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The Graduate Centre for Academic Communication (GCAC) is offering a number of courses beginning in late October that might be of interest, including:
All of GCAC’s free, non-credit courses run for two hours a week for 3-6 weeks (plus optional tutorials and individual appointments in most courses). Students can use this link to register for up to two courses this session: https://folio.utoronto.ca/students/Workflows/Detail/175
📢 CIHR Institute of Gender and Health Trainee Speaker Series (2025–2026)
Join us for the CIHR IGH Trainee Speaker Series, a monthly virtual event featuring trainee-led workshops and presentations exploring sex, gender, and health. Hosted by the University of Toronto Chapter, this series provides an interdisciplinary platform for emerging scholars to share their work at any stage, whether early project ideation, methodological planning, or completed studies. On November 12th, join us as we hear from Simran Bansal, who will be presenting a workshop titled "Exploring Gendered Experiences of Family Caregivers of People Living with Dementia".
Monthly Workshops | October 2025 – May 2026
🕛 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM (ET)
📍 Virtual via Zoom
💰 Free | Registration Required
Each session includes a 30–40 minute presentation followed by a live Q&A and discussion. Topics span a range of disciplines and methodologies but all center sex and/or gender-based analysis in health research.
🔗 Full speaker lineup and registration details available on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/1545130259199?aff=oddtdtcreator
Who Should Attend:
Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research staff, faculty, and anyone interested in sex- and gender-based approaches in health research.
Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with cutting-edge trainee-led research and expand your knowledge of SGBA+ in health science.
With the new academic year well underway, we here at the Health Sciences Writing Centre are excited to welcome new and familiar faces as our regular programming resumes and new possibilities—not to mention deadlines!—stretch over the horizon. Our appointment calendar is once again filling up; Inked, our graduate student writing group, is back in session; and soon we’ll be offering a host of new workshops to nourish your thinking and writing here at U of T and beyond.
Over the summer, Dr. Boba Samuels stepped back into her role as the centre’s Director after a well-earned sabbatical. We were fortunate to have Dr. Michael Cournoyea serve as Acting Director in Boba’s absence over the winter term, capping off a year where our centre solidified its reputation as a unique contributor to the field of writing pedagogy and research in the ever-shifting age of Generative AI.
That work follows us into the 2025-2026 academic year, where we’ll continue expanding our inquiries into students’ use of GenAI and its implications for writing centre instruction and teaching and learning more broadly. We’re also welcoming two new instructors to our team, Monica Gagnon and Emily Maggiacomo, whose respective backgrounds in Social and Behavioural Health and Disability Studies further enrich the range of supports we offer to students across the health sciences.
Stay tuned: we have much more in store!
from Boba Samuels, HSWC Director
On May 31, 2025, our research team of Joel Benabu, Marvin Lam, Danielle Martek, and myself (Boba), led by Michael Cournoyea, facilitated a workshop at the annual conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing, held at George Brown's beautiful waterfront campus. We presented a summary of our work this year on asking students about their use of genAI and creating policy guidelines, and we led participants through small group discussions about challenging scenarios based on our experiences in 1:1 sessions with students. Our presentation was well received, and we all found it helpful to share the discussions we've been having at our centre with other Canadian writing instructors.
Many thanks to the team who participated and Michael for leading! It was a real pleasure to work together to create our presentation.
I look forward to future collaborations and research amongst our group!
On May 27th, 2025, the HSWC convened over thirty faculty members, instructors, program administrators, and leaders from across University of Toronto’s health sciences faculties for its inaugural Symposium on Generative AI in Health Sciences Writing & Assessment. Generously supported by the Council of Health Sciences, and facilitated by Dr. Boba Samuels and Dr. Michael Cournoyea, the symposium aimed to:
Build cross-disciplinary networks to discuss the impact of Generative AI on academic programs, teaching, and learning.
Consider guidelines, program adaptations, and policies for AI-assisted health sciences education.
Explore transparency and accountability in AI decision-making.
Assess changes in high-stakes writing (e.g., comprehensive exams, grants) and possible adaptation strategies.
Our attendees’ overwhelmingly positive feedback suggests that our symposium was a success on these fronts. The Faculty of Information’s Learning Hub, our home for the day, was abuzz with rich discussion punctuated by provocations and insights drawn from across our respective fields of practice.
Michael and Boba share their opening remarks
In designing and framing the day's activities, Boba and Michael took cues from the University of Calgary’s Sarah Eaton (2025), who advocates for a “wraparound approach” to tackling both the tensions and possibilities of Generative AI—a model of inquiry that involves multiple stakeholders who bring a range of perspectives. That diversity is both a source of vitality and, as Michael reminded us in his opening remarks, the reason GenAI workshops can often be so difficult. Convening an interdisciplinary group means inviting diverse literacies, ethical stances, and learning contexts into the same room. For some, GenAI poses an existential threat: an “animal we can’t control,” as one attendee put it. For others, these tools are already making academic life richer, presenting opportunities to refine and streamline practice.
What also makes GenAI workshops challenging is that discussions are easily abstracted from the contexts of teaching and research practice. Our own growing data on students’ engagement with AI tools illuminates a range of uses: from understanding an assignment to brainstorming ideas, from summarizing readings to polishing a draft of written work. Eaton reminds us that the purpose of interrogating these practices is to “cultivat[e] ethical decision-making rather than pursuing an unwinnable academic integrity ‘arms race’ of detection and punishment.” Such was our intention, too, as we invited colleagues to discuss both ethical tensions and pedagogical possibilities grounded in real-life experience.
“Discussion,” for many participants, is precisely what made our event so generative—the sentiment echoing across their reflections on the day. Interdisciplinary, small group discussions animated the morning sessions, as new and familiar colleagues grappled with questions related to LLM-generated writing in high-stakes contexts like admissions, grant writing, and publication, as well as GenAI’s evolving implications for assessment, pedagogy, and policy. Reconvening as a full group in the afternoon, our discussion was anchored by case studies that reflect some of the central tensions and paradoxes texturing the current landscape: an accomplished student’s article flagged for undisclosed AI use several months post-publication; an instructor who crafts clinical simulations using Copilot that, for better or worse, reflect discriminatory practices; a graduate seminar enlivened by students’ improved comprehension and fluency thanks to AI-generated roadmaps of challenging readings. There are no simple solutions to these puzzles. As one attendee said, “I think you can argue on both sides.”
Colleagues engage in small group discussions to surface ethical tensions and pedagogical possibilities
As well as offering concrete provocations, we also invited participants to get their feet wet and their hands dirty by making use of tools like CoPilot and Otter.ai in their discussions. We did, too: the Symposium’s skeleton was partly drawn and fleshed out using similar tools. Asked at the close of the day whether they played in the proverbial sandbox, nearly every participant raised their hand. “That’s frighteningly good,” someone said of Otter.ai’s rendering of their group’s conversation. “Maybe it’s not as big of a problem as we really thought.”
If one refrain best captures the spirit of our collective deliberation it may be this, echoed over and over: “I hadn’t even thought of that.” One attendee shared that they especially “enjoyed the camaraderie of mixed health sciences groups”—a rarity in an increasingly siloed and splintered ecosystem. For us, that means we accomplished what we hoped for by bringing different voices and experiences to the same table. If another phrase best summarizes the feedback we received afterwards it’s that “future sessions would be welcome.” “This could be a multi-day event,” one colleague suggested. We think so, too, and we hope to reconvene sooner rather than later.
Reference
Eaton, S. E. (2025). A Wraparound Approach to Academic Integrity: Centering Students in the Postplagiarism Era (April 20, 2025). SSRN. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5223911
Dr. Boba Samuels, Director of the Health Sciences Writing Centre, is on research leave until July 1, 2025. Dr. Michael Cournoyea is serving as Acting Director during this period. Please contact Michael at hswriting@utoronto.ca.
We also welcome Ty Walkland to the HSWC as our administrative assistant starting January 1, 2025. We look forward to Ty’s experience and support this year!
Dr. Boba Samuels has returned from her research leave and can be contacted for any questions or concerns at boba.samuels@utoronto.ca. We sincerely thank Roz Spaffod for her exceptional work as acting director of the Health Sciences Writing Centre.
Dr. Boba Samuels, Director of the Health Sciences Writing Centre, is on research leave until July 2024; Roz Spafford is serving as Acting Director in her absence. Please contact Roz at roz.spafford@utoronto.ca with any questions or concerns.
The Health Sciences Writing Centre opened its doors in 1994, and we have been teaching students to write more effectively ever since. Click on this article about us, and come for an appointment so you can join the thousands of students we’ve helped!
On April 17, 2020 the University of Toronto Writing Centres Directors will hold a PD session celebrating the HSWC’s 25th anniversary and looking ahead to the future of writing centre work.
Addendum: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all in-person teaching was moved online in March 2020, and our celebration was cancelled.
We implemented a new online scheduling system in September 2018! Click under "Appointments" and the link to "Make an Appointment." ALL students need to register for an account, even if you have been to the HSCW before. If you have questions, please contact the Director of the HSWC, Dr. Boba Samuels, at boba.samuels@utoronto.ca.