Tizazu Mekonnen
Director, IBET PhD Project
The IBET PhD Project supports Black and Indigenous PhD students through funding, mentorship, and community support.
Pursuing a PhD in engineering or computer science as an Indigenous or Black student in Canada often means navigating a landscape where few peers or faculty members share your background or lived experiences. This lack of representation can be alienating and isolating. This, coupled with the steep financial burden, can make the journey even more daunting. It might even be enough to stop you from pursuing a career in STEM. The Indigenous and Black Engineering and Technology (IBET) PhD Project was created to combat these issues and helps post-graduate students from these underrepresented groups navigate the road to their PhD with funding, mentorship, and community support.
IBET Momentum fellowships are available to vetted candidates who self-identify as Indigenous or Black Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are PhD students studying at one of 18 Canadian partner universities. Recipients receive $30,000 annually for four years. Each fellow is also paired with a series of mentors from industry and academia, and has opportunities to connect with other Momentum fellowship recipients. They also have access to funding through Mitacs, a national not-for-profit that liaises between industry and academia, via a three to one matching ratio for industry funding and IBET Connect Award, a $9,000 grant to enable IBET fellows to study with a researcher at another institution, and forthcoming mentor support.
Mediaplanet chatted with Tizazu Mekonnen (Director of the IBET PhD Project, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, and Canada Research Chair [Tier II] in Sustainable Multiphase Polymers) and Christopher Dixon, Senior Advisor of Strategic Partnerships at Mitacs, to learn more about IBET and the partnerships driving it.
How did the IBET PhD Project come about?
Tizazu Mekonnen: After [the murder of] George Floyd in Minnesota, there was activity in the U.S. and in Canada that got us talking about diversity in engineering at the University of Waterloo. For example, we had no Indigenous professors in the Faculty of Engineering. That doesn’t reflect the fact that 4.8 per cent of the population in Canada is Indigenous. One way to mitigate the imbalance is to train more Indigenous and Black Canadians to a PhD level. We could try to hire one or two, but that’s a short-term solution. A long-term solution is to train at a large scale so we have a higher capacity.
How did the project come to include so many partner universities?
TM: Waterloo thought, “Why try to do this alone? Why not as a community, with partners?” So we reached out to other universities. They were all very excited. We continued the conversation to design what the program would look like, how we were going to launch it, and what key metrics and offerings we’d have. But from right out the gate, we wanted to make it pan-Canadian. We launched in January 2021 [with six partner universities], but very quickly other universities wanted to participate. So we currently have 18 universities as part of this partnership.
Why is the IBET PhD Project so important?
Christopher Dixon: When you’re in a field like engineering and you have people to look up to who have the same learned experiences as you do, a mentor who is a Black or Indigenous person who has gone through the whole PhD process and now has a job as a professor or an academic, it gives you motivation. It helps you to realize, “Yes, I can do it, just like these people have!”
Why is the project so important to you on a personal level?
CD: From an organizational standpoint, we have a whole inclusive innovation action plan [that aligns with the goals of IBET]. As someone who was the only Black student in my entire department, at the undergrad and graduate levels, I think it’s important to have a program that will create opportunities for more people from these underrepresented groups, who can then go on to be role models for those who come after them.
If you or someone you know is eligible for an IBET Momentum fellowship, or if you’d like to become involved with the mentorship program, visit ibetphd.ca/partners to learn more.
