About us
“First in Class”, our mentorship program, evolved from grassroots efforts. In the fall of 2018, Elaine Laberge (then a doctoral student), Catherine Léger (French and Francophone Studies), Colette Smart (Psychology) and Su Urbanczyk (Linguistics) co-founded the Shoestring Initiative. The original vision of the initiative was to build a community of support and connection amongst faculty and students from working class and poverty backgrounds. In October 2019, the Shoestring Initiative changed direction, and became student-led (steered by Elaine Laberge), focusing mostly on anti-poverty advocacy and informed by her research.
Catherine, Colette, and Su have worked over the last three years to build a faculty-student mentorship program at UVic between people with lived experience as first generation students. Here, we classify “first generation” as being broad and inclusive of people who were the first in their family to attend higher education.
In the summer of 2022, we received funding from the President’s office, Dr. Kevin Hall. Dr Hall was himself a first generation student, and in his prior academic appointments has been a champion of people pursuing alternative pathways to higher education who come from non-traditional backgrounds. We are working with Student Affairs, receiving advice based on previous peer-to-peer mentoring programs, as well as programs to connect first-year students.
We are also deriving inspiration from other mentorship programs at other universities around the world. While several similar programs exist in the United States, for example, as far as we know, this type of program is the only one in Canada.
As former first generation students who came from diverse backgrounds, Catherine, Colette, and Su know firsthand that one of the major elements in their academic success was dedicated mentorship, and having someone believe in them and encouraging them to pursue their dreams. They are passionate about mentoring other first generation students, as well as building a community of support and belonging for other faculty who may continue to find challenges navigating academia.