Do you feel you have enjoyed your studies of literature but are not sure what to do after graduation? You have acquired many valuable skills, the ability to read and write and think, plus a capacity to learn and judge and express, but wonder how to adapt these to a career? If so, an alumni mentor may be valuable.
In partnership with the office of Development and Alumni Relations, the Department of English at UTSC would like to invite you to take part in the Leadership Alumni Mentorship Program. It is one-to-one student-to-alumni mentorship initiative that allows students the opportunity to tap into the vast professional experience of our UTSC alumni.
To learn more about the program and apply a student mentee, visit the website below:
www.utsc.utoronto.ca/alumni/utsc-partners-leadership-alumni-mentorship-program
The application period is currently open for the 2021-2022 year, and the deadline to apply is July 31st.
Our Alumni Mentors (2021-22)
Below you can find information on the alumni mentors who you could be matched with as part of this year's program:
Nana Frimpong
Filmmaker and graduate student in film studies
Nana graduated from the English Department at UTSC in 2019. While an undergraduate student, she hosted the fifth annual TEDx conference, served as Vice-President Equity of the students’ union, and created the online and print photo journal, Maya, to honour women storytellers. She is currently an MFA Candidate in the Film and Television Production program at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). Nana regularly moderates conversations with filmmakers through SCA’s “Outside the [Box]Office” programming, most recently speaking with directors Amma Asante, Garrett Bradley, Kris Bowers, and Ben Proudfoot, to name a few. This year, Nana co-wrote the script, Radical Joy, which was selected and made in a USC advanced class. This fall, Nana will direct her thesis film, Healing in Colour, about the personal lives and careers of Black visual artists, Dr. Synthia St. James and Victoria Cassinova, and their pursuit to heal themselves and their communities through art. Her latest project, Marigold, which she produced, will be out later this year. At USC, Nana is a George Lucas Scholar and the recipient of the John Huston Scholarship for Directing.
Zahra Khosroshahi
Postdoctoral Fellow in film studies
After graduating from UTSC, Zahra completed a Master’s Degree in English Literary Studies at the University of York in the UK where she focused on Renaissance Literature and Drama. She completed her doctorate at the University of East Anglia, (UK) working on prominent Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad’s cinema as a gateway into important discussions around gender, femininity and the taboo. Zahra is now a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow here at University of Toronto. Her research explores how film challenges systems of power, and how filmmaking specifically functions as a form of resistance in Iran. She is currently working on a forthcoming monograph Iranian Women Filmmakers: A Cinema of Resistance (Edinburgh University Press), and her publications appear in a number of leading journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Frames Cinema Journal and Feminist Media Histories. In addition to her scholarship, Zahra is dedicated to disseminating her research outside of academia. During the gap year in between undergrad and graduate school, she completed a postgraduate certificate in Public Relations and Corporate Communications, and that experience made her start thinking differently about the role of media and invited her to explore different writing styles; skills she continues to use towards her freelance writing today.
Kerthiga Manokumar
Teacher and principal
Kerthiga completed her Honours Bachelor of Arts at UofT Scarborough in 2011, with a Specialist degree in English Literature and Minor in History. She then earned her Master of Teaching degree from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in 2013. She has been a Secondary School teacher in the York Region District School Board since 2014 and co-founder and Director at Step Up Academy of Learning since 2012. This year, Kerthiga has expanded the outreach of Step Up Academy to online learning and has been working with families all across Canada and the United States. She has also added to her portfolio the Principal role at Profectus Academy of Toronto.
Anna Sullivan
Marketing coordinator
Anna graduated from UTSC in 2014, with an English and Philosophy double major. She also completed an M.A. in English Literature from York University in 2015 and a Publishing certificate from Ryerson’s Chang School of Continuing Education in 2016. After completing academia, she followed her passion and pursued work in the publishing industry. While completing her certificate at Ryerson she secured two back-to-back internships at Penguin Random House Canada where she got the opportunity to work with big name authors like Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood and contribute to advertising campaigns for David Chariandy and Jodi Picoult among many others. She works as a Marketing Coordinator for Harlequin, where she spends her days hunting down trends, building campaigns, and finding new and creative ways to show off her books. Anna is currently working on a blockbuster marketing campaign for #1 New York Times bestselling author Robyn Carr’s the Virgin River series — which is now a smash-hit Netflix TV series. She feels lucky to have a job that pushes her to think creatively every day and she commends Harlequin for their amazing workplace culture. But she knows that making it into any industry is hard work, over the last couple years she has honed her networking and relationship-building skills to her advantage, skills she now passes on to her student mentees. Anna is excited to continue finding her voice in the industry and helping others do the same.
Ann Gagné
Educational Developer
Ann first graduated from UTSC in physical inorganic chemistry and worked in the geo-chemical field for almost a decade. However, her passion from a young age was always English literature and teaching so she returned to UTSC to complete her English degree before pursuing a Master’s degree in English at York University and PhD in Victorian literature at Western University. Her dissertation focused on the representation of tactility in Victorian literature and she can attribute her love of nineteenth-century literature to Professor Christine Bolus-Reichert. Professor Bolus-Reichert’s Romantics course along with Professor Andrew Patenall’s courses, which she took as an undergraduate, inspired Ann to go to graduate school.
Ann has been teaching English literature and working in post-secondary institutions for more than a decade. She is currently the Educational Developer (Universal Design for Learning) at the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre at the University of Toronto-Mississauga where she supports inclusive curriculum development and accessible pedagogy. Previously she was a Curriculum and Instructional Design Consultant at Durham College and a program coordinator for applied arts programs at Seneca College. How students interact with course material and the classroom environment is a theme that carries from her teaching practice and work to her scholarly research. Her present research looks at the intersection of tactility and education in in-person and online course delivery. She has been published in The Hardy Review, Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, MAI:Feminism & Visual Culture Journal, and Response: The Journal of Popular and American Culture.
Charmaine D'Souza
Teacher
Biography forthcoming!
Joyce Dusenbury
Retired teacher
Biography forthcoming!
Please feel free to contact Prof. Maria Assif if you have questions about this opportunity!