Three recent Daniels Faculty graduates from the Class of 2021 sat down with us to remember their time at university and share advice for new and current students. From memorable courses and favourite spots on campus, to critical first-year skills and advice for maintaining balance – read on for their responses.

Sheetza McGarry – Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies

What is your favourite memory at U of T and the Daniels Faculty?   

I don't think I can pick just one. However, I would say the community in general. The friendships made at this faculty become your teammates, support network, and family away from home. The relationships formed with faculty members are so supportive and really opened my eyes to the possibilities of architecture and design beyond this academic stage.  

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when starting your program?   

Self-care and socializing are just as important as school. You need to find a balance. It's 10x harder to do your best work alone and when you're not taking care of yourself.  

What skills do you think first-year students should focus on developing?   

Getting used to synthesizing large readings will definitely help with the first-year reading requirements. It also never hurts to get a leg up on the Adobe Suite (specifically Illustrator and Photoshop), Rhino, and AutoCAD. However, most importantly I'd just say keep creating, find what gets you excited and explore it.  

What was your favourite course that you took at Daniels?  

Any of the design studios of course. I also loved Artist's Writings. It was a great way to read pieces from creatives that we learn about in theory classes. From reading their works and having critical discussions about them in class, I discovered a lot about my own practice and places I grappled with my identity within the art and architecture field. The projects that came out of this class are some that I hold closest to my heart, and have gone on to inform the way I approach my artistic practice whether that be visual arts, writing, or architecture and design.  

How do you maintain a good work/life balance?   

It's a constant process of reminding myself to take breaks and step back. Without it, it can get a bit too easy to lose perspective on your work and academics in general. Don't forget to be excited about things outside of school: a meal you're really interested in trying to cook, a park you want to read in, or a new cycling route. Also, surrounding yourself with people you mesh well with will make work/life balance seamless as you'll support one another and remind each other to have fun!  

What is your favourite spot on campus?  

​The Bamboo Garden in the Terrence Donnelly Centre! Brightens any rainy or snowy day.  

What tips for success do you have for first-year students at Daniels? 

Find people you work well with and have fun with and hold on to them. With so much change going on at this stage in life, you'll grow more than you can ever expect. Having a community to do that with is the best feeling as you enter adulthood! Your community will become your collaborators, critics, and of course friends. Finally, remember to take care of yourself and have fun - it'll go by quick so make the most of it!  

Juliette Cook – Master of Architecture

What is your favourite memory at U of T and the Daniels Faculty?   

There are a few, but one of my favourite memory at Daniels comes from first year, when two of the people in my studio and I agreed we would never stay past 10pm. Fast forward to the weekend before the first deadline, we were in studio figuring out how to unroll surfaces and glue our models together, and stayed until about 2am. While we were tired and disappointed we didn’t abide by our ‘rule’, we sort of chuckled about it, and since we all lived in the East end, Ubered home together when we were done. Those two people have remained two of my closest friends throughout the program. You definitely bond during those late nights in studio! 

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when starting your program?   

It is never worth skipping a meal – always take that time away from your computer to nourish yourself and give your brain a break. 

  What skills do you think first-year students should focus on developing?   

I think it is important to ask for support in developing skills to design with climate change in mind; in other words, thinking about embodied and operational carbon. This may take the form of learning software skills (daylighting, energy intensity, carbon accounting, etc.) to learning about societal and environmental strategies for environmental management. One course that I think should be incorporated into first-year learning is Doug Anderson’s ‘Indigenous Perspectives on Landscapes.’

I also think it would be beneficial to have some small group exercises in studio, for example for doing precedent analysis, or even site analysis. Group work is an integral part of being in the field and practicing those skills in school will translate well to any workplace where you would work alongside a team (i.e. most workplaces!) Finally, students should be open-minded to experimenting with different techniques to find what helps to make their work legible and accessible to others. 

  What was your favourite course that you took at Daniels?  

Barring studio courses, my favourite is a toss up between Peter Sealy’s Berlin in Film summer course, and Tei Carpenter’s By Other Means seminar. From the content to the format of the class, I felt very inspired and motivated by these two. 

  How do you maintain a good work/life balance?   

I worked throughout my degree, outside of school as well as a TA in 2nd and 3rd year. While shuffling around the city commuting and also having to work made my schedule quite tight, both of these activities were a welcome break from thinking about schoolwork. It allowed me to take some space from studio and come back refreshed. I also would not compromise on working out / stretching, and even kept a lacrosse ball in my desk drawer to roll out my tired feet. Reserving time for a partner, friends, and family was key – though I wasn’t physically seeing many of these people over the course of the 3-year degree, regular calls during studio breaks or commutes home were good reminders that life goes on after school. 

 What is your favourite spot on campus?  

The PIT! Great spot to have lunch / take a break with a group of friends. I am not sure if everyone calls it the pit, but it is the auditorium space leading up to the grad studio. With COVID, Daniels Gathertown Edition was also a great place to be!   

  What tips for success do you have for first-year students at Daniels?   

My main tip would be figuring out a workflow that allows you to be efficient, while staying excited about what you are working on. If I felt like working on a perspective collage in Photoshop, even without having more technical drawings completed yet, I rolled with that feeling so that I had a rendered vision of my project that would keep me inspired. Starting tests on representation techniques early helped to confirm whether or not what I imagined in my brain would work out on paper! 

Rida Khan – Master of Urban Design

What is your favourite memory at U of T and the Daniels Faculty?   

It has to be during my online thesis presentation when so many of my past and current teachers all took time out to see my final work. I couldn’t stop smiling. I owe my growth as a designer to their guidance and patience and I am grateful to have created those relationships at Daniels. 

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when starting your program?   

Speak up and ask for help, you are not supposed to know everything.  

What skills do you think first-year students should focus on developing?  

Build your communication skills, understand your strengths, and acknowledge weaknesses you can build on. There are students and faculty who can help you inside and outside the classroom to build you up if you learn how to communicate well. 

What was your favourite course that you took at Daniels?  

Superstudio (the joint course between graduate students in Urban Design, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture). It was memorable. Good memories, bad memories. I felt hopeful and powerless at the same time – it was something!  

How do you maintain a good work/life balance?   

During my time at Daniels I had to constantly remind myself that I am in school to learn and not to prove something at the cost of my physical and mental health- we are intending to become designers not participate in Fear Factor. I made a rule for myself to not do all-nighters (I ended up doing a couple) and focus on the quality not quantity of the ideas I brought forward.  

What is your favourite spot on campus?  

The Daniels building is majestic, and I love to point out to friends that I am associated with it. The Graduate Studio where all the Urban Design, Architecture and Landscape Architecture students worked together is a space of student solidarity and potential. I also love that the Multifaith Centre is just steps away for those moments when you just needed to get away, reflect, or pray.  

What tips for success do you have for first-year students at Daniels?   

Soak in where you are: a top design school in one of North America’s fastest-growing cities surrounded by the best teachers. I encourage students to learn from their instructors and proactively engage in opportunities to uplift your colleagues and communities outside of coursework. 

The Daniels Building has been closed for the duration of Ontario's long COVID-19 lockdown, but students can still spend time in One Spadina's social spaces and studios — albeit virtually.

That's because Lily Jeon, a studio technologist at Daniels, has created an online replica of the Daniels Building, where students can walk around, study, and socialize as though they were actually on campus.

The project arose out of frustration with the drawbacks of online learning. "Faculty members and I wanted to respond to feedback received from students about the shared frustrations and difficulties of having casual conversations with one another online," Jeon says. "It’s hard for people to call each other out of the blue. It's much easier for them to have conversations when they're given opportunities to bump into each other naturally."

But the virtual building has now grown into much more than a casual hangout. Professors have begun to hold critiques there, and student clubs have started using it for events. A few faculty members have even begun using the space to hold office hours.

The virtual Daniels Building exists on Gather, an online collaboration platform. Gather is different than other collaboration platforms, like Zoom or Microsoft Teams, in that it actually tries to replicate the experience of being inside a physical space with other people. It does this by borrowing some of the design language of 1990s-era two-dimensional video games, in which player-characters wander brightly coloured worlds rendered in a top-down perspective. It's a fun, accessible aesthetic, instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent too much time playing Final Fantasy or The Legend of Zelda.

In Gather, each participant in a meeting appears as a pixel-art avatar inside a two-dimensional environment. Participants can travel freely around the virtual space. When two or more avatars approach each other, they have the option of opening a video chat together. The experience is similar to wandering through a party or a crowded lecture hall, noticing colleagues and spontaneously being pulled into conversation with them.

Gather provides some generic rooms for avatars to move around, but Jeon wanted to make the virtual space feel a little more Daniels-specific. So she got out her iPad and spent hours illustrating detailed environments that accurately replicate, in cartoon style, different parts of the Daniels Building. She and her work-study students, Gemma Robinson and Zainab Wakil, worked to refine the different areas to make them suitable for various kinds of programming.

Here's the student commons, where the Architecture and Visual Studies Student Union recently hosted a "coffee with profs" event, in which professors sat at tables in the virtual space and chatted with students:

Here's the graduate studio's amphitheatre, where assistant professor Erica Allen-Kim has lately been holding Writing Centre office hours:

Here's the undergraduate studio:

And the main hall, where the Daniels undergraduate mentorship program recently held a trivia night:

Several undergraduate studio professors have begun using the virtual Daniels Building on Gather to host critiques, including Dina Sarhane (ARC362), Tom Bessai (ARC381), and Jay Pooley (JAV101). They say the virtual environment allows for easier, more natural collaboration than Zoom.

"It's particularly great for students who have never been to the building, because it gives them a peek at what they have to look forward to," Pooley says. "It works well for studios, because students are able to easily break out into small groups within the class, and they can meet with their teaching assistants at a separate table. I've had people stop by my class, which is really great. It has been fun. We enjoy it."

Jen Wan, a fourth-year undergraduate at Daniels, has attended social events in the virtual Daniels Building as part of her involvement with Applied Architecture, Landscape, and Design, a student group. "I like Gather because it's really fun," she says. "When you're meeting with people in Zoom, it's hard because you have to work to orchestrate activities and games. On Gather, they're all right there for you."

The virtual Daniels Building isn't just for special events and studios. It's available on Gather 24 hours a day, and Daniels Faculty students and instructors are encouraged to use it casually, for informal hangouts and games. To join, use the link below:

Sign up for the virtual Daniels Building

In a normal year, the life of a first-year undergraduate at the Daniels Faculty is a whirlwind of orientation events, new friendships, exhilarating forays into the city, and countless hours spent in the Daniels Building's studio spaces.

For this year's new undergrads, the class of 2024, none of those things were possible. These students, who had already experienced Zoom high-school graduations and Zoom 18th birthday parties, discovered that their first year at university was, likewise, going to be carried out in video boxes on computer screens.

Throughout the year, as Daniels Faculty first-year students have sought ways of socializing with classmates during the pandemic, an Instagram account has played a crucial role in helping them make those connections. Uoftdaniels24, which is administered by a team of four student volunteers, has become a hub of first-year community during a difficult time.

Clockwise from top left: Madiha Syed, Selina Al Madanat, Nur Nasir, and Rayah Flash.

The account is run by Madiha Syed, Nur Nasir, Selina Al Madanat, and Rayah Flash, all of whom started their undergraduate studies at Daniels in the fall semester. They met each other during orientation, in the only way anyone meets anyone these days: in a group WhatsApp chat, at three in the morning. Despite the fact that all of them were confined to homes in different locations across the Greater Toronto Area, they managed to hit it off.

A few weeks later, Madiha noticed that the uoftdaniels24 Instagram account, which had been started by a different group of students, was no longer posting updates. "I had a couple ideas for posting resources," she says. She asked the account's owners if they would hand over control, and they agreed.

Realizing she couldn't manage the project on her own, Madiha enlisted Nur, Selina, and Rayah to help. The four of them set about transforming the account into a welcoming space for students coping with the strangeness of the online university experience. "It's different for us than it is for second and third-year students," Selina says. "Because we're all new to the university community, we don't know anyone at U of T. It can be hard to reach out and find the people who are experiencing the same thing as you."

"I've talked to a couple students who don't have the privilege to have their own seating area or desk at home," Madiha says. "Just having other people they know, who are also struggling, makes it easier for them to get through."

A screen shot of a recent game night.

Since taking over uoftdaniels24 at the end of October, Madiha, Nur, Selina, and Rayah, who have still never met in person as a group (Nur and Madiha met briefly, once, because they happen to live near each other), have hosted social events. They use the account to announce game nights, where students gather on Zoom to play Codebreaker, Cards Against Humanity, and Skribble.io. They host Zoom study sessions, where students can keep each other company while they work.

Uoftdaniels24 also publishes coursework by first-year students. And Madiha has used the account to publish video interviews with professors who teach first-year courses and studios, including Tara Bissett, Jay Pooley, Brady Peters, and James Macgillivray.

Madiha, Nur, Selina, and Rayah say they hope to continue their work into the fall, as university life begins to return to normal. And, perhaps one day soon, they'll be able to take their friendships offline. "The moment I see them, I'm going to give them a big hug, and a big smooch on the forehead," Madiha says. "I'm going to embrace them like they're my long-lost sisters."

Madiha, Nur, Selina, and Rayah will be doing a one-day "takeover" of the Daniels Faculty's main Instagram account on Thursday. Follow UofTDaniels on Instagram to see what they post.

Visit the uoftdaniels24 Instagram page

Daniels Radio logo design by Mark Bennett.

Daniels Radio, the Daniels Faculty's new student podcast, has just released its second episode. The theme of the show is "women in design."

The episode is embedded below, and can also be downloaded right here.

The show is split into four segments, each featuring a different group of Daniels students, discussing a different aspect of the female experience within Daniels or in the design fields. A variety of voices — female, male, and nonbinary — talk about the implications, good and bad, of the design community's push for gender diversity.

"I have an immediate kind of visceral reaction to the phrase 'women in architecture,'" says Miranda Fay, a fourth-year Master of Architecture student who is one of the episode's speakers. "To me, it doesn't really encompass even just the surface level of equity issues or gender issues."

Daniels Radio is produced with the support of assistant professors Peter Sealy and Jay Pooley.

The other contributors to episode two are:

Aisling Beers, host and editor
Erika Ulrich, editor
Louisa Kennett, segment writer and speaker
Allison E. Smith, segment writer and speaker
Dahlia, segment speaker
Tanvi Khurmi, segment speaker
Isobel Mclean, segment writer and speaker
Randa Omar, segment writer and speaker
Miranda Fay, segment writer and speaker
Jennifer Chau Tran, segment speaker
Noor Khalili, segment speaker
Jess Misak, segment speaker
Maya Freeman, segment speaker
Xavier Fox, segment speaker

Click here to download a full transcript.

In a normal year, the Daniels Faculty's orientation week would be a nonstop series of workshops, information sessions, collaborative design exercises, and parties, where new students would have opportunities to meet one another and begin to acclimate to university life. This year, the Faculty's orientation organizers — Daniels students Rose Awartani, Paul Kaita, Silya Sarieddine, Athina Ji-Hae Alight, Astrid Manzanilla, Diana Koulouthros, Ashvin Baskaran, Saad Nasr, and Negar Mashoof — were faced with a problem: how do you do all that when a pandemic is making it impossible to hold in-person gatherings?

The solution? Do it online, naturally.

All of this year's orientation events happened on Zoom, the videoconferencing platform. Orientation coordinators assembled three full days worth of introductory programming for first-year students, all of it provided free of charge. (Ordinarily, first-year students would pay a small fee to participate in orientation activities.)

Day one of orientation, September 7, was an ice-breaker day. New undergraduates assembled on Zoom for opening ceremonies and were then split into smaller breakout groups — an instant circle of friends that they would continue to interact with throughout the orientation program.

On day two, in a normal year, there would ordinarily be a banner-making activity, where first-year students would gather in a studio and transform large sheets of paper into colourful posters for them to carry in the annual Tri-Campus Parade.

This year, with the parade cancelled and access to the studios at the Daniels Building severely restricted, the banner-making exercise took on a different form. Students gathered on Zoom, broke into their pre-assigned groups, and then logged on to Miro, an online whiteboarding platform that makes it easy for a group of people to collaborate, remotely, on visual projects.

Here are a couple videos of the online banner-making process in action:

The day wrapped up with an online talent show, where students played instruments and showed off their design portfolios:

Some talent show images, from the Daniels Orientation Instagram.

On day three, after an online yoga session, first-year students split into their groups once again for virtual tours of Toronto, in which upper-year students used maps and photos to introduce the many interesting neighbourhoods and businesses located within walking distance of U of T's downtown campus.

One group took a Toronto quiz:

And another group learned about Koreatown:

After lunch, there was a virtual club fair, where first-years learned about some of the Daniels Faculty's student-run groups and activities:

The day — and the year's orientation programming — ended with closing ceremonies and a "virtual club night," where students could socialize in an unstructured way.

The online orientation process has set the tone for what will be a very online year: all learning and social activities at the Daniels Faculty will remain online-only throughout the fall semester, although students will have limited access to the Daniels Building for small in-person meetings. The Faculty has not yet decided whether online-only learning will continue during the winter semester.

First-year students at the Daniels Faculty always need a little help getting acclimated to U of T, but this September the situation is a bit different. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, fall semester classes will be online only, meaning new students will have to navigate the first few months of their studies from home. With that in mind, we asked some upper-year students for advice on getting started, and also for some pointers on maintaining work-life balance during a time when it's difficult to get out of the house. Here's what they said.

David Kalman

Undergraduate architecture, year four

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started at the Faculty?

The biggest thing is: start your assignments the instant you get them. It gives you time to fail. Build in enough time to screw up, so that you're not submitting something you're not happy with.

What types of things should new students definitely be doing during their first month?

I would say, get up to speed with Rhino. You can waste a lot of time not knowing how to use software. When I started at Daniels, I talked to an upper year who gave me a bit of help on Rhino. That helped me so much with getting ideas out. I was less nervous to put work forward.

The student workload at Daniels is quite heavy. How do you balance work and life?

You're not getting any work done when you're tired. Have a sleep schedule. If you're working at three in the morning, realistically you're probably not working as well as you would be if you were sleeping all night and waking up at 8:30. So just go to bed. That's something I learned the hard way.

Saaraa Premji

Master of Architecture, year three

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started at the Faculty?

In the beginning, I had motivational tendencies that leaned towards avoidance and fear of failure. Now, I always have a set goal in mind, and I'm motivated to achieve that goal. And the goal is always something a lot smaller than having a good project. It might be something as simple as, "I want to draw a beautiful plan." I have small goals like that, and they guide me through studio.

What types of things should new students definitely be doing during their first month?

I would make an extra effort to schedule time to talk to my professors — especially now that you don't get the casual conversations when you bump into them in the halls. I would just schedule 10-minute phone calls and get to know them a little bit, and let them get to know you.

The student workload at Daniels is quite heavy. How do you balance work and life?

I think having a dedicated space that you only use for schoolwork — whether that be a specific desk, or a specific chair — can help create that separation. Something I've started to try just recently is to have a separate user account on my computer for work. The background is different. Maybe I'll even change the theme. It's a virtual way of entering an office.

Celine Li

Master of Urban Design, recent graduate

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started at the Faculty?

I wish I knew that there were a lot of possibilities for me to explore outside the Faculty — a lot of things that the city and U of T have to offer. I'd suggest getting out of the box when selecting elective courses. Attend public lectures and exhibitions. There are a lot of options out there just waiting for you to reach out and grab them.

What types of things should new students definitely be doing during their first month?

I think it's really important, if you're in a city, to explore the city and be sensitive to what's going on there. Toronto is changing dramatically. New students should also try to get involved at U of T — not only at Daniels, but in other disciplines as well.

The student workload at Daniels is quite heavy. How do you balance work and life?

My way to balance work and life is to regularly exercise. I made a schedule for myself that involved going outside and running a few kilometres. And I also discovered some YouTube yoga channels. At the beginning, I forced myself to do these things, but now I've realized that they're becoming part of my routine.

Matt Nish-Lapidus

Master of Visual Studies, year two

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started at the Faculty?

There were some administrative things that weren't totally obvious at first, like the whole process for choosing an elective course outside of the Faculty. Make sure that you're figuring out what you want to take early and getting the paperwork done early enough, so it's not a scramble at the last minute.

The biggest thing I would say to anyone coming into the program is just to have trust in their own interests and really figure out how to use all the courses that they take, including electives, to deepen and expand on the area of interest that they think might become their thesis project.

What types of things should new students definitely be doing during their first month?

Definitely, once they're open to the public again, familiarize yourself with the university's libraries. They're the best resources we have at U of T. The first thing is just knowing that there are multiple libraries. There's Robarts, and the library in the Daniels Building, obviously. But for Visual Studies students there's also the Art Library, which is a dedicated resource full of everything you'd ever want to know about art history. And there's also the Innes College Library, which has a bunch of cinema studies materials that are incredibly useful. And remember: librarians are really good at helping you find the things that are related to your interests and topics. You don't have to know what you want before you go. You can just show up and say, "Hey, I'm interested in conceptual art in the 1970s." They will have tons of stuff for you.

The student workload at Daniels is quite heavy. How do you balance work and life?

If you start to feel burned out, take a day off. Your readings and your projects and stuff will still be there for you, and you can get them done later. But if you force yourself to work through exhaustion then often things end up taking longer than if you give yourself some time to relax.

Agata Mrozowski

Master of Landscape Architecture, year two

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started at the Faculty?

I had a sharp learning curve when it came to figuring out design software. Sometimes you have to rely on Google or other sources, but there are also people who can help. For instance, when we had to learn GIS, I found that the folks at the Map and Data Library were super knowledgeable and awesome.

Another thing I wish I'd known is that this program requires a good computer, with a powerful processor and at least 16 gigs of memory. At first, I had an old Mac that just really didn't cut it. Oh, and always back up your work.

What types of things should new students definitely be doing during their first month?

Make an effort to connect with your cohort, because your peers are also your mentors. I've learned so much from their patience and generosity. Set up a Facebook group or get an Instagram chat going, or have a weekly hangout on Zoom.

The student workload at Daniels is quite heavy. How do you balance work and life?

During my first year, I turned to Student Services at Daniels for help. That really helped me troubleshoot and provided support when I needed it.

Another thing I think is critical is that people need to leave the house every day, whether it's for a walk, a bike ride, or to grab something from the corner store. Treat yourself to a coffee. Just get out.

And if you can't leave the house, just prioritize your eating. Eat your vegetables. Have a smoothie or something. At least then you're getting some vitamins and nutrients. Pick a night every week to prep your food. Do it with family members, or friends, or roommates, or whoever's in your bubble. Make it a thing. I ate way too many croissants during first year.

The Daniels Art Directive, a student-run art group, has spent the past few months planning the installation of a giant mural for the Daniels Building's north facade. The selected design, by Daniels alumni Ashita Parekh and Tolu Alabi, will say, in giant letters, "Support Black Designers." But the group needs a little help from the Daniels community in order to realize the project.

How, exactly, can you help? By submitting a "pixel" — a 52.5-by-52.5-centimetre piece of artwork that will act as a single unit of the overall design. (Sort of like when a bunch of people in a stadium crowd hold up coloured sheets of paper to spell out a giant word.) Designers may submit multiple pixels, and they can work individually or in groups.

The mural will contain 248 of these pixels. The word "Support" will be made up of pixels that contain black-and-white written statements. The words "Black Designers" will be made up of colourful artwork. (Each "Black Designers" pixel should be at least 50 per cent yellow, to be consistent with the overall design.)

The Daniels Art Directive and a panel of judges will be reviewing pixel submissions. Everyone who makes a submission will be entered into a raffle for yet-to-be-announced prizes from the Daniels Art Directive. Each person or group whose work is accepted will receive credit for their work, as well as an honorarium of $10 per pixel and a prize package from Above Ground that includes a free sketchbook, a 20 per cent discount, and entry into a raffle for free art supplies.

Anyone — not just Daniels students — is eligible to submit a pixel for review. The Daniels Art Directive will be prioritizing submissions by Black designers.

The Daniels Art Directive is accepting pixel submissions via this Google form. Submissions are due before midnight on Monday, August 31.

For detailed submission guidelines, visit the Daniels Art Directive's Instagram.

Submit a pixel now

Are you an incoming first-year Daniels Faculty student? Do you wish you had a mentor who could help you get acclimated to the school's fast-paced, creative studio culture?

Or, if you're an upper-year student, do you wish you could give back to the Faculty by mentoring someone less experienced?

Good news: the Daniels Faculty mentorship program is here to help.

This year, for the first time ever, the program will include both undergraduate students and MArch, MLA, and MUD graduate students. (Previous Daniels Faculty mentorship programs were exclusively for undergraduate students.)

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all fall mentorship activities will take place online, using videoconferencing platforms.

The details

Undergraduates:

The undergraduate mentorship program will begin with an online "speed dating" session in early September, in which upper-year mentors and first-year mentees will meet for short conversations. Afterward, mentors and mentees will be divided into small groups, with several mentees to each mentor. Throughout the rest of the fall semester, mentors and mentees will meet online for shared activities, like design challenges and game nights.

Graduates:

The graduate mentorship program will be a one-to-one program, in which incoming grad students are each paired with a single mentor. Mentors and mentees will then be free to meet and collaborate as their schedules allow.

How to sign up

If you would like to become a mentor or mentee, you need to sign up.

Undergraduates:

Anyone interested in becoming an undergraduate mentor or mentee should email the undergraduate mentorship coordinators for details, at mentorship@daniels.utoronto.ca. Mentor/mentee applications are due by August 21.

Graduates:

The graduate mentorship program is no longer recruiting mentors, but anyone who wants to be a mentee is encouraged to apply by filling out a mentee application form and emailing it to gradmentorship@daniels.utoronto.ca. Applications are due by August 12.

Today is convocation, and the entire Daniels Faculty community will be celebrating from home. To help make this socially distanced graduation ceremony feel special, the Architecture and Visual Studies Student Union (AVSSU) has put together a short video with farewell messages from students, faculty, and staff. It's embedded above.

If you're graduating today, be sure to give the video a watch to get yourself in a party mood ahead of this afternoon's virtual convocation viewing party, which begins at 12 p.m. on Zoom. Register for the party here.

Welcome to our new cohort of undergraduate students coming this fall. The Daniels Faculty has a long and distinguished 125-plus year history. There have been other times when we have had to cope with unpredictable circumstances. Our past and our present are replete with stories of our students, faculty, and staff rallying together for the greater good. Together with our faculty, undergraduate students in our Architectural Studies program have assembled some of those moments in the video above. You will also see previews of some of the exciting things you will be engaged in as a Daniels student.

We look forward to meeting everyone soon.

Jeannie Kim, Undergraduate Director, HBA Architectural Studies