Building a community of student researchers

Dr. Katie Aitken is helping students develop research skills essential to being successful in their future careers, while building research capacity in the Yukon. She is supporting students to create and run their own research projects by teaching them skills like data management, planning, writing and reporting.

This type of research benefits students by helping them engage positively with research, seek future job opportunities, engage in workshops, and attend conferences and seminars. It also builds capacity for research to be done by Yukoners in communities throughout the territory. Historically research has been done predominantly by outsiders, making it difficult to establish relationships in their short visit and making the results less accessible to locals. Dr. Aitken hopes to build a generation of local researchers who will contribute to better understanding the issues in our own territory.

Dr. Aitken is able to hire her students with the help of the Scholarly Activity Grant by paying for their wages. She has participated in her own research that involves the ecology of forest bird communities, specifically those that nest in cavities in trees. Dr. Aitken often supervises students through directed studies. Learn more about student research opportunities!

Photo caption: Tree swallow nestlings in a monitored nest box in the Whitehorse area