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Gerontology students receive Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarship
Congratulations to doctoral student Letitia Zhu and master鈥檚 student Alex Dong on receiving Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarships!
"My doctoral research focuses on older adults with mobility challenges living in multi-unit rental housing in Metro Vancouver and explores how their home and building environments shape accessibility, safety, independence, and belonging. Using a community-engaged research approach, my work aims to better understand older adults鈥� lived experiences and bring their voices into conversations about inclusive housing design. I am also exploring how virtual reality can be used as a participatory, visual, and immersive tool to help older adults identify accessibility barriers and share spatial experiences that may be difficult to describe through interviews alone. By recreating everyday environmental challenges in VR, this research may also help decisionmakers better understand and more closely experience the barriers older adults encounter in multi-unit rental housing.
The SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship will support my data collection, data analysis, and continued engagement with older adults and community partners. I hope this research will offer practical insights for more accessible housing design and policy, while also contributing to more reciprocal and participatory research methods that recognize older adults鈥� lived experiences as valuable knowledge and enable them to participate meaningfully in design decisions that affect their everyday lives. More broadly, this work aims to contribute to housing environments that better support older adults鈥� dignity, autonomy, independence, and everyday participation," says Zhu.
Master鈥檚 student Alex Dong also received a Canada Graduate Research Scholarship for her research, 鈥淭he Role of the Socio-Physical Environment in the Green Care Farm Model in Enhancing Functioning and Well-Being of People Living with Dementia in a Care Community.鈥�
These scholarships recognize Letitia and Alex鈥檚 dedication to advancing research in aging and their commitment to making meaningful contributions to the lives and well-being of older adults.