Women who have helped shape KPU

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When Heather Harrison began her career at Kwantlen Polytechnic University as a philosophy instructor 24 years ago, she was the only woman teaching in her department. 

A job opened when a colleague Harrison knew left as she wasn’t interested in a permanent job. In a department that was completely male-dominated, she was excited to begin teaching philosophy and create change. She went on to teach philosophy for 19 years and felt moved to create a difference after witnessing the dangers of climate change at KPU. She, among other colleagues, created the policy studies in sustainability degree, where students get to solve problems from different perspectives. 

Harrison also served as the interim associate dean of arts and interim associate dean of the Melville School of Business for a few years before moving to her current role today as special advisor of strategic initiatives at the office of the president since February. In this role, she works on a number of projects like helping create a vision for globalization at KPU with the Global Education Advisory Committee and maintaining the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) courses for students to take part in. 

This is just the surface of what Harrison, among many women, has done during her time at KPU to shape the university into what it is today. 

“We’ve come a long way as an institution, we really have, and I feel now we are leaders in a lot of areas,” Harrison says. “I feel really proud to be part of KPU, and I think sometimes we don’t talk as much about what a good job we do.”

International Women’s Day (IWD) takes place every year on March 8 globally to recognize and celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements made by women and girls. IWD aims to also raise awareness of the progress made towards gender equality, but also the work that needs to be done moving forward.

IWD was born out of the labour movements occurring in North America and Europe during the early 20th century. This was during a time where women did not have many rights or privileges in society such as the right to vote, owning property or a bank account, getting divorced, and working in certain professions like dressmakers, launderers, and housekeepers. 

The first IWD took place on March 19, 1911, in countries across Europe like Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. Over a million women and men came together to attend public events in these countries to show support and celebrate the day, according to the Government of Canada’s website. 

The United Nations declared IWD on March 8, 1975 and recognized the same year as International Women’s Year. Every year since, a different theme is dedicated to the day, with this year’s being “Invest in women: Accelerate progress.”

Alongside IWD, many countries recognize March as Women’s History Month like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, while Canada has celebrated in October since 1992. 

Historically, post-secondary institutions were not a place that carried diversity in gender or race. However, this has changed drastically, with far more diversity since the 20th century. 

Harrison has seen and done a lot during her time at the university, like witnessing many senior positions not filled by women flourish with diversity. A lot has changed for the better, she says. 

“You don’t want a hockey team where everyone’s a goalie, right? You need different [players] … . How can we possibly consider ourselves educators [if] we’re excluding people?” Harrison says. 

During her time at KPU, Harrison also created the Surrey CityLab partnership, an initiative that partners with the City of Surrey and Simon Fraser University where students, faculty, city staff, and the community work on sustainability projects to improve the city. 

“I’ve always been really interested in creating interesting opportunities to engage in real-life experiences,” Harrison says. “This idea of allowing students to experience a global perspective is just so important given the way the world is constructed today.” 

KPU nursing instructor Dr. Balbir Gurm has always participated in creating social justice for others, whether it be within KPU or the outside community. 

Gurm has paved the way as a leader at KPU for over 30 years, creating the Network to Eliminate Violence in Relationships (NEVR), an open access e-book of understanding relationship violence, and co-leading a project documenting the history of South Asians in Canada.

She also helped highlight the need for a Teaching and Learning centre and got it off the ground, shepherded the first bachelor of science in nursing degree, and focused her dissertation on a social audit of the university, providing data on the status of the social culture at KPU and what needed to be done. 

Gurm says it may look like she has done a bunch of things, but they all intertwine. 

“Within nursing, the social determinants of health are really what gets me into social justice, because our social determinants of health are things like unfair practices, racism, homelessness, unequal access to services,” she says. 

“Things like not being able to access education, having social identities that are oppressive, so you don’t get the same access to anything. That’s usually what drives me to do the things that I do.” 

Out of all the contributions Gurm has made to KPU, NEVR has been one of the biggest, she says. 

When Gurm created NEVR in 2012, she wanted more people to understand relationship violence, whether that be violence against students, faculty, women, or men. Her free book, Making Sense of a Global Pandemic: Relationship Violence & Working Together Towards a Violence Free Society, discusses what relationship violence is, the variety, and analysis of the complexities of it, and how people can seek help. 

Gurm says in less than four years of the book release, there have been almost 50,000 downloads, and it is used by many undergraduate and graduate programs, including a post-secondary institution in Brazil. 

Outside of her time at KPU, she has worked as a staff registered nurse, clinical nurse educator, and coordinator at Vancouver hospitals. She uses her experience and knowledge to improve the lives of other women. 

“I quite often forget, because what’s been important to me is trying to make a difference and change,” Gurm says. “Everything I do is about social justice.” 

Teachers have the gift of sharing knowledge and helping people, and this was Melinda Bige’s experience when she was a student at KPU in 2008. Criminology instructor Lisa Monchalin mentored Bige throughout her undergraduate degree, among others, which she is grateful for. 

Bige has worked her way through KPU from a student to now the associate dean in the faculty of arts, where she works closely with the dean and other associate deans to provide educational leadership within the faculty, create partnerships across the university, and help with day-to-day administrative work. 

Before this role, Bige was the first Indigenous studies instructor in the department and became chair of Indigenous studies a few years later. 

“I don’t think I expected to get this far. I don’t think I anticipated that I would still be here,” Bige says. 

Bige has made overwhelming contributions to KPU, like advocating for the work of Indigenous Peoples with the Kwantlen Student Association. 

When Bige was a student, she hosted events such as the first annual powwow on campus, a missing and murdered Indigenous women’s vigil, salmon barbecues, and fundraised for various Indigenous community initiatives. 

As she became an instructor after graduating from the University of Victoria in 2017, she wanted to connect with students and encourage them to engage with Indigenous content in a healthy and respectful way. She wanted to do this to mobilize them in their fields and support Indigenous perspectives, but also humanism. 

Bige also worked on the creation of the Indigenous Studies department, which was a goal she had wanted to achieve since she was a KPU student. 

She helped develop three courses, such as “Indigenous Sexuality and Gender” and “Indigenous Families and Healing,” with “Introduction to West Coast Indigenous Studies” launching in the fall. She is currently working in consultation with local First Nations communities to incorporate what they would like to see at the university. 

“We are taking leadership from them, which is what we should have always been doing,” Bige says.  

Community involvement and passion is a statement true to Kim McGill since she began her career at KPU in 2001. McGill is the manager of the community engagement and major events at the university and has held the role since August 2020. 

Her job is to help events run smoothly, both internally and externally, help the external affairs department, and support initiatives from the president’s office. 

McGill has carried many titles during her time at KPU. When she first came to the institution, she began as an instructional associate coordinator in the Access Programs for People with Disabilities, now called the Employment and Community Studies Program, and she created the first ever alumni network for those students. 

She worked in the program for over a decade, and later worked as an operations manager for academic and career advancement. McGill then held the position of instructional associate coordinator and coordinator of marketing for the Faculty of Academic and Career Preparation until 2017 before she moved into the future students’ office where she was the manager of communications and technologies. 

In addition to these roles, McGill served on KPU’s Senate for three years between August 2012 to 2015, and shortly after went on the Board of Governors until August 2021. McGill was awarded the Distinguished Service Award in 2022 for her involvement in the KPU community. 

“I am a KPU cheerleader,” McGill says. “I have a love for KPU and I want to tell the world how great it is, and being able to collaborate and bring people together for a common cause is really the thing I’m so grateful for.” 

On top of her high-achieving career, McGill is a cancer survivor. She went through eight months of treatment in 2017, and still worked full-time at KPU. 

McGill has witnessed a growth of female leadership at KPU and is excited to see more in the future. 

“It is so wonderful at KPU to see more strong women in leadership at the table. And not just having a seat at the table, having vital, contributing voices is so important,” she says. “It’s all about education, we have to walk the walk, we can’t just talk the talk.” 

Asma Sayed is an example of those who educate others, creating change at KPU since 2017. Sayed has been the vice president of the equity and inclusive communities since November, where she is responsible for providing leadership to initiatives at KPU that advance equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) while fostering the development of a welcoming university environment. 

She is also the Canada research chair in South Asian literary and cultural studies in the English department along with being an English instructor. Sayed isn’t afraid to echo equity, diversity, and inclusion as she was the chair of KPU’s Task Force on Anti-Racism for two years from 2020 to 2022. 

In October 2022, the task force released 64 recommendations to tackle systemic racism, which Sayed is working on now in her current role. She is also working on the recommendations made from the Accessibility Plan released in November. Sayed has led multiple initiatives focused on intersectional social justice, such as taking part and creating an award in the Intersectional Social Justice Essay Awards for KPU English students, which launched in 2022.

People oftentimes tend to look at issues pertaining to women and other intersectionality social issues in silos, Sayed says, instead of addressing the full piece. 

“When we are talking about gender diversity, we need to take an intersectional approach. … So when we talk about experiences of women, as you add layers of marginalization, experiences change and the support systems that we need change,” Sayed says. 

“We want to be able to look at all these areas that we are working on intersectionality so that we can create safer spaces for everyone, and in a way we are mindful.” 

Sayed takes a lot of pride in her education and having the opportunity to do so, as she was the first in her family to pursue post-secondary education. Many women in her family wanted to attend school, but didn’t have the opportunity. This made Sayed feel able to carry this on for the next generation. 

“It means so much to my daughters, to see me doing some of this work and knowing that it was not accessible to the generation before me,” Sayed says. “It’s easy to get frustrated in this world, but sometimes it’s important to remember that we are here because somebody else fought for us before.” 

To many, IWD carries a different meaning, but oftentimes brings up that there is still a long way to go and recognition should carry through year round. For Sayed, IWD means a reminder of the responsibility that comes with it. 

“It’s a privilege to be able to do this work, and just a reminder of the responsibility that we have to carry this work forward,” Sayed says. 

“International Women’s Day means to me shining a light on what women have accomplished as well as how far we still have to go,” Gurm says. 

While Bige doesn’t have a reflection of IWD, she says it helps recognize women’s achievements and movements further. 

“I don’t necessarily always conform to nationally recognized days of recognition, because I would interrogate the reason for recognition,” Bige says. “But celebrating any day of the leap is important.” 

McGill says IWD is a time to reflect on the women before and who walk alongside us, where we are today, and an appreciation for people from around the world, their journeys, and voices. 

“It is a celebration of where we’ve been, where we are today, and where we have so many opportunities to go and have our voices heard. It is a proud time,” McGill says. 

Moving forward at KPU, Harrison says she would like to see a female president at the institution one day. 

“Not to say our current president hasn’t done a wonderful job, he really has. But I think he would be really excited at that prospect too,” Harrison says. “It’s really important that we continue to break that glass ceiling and ensure that we give women internal mobility within the institution.”