The Graduate and Postdoctoral Education Office works within the Office of Vice Dean, Research and the Office of Vice Dean, Education in the Faculty of Medicine. We promote the values of respect, integrity, compassion, collaboration and equity that we all share in the Faculty of Medicine. Our team’s values reflect who we are and provide the foundation for how we work together. We achieve our mission through courage, collaboration, wellbeing, and accountability.
TEAM VISION
Transforming health for everyone through quality graduate and postdoctoral education that is equitable, inclusive, and sustainable.
TEAM MISSION
We work collaboratively to offer informed and holistic support and to enhance nurturing research and learning environments, empowering graduate and postdoctoral trainees in the Faculty of Medicine to thrive.
Team values
Courage: Our team is a safe space to think ambitiously, push boundaries, and explore new ideas. We encourage self-reflection, allow vulnerability, and cultivate personal and team resilience.
Collaboration: We work in partnership across the Faculty of Medicine and the university to bring together diverse ideas, offer mutual benefit, and co-create solutions.
Wellbeing: Wellbeing encompasses attention to individual needs within societal and environmental contexts. It lays the foundation for sustained excellence, productivity, and success.
Accountability: We foster transparent decision-making within an ethical framework that is built on shared values and trust. We acknowledge responsibility to ourselves, each other, and those we serve.
Our team
For all enquiries, please contact our office at med.gradpostdoc@ubc.ca
Associate Dean, Graduate & Postdoctoral Education
TBD
Manager, Graduate & Postdoctoral Education
Richa Sharma (she/her) richag.sharma@ubc.ca
Richa’s role focuses on communication, community engagement and professional development to improve the graduate trainee experience. Her portfolio includes coordinating centralized events such as the annual research trainee day, the administration and adjudication of awards and scholarships, and managing policies & procedures. She is also responsible for the strategic, operational and administrative organization of the GPE office. Richa holds a Master’s in Environmental Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University.
Wellbeing Support Coordinator, Graduate & Postdoctoral Education
Alisha Lettman (she/they) alisha.lettman@ubc.ca
Alisha’s role is to promote mental health literacy and wellbeing initiatives across the Faculty of Medicine. Her portfolio manages the Healthy Environment in Academic Research Teams (HEART) program, peer-mentorship programs for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and programming aligned with UBC-wide campaigns including Move & THRIVE months. Alisha holds a Bachelor’s in Interdisciplinary Studies and is an alumnus of UBC.
Administrative Coordinator, Graduate & Postdoctoral Education
Yvette Shen (she/her) yvette.shen@ubc.ca
Yvette Shen is the Administrative Coordinator in the Graduate & Postdoctoral Education Office and administratively supports all projects and initiatives in our office. Yvette studied in China, Germany and Canada, and holds a BCOM with Honors degree and a MBA from UBC.
Land acknowledgement
The UBC Vancouver campus and UBC’s Faculty of Medicine Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Education is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people. The faculty’s teaching & learning sites also span the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, the Squamish, Stó:lō, Stz’uminus, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, among others.
What this means is that our office, and UBC more broadly, is committed to a respectful relationship with Indigenous communities. When we acknowledge the land in this manner, we recognize Indigenous communities’ longstanding ties with, and rightful claims to, this place. It is an expression of respect for their traditional protocol of acknowledging the land, and it reflects UBC’s commitment to being an active accomplice in the ongoing pursuit of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.
For millennia, the Musqueam people have inhabited the territory we call UBC Vancouver. While UBC developed educational opportunities throughout the 20th century, Aboriginal peoples were largely excluded from those privileges. At times, researchers would extract information from Indigenous communities and publish it for their benefit without giving back to the community. We acknowledge that academia has been a tool of colonization, appropriation, and oppression. UBC has begun the process of reforming this relationship to become a respectful, mutually beneficial one. Today, the Faculty of Medicine has dedicated resources, staff and learning opportunities that celebrate the rich cultures of First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples in Canada and recognize the work needed to address long term impacts of Settler colonialism.
All members of the Faculty of Medicine community are invited into this pursuit. No matter where you come from, you now rely on this place. You will be changed by this place, and you will change this place by your presence. We all have a different role to play to advance reconciliation and to build strong relationships with Indigenous Peoples. Your family’s history, social context, and presence on these lands is unique – some of us are multi-generational European settlers, some have arrived as refugees, some are Indigenous to a place outside of Canada, some have ancestors who were brought through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, some arrived through economic coercion – but most of us are here to advance our social mobility. To quote David Moscrop, “To be a settler is to be bound up in the social, political, cultural and economic structures that both make Canada possible and make it colonial.” Settlers benefit from and recreate “system[s] of colonialization through extraction, marginalization, abuse and violence — even if you face” other types of marginalization.
A land acknowledgment becomes performative when we mistake it for the actual work of reconciliation. During a land acknowledgment, we as settlers are meant to be unsettled and uncomfortable. We are meant to recognize our own power and position within a colonial state – rather than assuming our presence to be default, neutral or natural. We are meant to reflect upon our relationship to this place, and the lasting impacts of colonialism on the social, cultural and ecological landscapes we live in. We, as settlers, are meant to reflect on the ways we benefit from the ongoing oppression Indigenous communities experience in Canada. We are meant to reflect on our role in decolonization – our role in changing these conditions.
We invite you to consider the ways you can honor, respect and support the self-determination efforts of the many Indigenous communities you will encounter throughout your time here at UBC. We invite you to reflect on how your work as a researcher interacts with Indigenous issues locally and globally. And we invite you to learn about the history and futures of First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples in the places you work and live, and to respectfully seek out ways to enact reciprocity to these communities and to these places. For those of you who come from an environment of marginalization and oppression, we invite you to recognize that solidarity can be fostered in recognition of the common struggles Indigenous Peoples and other historically, persistently, or systematically marginalized groups face.