nothing interesting got out of it. They said the door is open but there’s no conversation happening.”

Sean Illman-White, secretary of academic affairs and advocacy at the SCPA Students’ Association, attended the session to better inform his association on whether or not a strike mandate is a step worth considering. He said a committee meeting by his association will be held next week.

The vast majority of internships at the SCPA are unpaid, said Illman-White. Nevertheless, he said they are necessary. “For a lot of us, unpaid internships are really important,” he said. “We want to make sure that we are building towards a future where this work is valued.”

“Many student associations are not mobilized at the moment, so people aren’t really talking with each other,” Illman-White said. “Now that this discussion is happening and people are thinking about it, maybe we can start building better practices around talking to each other so that we can mobilize together better.”

Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Caleb Owusu-Acheaw steps down after admitting to an unauthorized withdrawal

The Arts and Science Federation of Associations’s (ASFA) Finance Coordinator, Caleb Owusu-Acheaw, resigned on Nov. 29 after admitting to withdrawing funds for personal use. His resignation came directly after a special council meeting held to discuss the course of action going forward after Owusu-Acheaw told ASFA.

Owusu-Acheaw revealed to the executive team on Nov. 27 that he took $300 from ASFA’s petty cash, according to a statement released on Sunday by ASFA executives and council, as well as Owusu-Acheaw. The petty cash is kept in case of unforeseen expenses in day-to-day operations at ASFA. It is managed by the finance coordinator.

Although Owusu-Acheaw said he would repay ASFA by Jan. 1 2019, immediate actions were taken by the executive team to protect the federation from financial risk.

Marguerite Rolland, ASFA’s advocacy and executive coordinator, told The Concordian the executive team is “sympathetic to Caleb’s situation and appreciative that he came forward.” However, Rolland added “the executives understood that their primary responsibility was toward ASFA’s financial risk and to ensuring accountability going forward.”

Following this incident, an emergency meeting was held between the executive team, the office manager, and the council chairperson on Nov. 28. During the meeting, an informal inspection of the federation’s cash finances was conducted. It was also decided that Owusu-Acheaw would reimburse ASFA $450.

Rolland said that when the informal audit of cash finances was performed, those present at the meeting discovered that cash revenue collected from ASFA’s past events were deposited in a separate petty cash fund by Owusu-Acheaw. “The executive and office manager did not have knowledge that funds in cash were in the possession of the finance coordinator,” said Rolland.

Rolland said ASFA is planning on changing their policies to have two people authorize any withdrawal. “Council has mandated that ASFA hire an external third-party to conduct an audit on all financial policy, including any procedure related to keeping and using cash,” said Rolland. “An interim measure of two-party authorization for any use of cash has been implemented until a formal policy is approved.”

ASFA’s finance policies will be inspected by a third-party to ensure the federation’s budgetary responsibility is held to a higher level, following a council motion.

During the meeting, council had also voted to remove the now-former finance coordinator from his position after a 10-day statutory period.

The President and Councillor of Concordia’s Sociology & Anthropology Student Union, Gigi Cordeiro, was appointed as interim finance coordinator until January, when there will be a call out and an election of a new finance coordinator.

In the statement release on Sunday, Rolland said ASFA is committed to “upholding the trust that students have placed within us, and as such we are working to ensure that situations like this do not arise in the future.”

Tens of thousands of university and CEGEP students march for remuneration

Tens of thousands of university and CEGEP students braved the cold on Nov. 21 to protest against unpaid internships.

Coinciding with International Interns Day on Nov. 10, about 20,000 students from associations from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Université de Montréal and McGill University took part in the demonstration as part of their week-long strike against unpaid internships from Nov. 19 to 23.

Jessica Mitchell, a worker at Campagne unitaire sur le travail étudiant (CUTE), said that multiple student associations announced the strike by voting in October during their general assemblies.

The purpose of the strike was to demand that students’ work be recognized and remunerated. Many students from Cégep du Vieux Montréal, Collège Montmorency and Cégep de Saint-Laurent were also present at the demonstration. The event began at 3 p.m. at Place Émilie-Gamelin, next to the Berri-UQAM metro.

Throughout the march, students chanted in French, “Let’s scream louder so no one can ignore us” and “Remuneration for internships.”

“The message I would give to the government is to stop exploiting interns because they need us,” said Maryse Forget, an education student at UQAM. “All internships must be paid in all fields.”

According to Forget, the biggest challenge many education students face is that they often aren’t allowed to work part-time jobs in addition to their internship because of concerns that the students won’t be able to fully commit themselves to the internship.

“We want internships to be paid so that we do not have to deal with this financial stress,” Forget said. “Being an intern is already emotionally stressful. On top of that, having financial stress can result in a burnout.”

According to a survey conducted in 2017 by the committee for the remuneration of internships at the l’Université du Québec en Outaouais, heavy workloads that students often carry during internships can have unhealthy impacts. Twenty per cent of survey respondents said they felt overworked, were sleep deprived and experienced a difficulty in balancing work, internship, studies and personal life. In addition, 42 per cent of respondents reported experiencing anxiety, isolation and psychological distress during their internship.

According to UQAM’s education department’s student association, about 84 per cent of interns in the education field are women. Forget added that many unpaid internships are in female-dominated fields, such as teaching, social work and nursing. “It’s a feminist strike because we see that fields for women are being exploited,” she said.

 

Jacqueline Ohayon, a McGill student and social work intern at Just Solutions legal clinic, said that there is an issue of trust between employers and interns. “We are trusted to provide the services but not trusted with the wages,” Ohayon said. “We want that labor to be recognized.”

Mitchell said that this is an issue of sexism because internships in predominantly male fields, such as engineering and computer science, are often paid whereas those often geared toward women are not.

“People will often say that interns are supposed to be learning and you should not be paid to learn,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell added that unpaid internships are becoming more common in Quebec due to the competitive nature of many fields. “Some students are expected to boost up their resumes through unpaid internships,” Mitchell said.

Although many students have called for an unlimited general strike in January 2019 if the government does not implement changes, Mitchell said that this is not necessarily set in stone. “We will hold general assemblies among student associations and vote to decide whether or not we will go on strike or not,” she said.

John Hutton, the finance coordinator for the Concordia Student Union (CSU), also participated in the march, and said that the CSU is in favour of the strike. “There are a number of students at Concordia who have to deal with this as well, and we are here to support them and say that all work should be paid,”he said.

According to Hutton, this problem isn’t specific to Montreal. “There are many students across Canada who are forced to work unpaid internships in order to complete their degrees,” he said. “That’s not fair, and it’s a question of justice. All work should be paid.”

“Pay people for their work,” Hutton said. “It can’t be said enough. It is as simple as that. You work, you get paid. Doesn’t matter if you’re young or a student. If you work, you deserve to be paid.”

Photos by Mackenzie Lad.

One student’s blog aims to help sexual assault survivors

Caroline Bühler, a first-year creative writing student, was sexually assaulted by a Concordia student at a Frosh Week event last summer.

The day after the assault, Bühler went to Concordia’s Sexual Assault Resource Centre to file a complaint about the incident. “When I filed the complaint, I said I didn’t want him on campus,” she said. “I want him out of the university because I kept seeing him and it triggered me.”

Before the hearing in October, Bühler and an advocate from the Concordia Student Union’s (CSU) Advocacy Centre gathered evidence such as text messages sent to her, friends and acquaintances, which she said contained threats and lies. Two weeks after the hearing, the assaulter was expelled from student residence.

On Sept. 13, Bühler attended the CSU’s Sexual Violence Campaign Launch at the Hive Café. There, she met Camille Thompson, the CSU’s external affairs and mobilization coordinator, to whom she disclosed her story and her idea to create a blog to support sexual assault victims.

Thompson put Bühler in contact with Grace Evenson, the campaign assistant, who helped Bühler further develop her project. Evenson invited two students, Gaby Nova and Jennifer Lauren, to help with editing and content management. Bühler, Nova, Lauren and Evenson are currently the admins of the blog.

Bühler had the idea to name the blog #takingbackourvoices after a class assignment that required her to take excerpts from a text to create an original poem.

As Bühler was writing the assignment, she received a first draft of her assaulter’s statement from a mutual friend.

“I took a couple words from the statement and I wrote a poem out of it,” Bühler said. “In the poem, I re-wrote the story and made it seem like he had listened to me when I told him ‘no’ the first time and he stopped. I called the poem taking back my voice.”

I looked at her

Without any hesitation;

She told me no

And I stopped-

She kept talking for a while,

I didn’t say anything

In October, the admins posted two callouts for submissions via social media and put up posters around campus advertising the upcoming blog. Bühler said there have been a few submission including poetry, art and personal essays.

Bühler plans to have multiple sections on the blog, including pieces, articles, resources and discussions.

Bühler hopes the blog will be a place for sexual assault survivors to share their stories, be relieved of burden of the repercussions of sexual assault and communicate with their abusers. “There’s a lot of self-blame that goes with being assaulted and I hope this blog helps people get rid of this,” she told The Concordian. “People know what consent is, but they don’t know what are the grey lines and when no means no.”

The blog is expected to be launched in January. A wine and cheese event will be organized to promote it.

Graphic by @spooky_soda.

UPDATE: Following the publication of this article, Caroline Bühler’s assaulter was expelled from the university.

“The poor members of the Judicial Board were bombarded with [aggressive] messages [on social media],” said Samantha Candido, a Concordia Student Union (CSU) councillor on the union’s policy committee.

Minutes from an Oct. 12 policy committee meeting describe the harassment faced by the CSU’s Judicial Board following the union’s Annual General Election in March 2018.

During the election, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Nicholas Roberts, disqualified the political party Speak Up, after the release of an op-ed by The Link  that endorsed the slate. The CEO interpreted it as campaign material, which, according to election rules, may not be published during polling period.

The CSU’s Judicial Board, which deals with conflicts concerning the CSU’s bylaws and standing regulations, ruled that this was an unjust disqualification, and declared Speak Up the winners of the election. This decision drew criticism from students who disagreed with the ruling.

According to Candido, Judicial Board members were harassed by students on their personal Facebook accounts via private messages. One incident took place in-person directly after the hearing. Some students also demanded their numbers and tried calling them. Candido told The Concordian she does not know if all members were harassed, nor does she know the content of the messages.

Patrick Quinn, a CSU councillor on the policy committee, said that after the incidents, Mathilde Braems, Sarah Mazhero, and Safa Sheikh stepped down from their positions on the Judicial Board. The only present member is Alex Barcelona.

Braems refused a request for comment. The remaining former members did not respond to a request for comment.

During the Oct. 12 meeting, the CSU’s policy committee discussed possible solutions to prevent future incidents of harassment. Candido suggested an honorarium to help the former Judicial Board members better train their new members. She also suggested the implementation of an anti-harassment policy. Candido has not decided if it would be implemented within the Judicial Board alone or more broadly within the CSU’s bylaws.

The proposed policy would discourage all members from responding to any inappropriate messages or messages from unofficial email addresses. Candido said the committee is still deciding how these changes would be implemented.

Quinn said there is a pressing need to appoint Judicial Board members in preparation for the 2019 CSU elections. “They need to be trained better, and [the CSU] needs to be available for them if they have questions,” said Quinn.

The policy committee will move forward with the proposed solutions once they have established a regular meeting time.

 

Graphic by Ana Bilokin

WRITTEN BY IAN DOWN AND MINA MAZUMDER

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A brief history of exclusion in university government

 

Déjà Vu

As the General Coordinator of the Concordia Student Union (CSU), Sophie Hough-Martin should have been on Concordia’s Senate.

According to the CSU’s standing regulations, the general coordinator and the academic and advocacy coordinator are ex-officio representatives of the CSU on Senate, Concordia’s senior academic governing body.

But earlier this term, Hough-Martin was denied a place on both Senate and the Board of Governors. At the time, she was in conditional academic standing, which, under Concordia’s bylaws, disqualified her from participating. Hough-Martin said that a major depressive episode in fall 2017 was the reason for her conditional standing. “I was unable to complete my coursework by the prescribed deadlines for an incomplete [grade],” she said.

Earlier this month, Hough-Martin’s academic standing was re-evaluated and she was no longer in conditional standing. However, the incident led to the revival of a 2016 Senate ad hoc committee on student eligibility. Hough-Martin and Mikaela Clark-Gardner, the CSU’s academic and advocacy coordinator, successfully requested to have the committee reconvene to review academic standing requirements for student representatives.

This is not the first time this year that Concordia students have had to fight for representation. In January, the administration announced that the two undergraduate and two graduate students who would participate in the Task Force on Sexual Violence would be chosen by the administration, not by the CSU. Although the administration reversed this decision a week later following a CSU press conference criticizing the recruitment process, it did not remove academic standing requirements for task force participants.

Sophia Sahrane, the research and education coordinator for the student advocacy organization Association for the Voice of Education in Quebec (AVEQ), criticized the requirements for discriminating against survivors of sexual violence. “How do you maintain a good academic standing when you have just been sexually assaulted?” she asked at a CSU press conference in February. “When you have had your agency taken away from you? […] When your abuser is your professor?”

Three years prior to the Task Force controversy, Lucinda Marshall-Kiparissis, then the CSU’s general coordinator, and Marion Miller, then a fine arts representative on Senate, were stripped of their rights as senators after participating in the 2015 student strikes. Their roles in the protests led to a sanction under Concordia’s Office of Rights and Responsibilities, which disqualified them from voting and participating in closed sessions. However, an ad hoc committee, the same one that reconvened last month, struck down this bylaw, and Miller and Marshall-Kiparissis had their rights as senators restored.

 

Uncommon Practice

“The majority view expressed over the years is that excluding students on conditional standing is not meant to penalize them but a way of helping them avoid additional burden so that they can focus on their studies and redress their academic standing,” said University Spokesperson Mary-Jo Barr.

“This seems to be kind of a dismissive approach from the Concordia institution,” said Guillaume Lecorps, president of the Quebec Student Union (QSU), which represents eight student associations from around Quebec. He said he was not aware of such regulations at any of the universities that the QSU represents.

In fact, Concordia is one of the only universities in Quebec with academic requirements for students who want to participate in school government. Bishop’s University is the only one with similar requirements.

Of the top 27 Canadian universities listed in the 2019 Times Higher Education ranking, only two—Carleton University and the Memorial University of Newfoundland—mention academic standing requirements in their bylaws. Concordia is in the bottom six rankings in a list which also includes the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia.

 

The Legal Question

In a statement to The Concordian, Marshall-Kiparissis said that if Concordia’s administration wanted to “show respect for the new student representatives they allow, they should try actually abiding by the Accreditation Act instead of making excuses for their ‘interpretation’ of the law.”

Section 32 of Quebec’s Act respecting the accreditation and financing of students’ associations states that “An accredited students’ association or alliance may, alone, appoint students who, under an Act, regulation, by-law, charter or agreement, are called upon to sit or participate as student representatives on various councils, committees or other bodies in the institution.”

At a regular council meeting on Oct. 10, councillor Rory Blaisdell introduced a motion to allocate $10,000 towards taking legal action against the administration for allegedly violating the Accreditation Act. “We’re gonna take it to court, and we’re gonna have a judge come down and set the precedent, and say ‘No, Concordia, you can’t do this,’” he said. Council moved to go into closed session after the motion was introduced, and Blaisdell declined to comment on the proceedings.

However, a legal dispute between the CSU and the administration could be precedent-setting. Patrice Blais is vice president of Grievance and Collective Agreement for the Concordia University Part-time Faculty Association. He is also part of the ad hoc committee that is investigating the issue of academic requirements. Because of his place on the committee, he declined to offer an interpretation of the Accreditation Act. “However, I can tell you that this issue has not been the issue of litigation and there exists no jurisprudence currently on this issue, so any legal opinion has to be taken with a grain of salt,” he said.

* * *

Hough-Martin said the CSU’s executives will attend a steering committee on Oct. 30 to discuss the composition, timing and overview of what will be looked at on the ad hoc committee. Hough-Martin hopes this issue will be resolved by the end of her mandate.

“Students who are in precarious academic standing have even more interesting knowledge and life experience to bring to Senate,” Miller said, adding that they understand why students fall behind in their academics, and can suggest improvements that will help them, “So that’s a very valuable perspective to be getting.”

Archive graphic by Zeze Le Lin

CSU’s Loyola coordinator questions lack of adequate services

 

Resources for sexual assault victims “are non-existent at Concordia University’s Loyola campus,” said the Concordia Student Union’s Loyola coordinator.

In an interview with The Concordian, Alexis G. Searcy highlighted the inadequacies of the existing services. “There is Health Services that you can go to for an appointment [with a nurse], but you still have to go downtown to the Sexual Assault Resource Centre,” said Searcy. “There is always security you can go to if you are in an immediate danger. As far as support services and accomodations, there [are] literally none [at Loyola].”

The Sexual Assault Resource Centre (SARC) is Concordia’s primary resource centre for confidential support and services for victims of sexual assault or harassment. Searcy said one of the reasons SARC hasn’t been able to open more doors for students is because it’s underfunded. She wishes there was more funding available to help students at Loyola.

The Task Force on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Violence released its report on June 26. Section 3.5 recommended a “review be conducted of the services offered on the Loyola campus in regards to sexual misconduct and sexual violence.”

The report also recommended that “investments be made where needed to ensure that the services are available and adequate.”

Searcy was told by Jennifer Drummond, SARC’s coordinator and social worker, that the centre hasn’t started this process yet. “They haven’t been able to expand services at all [to Loyola], but they will get back to me once these kinds of things have been done,” said Searcy.

Drummond told The Concordian that having SARC services at Loyola will only be possible once another staff member has been hired. “SARC will be hiring a social worker in the coming months and I look forward to the possibilities this will present regarding expanded services,” she said.

Fiona Downey, Concordia’s senior advisor of public affairs and deputy spokesperson, said there are presently numerous resources on both campuses to help students affected by sexual misconduct. These include staff at the Campus Wellness and Support Services, Health Services, and Counselling and Psychological Services.

“The ideal is to have some SARC presence at Loyola, whether it is office hours or an actual physical space similar to SARC,” Searcy agreed.

Downey said that “once [an additional SARC staff person is] in place, one of our priorities is to have a regular presence on the Loyola campus.” She added that SARC holds regular meetings and training sessions on how to properly respond to disclosures of sexual misconduct, violence or assault.

Searcy recently received multiple questions from students such as, “Why isn’t there SARC at Loyola?” and, “Where are sexual assault resources at the Loyola campus?” She was unable to respond due to the lack of updates from SARC. “Right now, it is very present in people’s minds,” she said.

As for the future, Downey said that Lisa Ostiguy, special advisor to the provost on campus life at Concordia, will be reviewing the needs of, and support for, students on the Loyola campus.

Searcy is currently looking into how other sexual assault resources, such as consent and sexual violence support workshops, can branch out to the Loyola campus. She is keeping in touch with SARC and the task force to make sure this happens.

If you or someone you know is a victim of sexual assault, you can contact the Sexual Assault Resource Centre in room H-645 on the downtown campus or call Jennifer Drummond at 514-848-2424 Ext. 3353. If you are in immediate danger, call security at 514-848-3717.

Graphic by @spooky_soda

Survey findings show a need for digital literacy and data privacy.

Digital literacy and data privacy are of the utmost importance to the Concordia community, said Guylaine Beaudry, Concordia’s vice-provost of digital strategy and university librarian, at a public event on Oct. 12.

Beaudry recommitted to the university’s goals when presenting the results of a public consultation and survey conducted in the spring of 2018, which are available on the Concordia website. The digital strategy project team gathered feedback from the university’s students, staff and faculty on the renovated Webster Library and Concordia’s digital system, which include the university’s website, myConcordia portal and Moodle.

According to Beaudry, the survey results showed that 84 per cent of 115 respondents can access reliable university WiFi on campus whenever they need it. Additionally, 34 per cent of respondents agreed that Concordia protects their data privacy, and only 15 per cent said the university keeps them informed on how their personal data is stored and used.

Students “don’t know what Concordia is doing with their data,” Beaudry said. “This is something we need to work on and transmit to our students.”

The survey also found that 49 per cent of students would like to see more use of technology in their courses; five per cent want to see less, and 46 per cent are comfortable with what they have now. Beaudry said her team will conduct further research on the issues raised in the survey results.

The survey was sent to students through email and given out at the Webster Library entrance. One of the issues highlighted in it was digital communication between students and professors. “Younger students find emails to be too formal, and they don’t look at their email every day,” Beaudry said. “When they do use email, they have varying success in getting a response in a timely manner.”

According to the survey, some students felt several professors were not using Moodle as much as they would like. On the other hand, professors who responded to the survey preferred face-to-face interactions with their students over virtual ones. Many professors found Moodle to be too rigid, Beaudry said. “It explains the reason why students are confused, because they are going from one platform to another,” she said.

To prove students were comfortable with digital technology, Beaudry mentioned many students also rely on third-party platforms, such as Facebook and Google Docs.

Recorded lectures and online videos were highly requested by many Concordia students. Respondents found “pre-recorded content to be a good complement to their courses, such as recordings of past lectures,” Beaudry said. “It is something students told us over and over again.” Beaudry said the administration is looking at how they can make that a viable option.

Beaudry said they should not only see Concordia as somewhere to get a good education, but a place where they can expand on their digital literacy.

“As a community, we need to take charge and seize every opportunity to contribute to the new digital landscape,” Beaudry said. She hopes that, by being more people-oriented and focusing on developing its community’s digital skills, Concordia will become a more technologically-advanced institution.  

Graphic by Ana Bilokin.

Cardiovascular lab improving the performance of medical devices.

 

Creating heart replicas to help doctors better explain cardiological issues is one of the many efforts of student researchers at the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Fluid Dynamics to enrich the practice of medicine.

Lyes Kadem, a professor of industrial engineering at Concordia and the director of the department’s laboratory, showed his team’s latest advancements in their research project to The Concordian on Oct. 3. “All of the systems we have are the most unique around the world,” Kadem said. “Whatever you are doing on a patient [who is dealing with a heart problem], you can do it on our simulators.”

These advancements, which include three innovative simulators, are given human names so researchers can better familiarize themselves with them. These simulators test mainstream health devices that tackle cardiovascular issues used by medical device companies.

Kadem and his collaborator Dr. Tsz Ho Kwok, an expert in additive manufacturing, hired fourth-year mechanical engineering students to help further projects in his research lab. Kadem explained that all of the simulators have been constructed and designed by undergraduate students. They use fused deposition modeling technology, which is commonly used for modeling, prototyping, production applications, and creating human heart replicas.

These 3D-printed models are then used as part of the Compact Heart for Realistic Interactive Simulation (CHRIS) simulator to test products that tackle most cardiovascular diseases, but typically heart valve disease.

According to Kadem, students replicate hearts to test the performance of medical devices to make sure they can successfully fix cardiovascular issues. When testing products that will soon be on the market, researchers must ask themselves critical questions: “Is this product doing the right job?” and “Will it affect red blood cells?”

Kadem and his team collaborate with doctors in the pediatric-cardiology department at the St-Justine Hospital. Kadem’s team makes heart models and donate them to help healthcare professionals better articulate certain issues to their patients.

“They face a problem explaining to parents the heart issues and pathologies that their children have,” Kadem said. He added that doctors use drawings to explain the heart conditions, but they aren’t as tangible as 3D models. Kadem hopes that, by donating the models his researchers use for CHRIS, it will help children better understand the issues they are facing. According to Kadem, although the models are not the standard, they are gaining popularity.

The second simulator, the Simulation Through In-vitro Testing on the Complete Heart (STITCH), tests devices that aim to improve issues related to the left-ventricle. “We use [STITCH] to measure how the flow behaves inside the healthy heart, and then we can change the conditions to make STITCH sick, [to assess the before and after],” he said. However, STITCH is not appropriate to test devices for all patients. “[For] some patients with a weird aorta, the device will be risky [to their health].”

Finally, the Ongoing Search to Counteract Aortic Rupture (OSCAR) is a crash-test simulator, which assesses how the heart reacts to accidents that put it at risk. “The idea is to try to simulate what happens to the human body in case of [a] car-crash,” Kadem said.

This simulator will help patients in two different ways, Kadem explained. Not only does it facilitate the testing of airbags, but it also addresses how one can minimize the risk to their heart if a crash does occur.

Kadem said these simulators advance current knowledge in cardiovascular flows and medical devices, but also to give companies a space to test their products, so they can save money and advance their products to better assess patients who need immediate health support.

Photo by Hannah Ewen.