The Doctoral Student Association is structured to serve our community of PhDs while supporting the needs of its individuals.
The DSA serves as an organizing structure to foster our community of PhD students while serving the needs of its individual members. The DSA communicates with the Faculty, other university bodies, students, and interested individuals to represent the voices of current PhD students involved in studies at the iSchool at the University of British Columbia.
Our mission is five-fold:
- to ensure that each student maintains their sense of agency, while they cooperate with our community, and that;
- there is a symmetry of respect in the relationships between each member.
- To do so, we remain aware of the importance of each other’s contributions to the community, such as our research interests and non-academic commitments.
- We are also committed to a reflexivity, so that our community continuously:
a) reflects on whether we are serving our own group’s purpose;
b) while reflecting on whether we are respectful towards non-members and their groups. - Finally, we are a community that welcomes people from diverse backgrounds, especially in the case of visiting or international students, and will work to build a sense of common-ground, or mutuality, while still respecting any differences amongst ourselves.