Graduate Supervisory Relationships: Creating Space for Dialogue and Wellbeing through Theatre

This project focuses on graduate supervisory relationships and the wellbeing of UBC students and supervisors. Using research-based theatre, we will develop dramatized scenes about graduate supervisory relationships and community responses to challenges in these relationships. The scenes will be performed by actors for audiences of graduate students or faculty supervisors, administrators and staff to create dialogue about how to support and improve graduate supervisory relationships. When audiences experience a performance together, they can discuss sensitive issues in light of shared experience, commenting on characters and situations rather than personal stories. Throughout this project, we will apply the tenets of appreciative inquiry to focus on the ingredients of successful as well as problematic supervisory relationships and support greater awareness of supervision as a vital form of pedagogy. Final outputs will include a professionally recorded digital version of the scenes, a facilitator manual and recommendations on how to support further dialogue.

Susan Cox, Associate Professor / Director, PhD and MSc Programs, School of Population and Public Health (SPPH), Faculty of Medicine
Michael Lee, Co-Principal Investigator / Senior Instructor, Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine
Levonne Abshire, Health Promotion Strategist, Student Development and Services
George Belliveau, Professor, Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education
Jacqui Brinkman, Director, Graduate Student Professional Development, Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
Brianne Howard, Director, Academic Support, Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
Kate McLeod, PhD Student, SPPH, Faculty of Medicine
Kathy O'Flynn-Magee, Senior Instructor, Nursing, Faculty of Applied Science