OUR MISSION
The OISE Care Collective (formerly the Ph.D. Caring & Sharing Collective) is a network of graduate students that seeks to promote greater community care in academia. We understand collective care as graduate students sharing what we’ve learned with one another (i.e. academic and career-related resources) to speak back to the hidden curriculum of grad school and academia.
Recognizing that academic spaces can be quite hierarchical and reproduce traits of white supremacy culture (Jones & Okun, 2001) like urgency, hyper-competitiveness, and perfectionism, our group tries to create room for more reciprocity, vulnerability, and non-mastery. Specifically, we try to model mutuality through a peer-generated resource that we created in 2020 that seeks to help Ph.D. students and candidates in the department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning. We also try to mobilize vulnerability and non-mastery by creating events where graduate students across departments can come together in space of mutual learning and support (e.g. through speaker series, career exploration events, socials etc.).
WHAT DO WE DO?
We work collaboratively to compile academic, social, and career-related resources for graduate students on our Instagram and in our CTL Ph.D. peer support guide.
We work collaboratively to host community and knowledge-sharing events (e.g. socials, speaker series, career exploration events, community orientation etc.)
HOW DID WE GET STARTED?
This care collective took root in 2020 as a small group of Ph.D. students (The Ph.D. Caring & Sharing Collective). We came together to discuss what might help us in our doctoral journey. Our group has since expanded to be open to Ph.D., Ed.D., M.A., M.Ed., and MT students and postdocs across OISE departments, who are interested in challenging the hidden curriculum of academia and who want to foster more tender, supportive academic communities. We still provide resources related to the CTL department and for Ph.D. students; however, we welcome participation from community-minded individuals in LHAE, SJE, APHD and all of our events are open to M.Ed., M.A. and MT students as well. We made this decision because we realized that a lot of Master students were craving similar resources and events. To better communicate that all OISE graduate students and postdocs are welcome in this collective, we changed our name from the Ph.D. Caring & Sharing Collective to the OISE Care Collective in August 2023.
HOW ARE WE ORGANIZED?
We're a student-led group that has core members who plan our initiatives and develop resources, volunteer support members who help our leadership team, and members at large who access our resources and show up at our events.
Meet our core members here.
CORE MEMBERS
A collective leader (or core member) for the OISE Care Collective is someone who helps with planning activities, such as maintaining student resources (our website), advertising events, meeting with other members to plan events, and developing ideas. We have a small team of core members.
PERIPHERY MEMBERS
A support member (or periphery member) is someone who volunteers occasionally, but isn’t involved in the larger behind the scenes planning. For example, if someone volunteers to be a host for a social event but isn’t involved in the bigger planning, they are a support member. This is a great role for someone who wants to be involved but doesn’t have a lot of time to attend meetings and isn’t interested in planning. We will have calls for support members throughout the year.
MEMBERS AT LARGE
A member at large (general member) is someone who attends our events or uses our resources, so they are part of our community, but do not have the capacity to volunteer. You don’t need to reach out and express interest to be considered a member at large.
If you are interested in getting involved, read about upcoming roles here!
