Academic News

Each year, the Step Out of Your Box (SOYB) committee reviews the application pieces and selects four students to receive one of the four awards of $500 each.

SOYB program gives students the opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge in our community while enhancing their interpersonal, communication, critical thinking, and leadership skills.

Students who participate in this program explore a dimension of diversity that is different from themselves by volunteering at a community organization. After seven hours (minimum), they create a “leave-behind” project that showcases their abilities and benefits a local volunteer organization. As part of their reflection document, students describe what they did, how this experience impacted them, and how they will carry this experience forward in their personal and professional lives.

This year, four Nursing students were selected to receive the awards:

L to R: Mallory, Cassie, Thi
Not Pictured: Danielle

Thi Nguyen:
Volunteer Organization: Main Street Project: Men’s Detoxification and Stabilization Unit
Dimension(s) of Focus: Males and addictions
Leave-Behind project: Halloween themed Bingo night

Thi’s concluding Thoughts:
It helped me stand out my comfort zone to open with others; especially men…. Challenging myself is necessary to be successful. Volunteering at Men’s detox helped me gain my experiences when contacting with men. I saw how staff communicated and treated to men. I saw different angles of the way of thinking, how they expressed their emotion, feeling and their goals of life. The most important thing is I can overcome my fear while being among men. I was able to play cards with them comfortably. My heart was melted and touched after listening to their stories. Being among men gave me an opportunity to understand more about myself. I received immense support from staff and a volunteer coordinator, and although I was shy at first, I quickly learned that people were there to help me in any way they could. Diversity is greatly valued and each individual has a voice. I have consistently felt that my ideas were valued and credited; in the long term, this has helped me build confidence.

Mallory Shewfelt:
Volunteer Organization: Main Street Project: Men’s Detoxification and Stabilization Unit
Dimension(s) of Focus: Males and addictions
Leave-Behind project: Halloween themed Bingo night

Mallory’s concluding thoughts:
I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and try to gain new perspective for people facing addiction, many homeless who live on the streets of Winnipeg…This experience will greatly impact my practice as a future nurse. I will no longer see people who are homeless as lazy addicts who would rather spend their time asking for money rather than going to find a job. Now what I will see is people who have had some difficult life experiences, many dealing with painful trauma and struggle with the disease of addiction….I now believe there is no difference in emotional ability for either female or males. I will use the same therapeutic communication techniques regardless of sex or gender. This experience has also sparked my interest in possibly wanting to help individuals who struggle with addiction as a registered nurse. For the time being, I plan to still volunteer at Main Street Project while I finish my Bachelor’s degree of nursing, which is not something I anticipated prior to the Step Out of Your Box Program.

Prizes from Bingo Night

Danielle Rasmussen:
Volunteer Organization: Sunshine House
Dimension(s) of Focus: Transgender community
Leave-Behind project: Family Christmas party

Danielle’s concluding thoughts:
Before this experience I would just try to ignore or avoid the fact that someone was transgender in hopes to avoid offending anyone if I had said the wrong thing. This experience has taught me that it is okay to ask questions if I am confused or unsure of something. Clarification is better than making assumptions about someone. After talking to this individual, I was able to feel comfortable socializing with some of the other people visiting the drop-in center… As a nurse I can reflect on this experience remembering the struggles that someone who is transitioning goes through, so that I can be compassionate to their feelings and have empathy for them in the process…

Having a culturally sensitive and diverse nursing workforce allows patients to seek help with their health issues without the fear of being judged or rejected. It is a common human feeling that when we think someone will be judging us we often want to tweak our stories so that they don’t sound as bad. I believe that in order for this to happen, though, it needs to be a team effort with all of the medical staff. When all the staff are working together on the same team caring for patients, patient care will go much more smoothly.

Cassie Oliver:
Volunteer Organization: Sunshine House
Dimension(s) of Focus: Transgender and non-binary persons
Leave-Behind project: Family Christmas party

Cassie’s concluding thoughts:
Originally, my lack of experience and understanding of transgender individuals led to negative views, but now I realize that it does not matter how people identify. It does not affect me personally. I learned that, as I am not transgender or non-binary, it would be difficult to understand the struggles that transgender people face, however, that does not mean I need to add to the struggles. I am accepting of all individuals regardless of my understanding of their background and circumstances now….Prior to this experience I was also afraid of misgendering someone, however it was quite easy to avoid. When faced with someone who was of ambiguous gender, I used the person’s name, until they self-identified as trans. I learned it’s a lot easier than I thought it would be, and most people are quite forgiving if you make an honest effort.

I have realized that nonbinary individuals struggle immensely with the healthcare system, through my conversations at Sunshine House and do not want to contribute to this. After hearing the stories of misgendering, and how traumatic it is to be faced with the biologic sex identifiers, as well as having health professionals address them as their sex at birth, I think advocacy will also be important. It is important that the nursing workforce is sensitive to culture and is diverse to meet patient needs as no two patients are alike. As nurses, we serve patients across all cultures, genders, and sexual orientations. We must be aware of cultural and social differences to treat the patient holistically. …Validating and accepting patients for who they wish to be is an important aspect in holistic care.

Christmas Party

Congratulations to all the students who participated in this program! Your contributions to these community organizations are immeasurable.

Instructors – If you’re looking for an alternative to the research paper or test, want to add new insights and dimensions to class discussions, reduce stereotypes, and facilitate cultural and racial understanding, consider incorporating this program into your course. For more information, contact the Mentorship Program Coordinator at soyb@rrc.ca or 204.632.3847 or visit rrc.ca/mentorship-awards.

Post written by Vera Godavari – Mentorship Program Coordinator

Project Term: Summer 2019

TAIV enables business owners to create, schedule and play their own TV advertisements instead of the commercials that appear during the broadcast. This helps establishments create a targeted audience and drive sales. During the summer term at the ACE Project Space, a team of students completed a number of enhancements to improve the user experience. Read More →

Project Term: Summer 2019

The ACE Project Space required a robust and scalable application to better manage change and incident requests, assets and those using them. The system that was in use was clunky and did not provide the full range of functionality that the Change Advisory Board (CAB) was looking for. A student team at the ACE Project Space went about designing the application from scratch. The purpose was to deliver a working application with asset, user and change management functionality by the end of the four-month term. Completing the application was accomplished through extensive research and learning through Lynda, Code Academy and Udemy as well as collaboration with the RPI research group. Read More →

Project Term: Summer 2019

Red River Bookstore has been operating for decades and has amassed a huge inventory of used books, comics, music, movies, video games and other miscellaneous items. With such a large inventory and very little online presence, the bookstore staff could not meet the growing demands without integrating digital solutions. ACE Project Space students worked with the bookstore to gather their requirements, and then build viable solutions to help the business manage its inventory. Read More →

Project Term: Summer 2019

The Manitoba Genealogical Society (MGS) organizes and archives information about the lives of Manitobans and their family relationships. In a previous term at the ACE Project Space, students helped to build the consolidated Manitoba Name Index (MANI) service to provide a central source for searching genealogical data. During the summer term, a new team of students worked on improvements to the MANI codebase and delivered a number of enhancements to improve the user experience and create new revenue generation opportunities. Read More →

Project Term: Summer 2019

Equal Opportunities West is a Winnipeg-based non-profit organization that provides support services to adults with developmental disabilities, helping them to attain meaningful employment. The organization’s rapid growth in the past five years increased the burden of administering activities involving staff, students, and vehicle assets. Employees were using a paper-based system and board to set activities, track assets and communicate with staff. The system could not keep up with all the activities and associated changes happening simultaneously.  A team of students from the ACE Project Space built a comprehensive resource management system to digitize the organization’s current system and improve business processes. Read More →

User experience, or UX for short, refers to how a person interacts with a company or brand. This includes interactions with websites, mobile apps, social media, as well as actual face-to-face interaction.
In DMD, we teach the key principles of designing a great user experience. We also teach about responsive web design, or designing for an equally great user experience across a wide range of devices (mobile, tablets, desktops, etc).

Project Term: Summer 2019

Manitoba Angel Dresses is a volunteer-driven organization whose vision and mission is to ease the stress of families grieving from the loss of their stillborn child. Volunteers create personalized dresses and other clothing items from donated bridal and bridesmaid gowns that are later used for dressing the babies to provide an opportunity for families to share a grieving experience and take photographs to provide a lasting memory. The organization was working with an outdated system for tracking their donation and new creation inventories. ACE Project Space students created a simple web application to improve the user experience of managing the organization’s inventory. Read More →

When you prepare to venture into the world of nursing, it is not uncommon to feel mixed emotions. As you begin this new adventure, it is important to realize that you are not alone. Each of us seasoned nurses who consider ourselves lucky to be a part of the process of your nursing education would like you to know that we all started somewhere. It is for that reason that I felt compelled to share my first day story.

As a newly graduated nurse in 1996, I was pleased to accept a new position on the Bone Marrow Transplant department at HSC. I arrived for my first independent shift as a nurse after receiving two weeks of intensive orientation. Nervous did not even begin to describe how I felt. I came onto the unit about 45 minutes early, wrote out my assignment, started to plan out my day, and saw that I had a student nurse assigned to one of my patients. When we met, she recognized me from the hallways of nursing school. The day only seemed to go downhill from there. The four patients assigned to me were all acutely ill. One was having seizures and required MRIs (the one with a student luckily, because she knew the patient better than I did), one needed to go for a lung biopsy (I needed to prep her for this, and I did not know where to begin). Both of these patients needed to leave the unit, and this required a lot of planning because they were neutropenic. Another needed platelets, and the last needed 2 units of blood. They all had central lines, each with about 3 IV lines with hourly ins and outs and multiple IV medications due each hour. By the end of the 12 hour shift, I was completely drained. I remember crying when I got home and thinking how am I going to do this? I went back the next day and it got better, not perfect but better.

This first day taught me a lot. It taught me to trust my colleagues, to ask for help, and to admit when I did not know something. I learned to listen to everyone. The student came to me about her assessment findings. The patients’ wife shared that she had been noticing the seizure activity for a while, but it had been dismissed so she thought it wasn’t important. It’s funny that I still remember that day with such clarity. I understood that I was a novice still learning, and needed to give myself a break. The key I believe to my continued success was resilience, a wonderful support network, and unwillingness to give up. That is what I want to say to you all. That I believe in you. I am still here for you because I understand to this day what it’s like to feel lost and overwhelmed. I also understand the rewards of sticking it out and living to tell my tale.

Post written by Corrina Zacharkiw RN MN

SolarSkyrise

We’re looking for a skilled user interface designer to join our team to help us build the technology that will help change the world of urban renewable energy.

UI designers take complex challenges, features, and requirements, then turn them into easy to use, easy to understand interfaces that make the lives of our users better. They work closely with software developers, co-founders and other staff in a collaborative and agile environment.

HERE IS WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU

• Think first and foremost about our users and how we can make their lives
• Help ensure we’re solving the right problem and conceptualize the best solutions for new and existing
• Create sketches and/or highly-detailed mock-ups, user-flows, storyboards, and prototypes to communicate user interface, interactions, and experience
• Constantly evaluate our apps to ensure we’re changing and evolving them to be the
• Demonstrate you have the knowledge and experience in building easy to use, easy to understand web-based interfaces, design system, and pattern
• Have a post-secondary education in web design or equivalent work
• Provide a link to your impressive portfolio showing off all the great work you’ve done Note: only applications accompanied by a portfolio will be considered for the UI designer

SKILLS THAT WILL GET YOU FAR

• A strong, clean visual design
• Proficiency with design and prototyping software: Photoshop, Illustrator, XD, Sketch, Figma, InVision, Axure,
• Expert in HTML and
• Knowledge of JavaScript, to be able to prototype and prove Experience with React or similar frameworks will be an asset.
• Leadership; influence others to make everything
• Collaboration; work closely with teams to find the best
• Communication; share your ideas in a way people can understand, while also best understanding the ideas of
• Empathy; be able to easily adopt the perspective of another person to see and understand things the way they
• Curiosity; seek understand complex challenges and user needs, why things are the way they are, and keep digging to figure out how they can become something

CONTACT

To apply, please send resume, cover letter, and portfolio to:

Scott Russell – Co-Founder and CEO SolarSkyrise Inc. scott.russell@solarskyrise.com solarskyrise.com