Sarah Lappin & Maddox Nelles

More Than Medicine: Psychosocial and Peer-based Approaches to Understanding and Affirming Transgender Identity in Children and Youth

Program: Child Studies and Social Work

Supervisor: Gio Dolecore

On January 31, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced her government's intentions to introduce legislation that would drastically limit gender-affirming care for transgender youth. 

Mount Royal students Sarah Lappin and Maddox Nelles were deep into a project exploring a historical timeline of the diagnosis of gender dysphoria when the announcement was made. 

The pair immediately shifted gears into a new project examining and collecting scholarly evidence arguing why gender-affirming care should be supported, specifically focusing on psychosocial approaches that did not include medical care. 

 That meant specifically examining social aspects of gender-affirming care, such as letting people use their preferred name and pronouns or having places of support online. 

Lappin and Nelles felt this was a gap in the Canadian context that should be explored, especially in light of these recent developments. 

Additionally, it was a topic that hit close to home for both of them. “As both members of the LGBTQ+ community and people who know transgender individuals, it was important to get some research out there and show, in the context of this proposed legislation in Alberta, how dangerous it could be for transgender people,” Nelles says. 

Lappin continues, “It was clear to me that this proposed legislation was not rooted in evidence or research. There is a total absence of it being mentioned, which is why I wanted to see the research myself.” The importance of this topic, especially within the Alberta context as harmful legislation looms over the province, meant that communicating their findings was a priority for the pair. 

They set their sights on Research and Scholarship Days to disseminate their research. However, with the announcement being made on January 31 and Research and Scholarship Days starting in late March, it meant there would be a tight turnaround for this project. 

A two-month timeframe meant a lot of work needed to be done. Lappin and Nelles decided to focus on producing a literature review, finding evidence through a semi-structured search strategy. The work was realistic within their timeframe and could still produce insights and evidence for gender-affirming care that could be easily disseminated. 

They searched through ten scholarly databases, scanning titles and abstracts for works that matched their search criteria, eventually gathering a pool of evidence that supported the use of gender-affirming care. 

It was a tall task. Thankfully for Lappin, research was not a process she was unfamiliar with, having been immersed in research since high school. Lappin’s experiences include working with Alberta Health Services as a patient advisor and involvement in research projects with the University of Alberta and Brock University. “I was trained in community-based participatory research and participatory action research…As a young person who has accessed mental health services and had lived experiences with mental health, I worked with researchers to inform their research,” Lappin says. This included helping with interview questions, writing, and analyzing data, which was a boon for her Research and Scholarship Days efforts. 

Nelles notes that this process will be invaluable as he goes through the rest of his program and eventually into graduate school. However, being able to research a topic he was invested in was the most valuable part of the experience. “I think the most important part for me was to have the support to research an issue that really matters to me…Having the support to do what we are supposed to do as social workers. Supporting a marginalized community is an important professional and personal opportunity,” Nelles says. 

Even though Research and Scholarship Days are over, Lappin and Nelles are still committed to spreading the word about their research and communicating it to Albertans.  

Kobe Tulloch, Julie Patton & Connor Balsillie

Is Home Here?

Program: Journalism & Digital Media

Supervisor: Patti Edgar

On September 16, 2023, Calgary City Council approved the city’s housing strategy dubbed Home is Here. A proposed plan to help deal with the ongoing housing crisis. The plan outlines 98 action items that will work to achieve the plan's five desired outcomes. 

The city released a large PDF document outlining the plan, but for Mount Royal journalism students Kobe Tulloch, Julie Patton and Connor Balsillie, that wasn’t enough. For such a vital issue that affects everyone in the city, they wanted to break down the plan and make it more digestible for the everyday Calgarian.

This resulted in their multimedia project titled Is Home Here? consisting of a multimedia website featuring interviews with affected sources representing several sides of the housing crisis, a video explainer, and infographics. The objective is to clearly explain to Calgarians how the plan will affect them and hopefully make the documents released by the city more comprehensible and the jargon easier to parse.

The group explored three perspectives on the housing crisis: The renter, the homeowner, and the unhoused. The group wanted to give a voice to these perspectives and let other Calgarians see the crisis from multiple angles.

As people who have lived experiences with the housing crisis, the proposed plan was the catalyst that prompted the group to take up this research project, as Tulloch and Balsillie explain. “I [Tulloch] rent in Calgary, and that is getting harder and harder. I’m one of many students who have heard conceptually about the city’s housing crisis and that a plan had been announced to deal with it.”

Balsillie continues by saying, “I thought it would be a good time to work on a project about housing...I could use my position as someone who didn’t know that much about housing and use that to my advantage to help everyday Calgarians.”

For the fourth-year journalism students, this was the perfect opportunity to test their creative talents and research skills. Everyone focused on their area of interest for creating the website, with Julie handling the writing, Connor working on infographics, and Kobe designing the layout of the website itself.

It also involved extensive hands-on experience, with each group member conducting interviews and attending in-person info sessions organized by the city. Despite the excellent group dynamic, this on-the-ground experience still caused some anxiety and frustration.

Patton says that she set up the interviews and that “I’ve never had so much trouble finding people before. People did not want to talk about this. It was a lot of reaching out to someone, and then they’d pass me to someone else, and it was a lot of back and forth repeating that. It took a lot of time, but it brought us to some amazing people.” The struggle to find sources was contrasted by their experiences at the city info sessions, where people were eager to speak with them on this topic

Ultimately, the group found through this hunt and the info sessions that this was a topic Calgarians wanted to have their voices heard on. Since the completion of the Is Home Here? website, frustrations and controversy have continued to flare as the city considers blanket rezoning for Calgary, making this research project even more timely.

While the three journalism students wanted to spread the word about this important topic, they also wanted to share this with the Mount Royal community. Patton notes that it was always their goal to present at Research and Scholarship Days, especially with how this issue impacts students.

Overall, the group felt it was a rewarding experience, with Balsillie saying, “Talking to citizens, ordinary Calgarians, and talking about their concerns was really enjoyable. I felt fulfilled and satisfied after doing that.” While creating a memorable presentation, the project also provided a resource for Calgarians navigating this complicated issue.

McKenzie Thompson

Sexually exploited youth in care: An integrative review of treatment models and policies

Program: Criminal Justice

Supervisor: Scharie Tavcer

Fourth-year criminal justice student McKenzie Thompson had always had a clear idea of the direction she wanted her university career to take. “Since starting school, I knew I wanted to go into honours, and I initially wanted to look at perceptions of the decriminalization of drugs. That was always my idea,” Thompson says.

That changed when she started working at a youth group home last summer, and her perspective shifted. Seeing and working with vulnerable youth living through difficult situations changed the direction of her research interests, with Thompson saying, “I wanted to look at the problems these youth face, especially because I worked in it. I knew what was going on, how youth felt, and how they were vulnerable.” That led to her project examining sexually exploited youth living in group homes and what treatment models and policies were currently in use.

The research project primarily consisted of an integrative literature review focusing specifically on the Canadian context. Thompson aimed to determine why youth in group homes were more vulnerable to sexual exploitation and what preventative methods group homes could utilize to reduce risk factors.

Interaction with strangers online was identified as one of the biggest factors in youth exploitation, which aligned with her own experiences working in a group home. “We can’t patrol everything youth participate in online 100 per cent. Things can slip through the cracks,” Thompson says. Educating youth in group homes about online interaction and how to spot exploitative behaviour is a big preventative measure.

Furthermore, through the literature review, Thompson determined that trauma-informed care was the most effective measure to reduce risk factors of exploitation. Supportive environments that build trust and allow youth to tell their stories in safe spaces at their own pace was proven to be an effective method of care in Canadian youth group homes.

Through these findings, Thompson hopes her research will be built upon further with stakeholder interviews, both with workers in youth group homes and the youth who live there. Building upon this researcher would ideally inform policy decisions at high levels.

Thompson also notes that this doesn’t just affect youth in group homes. Exploitation of youth through the internet and online interactions can affect anyone. Education in schools would be an important step for youth to develop the skills to recognize exploitative behaviour. This again ties into the importance of building upon this research and informing policymakers.

While this was a topic Thompson was invested in and passionate about, that didn’t make the research process any less intimidating. “This was my first time ever working on a project this big, so it was really daunting going into it,” Thompson says. Support from resources in the library proved invaluable, and the actual act of research is something Thompson says improved her education immensely. “I was unaware of this entire process, and it really helped my writing. Even as a fourth-year student, I thought I knew everything about APA, and I didn’t. I needed to review my work a lot.”

Thompson will continue working with youth as she moves beyond university, continuing to work in a group home this coming summer with Heritage Family Services.

Can You Stand It? Balance Responses to Visual Perturbation in Virtual Reality

Student: Minal Ahuja 

Faculty Advisor: Nick Strzalkowski

Mode of Action of Corynacin, a Novel Bacteriocin against Lactococcus lactis

Student: James La 

Faculty Advisor: Jeella Acedo

The Impact of Landslides on the Genomics of Pacific Salmon: The Downstream Effects on Upstream Populations

Student: Samantha Cassidy 

Faculty Advisor: Sarah Smith

Streamlined Success: Mapping the Morphological Impact of Restoration in Radiant Creek

Student: Pelvain Dhanda, Brock Pearson 

Faculty Advisor: Lynn Moorman

Radiant Creek Land Cover Classification and Change Detection Using GIS

Student: Alfred Jageregger 

Faculty Advisor: Lynn Moorman

GIS Analysis of Stream Restoration Impact

Student: Depanshu Suyal 

Faculty Advisor: Lynn Moorman

Problematic Conical Fossils from the Silurian of Anticosti Island, Quebec: Morphology, Paleoecology, and Evolutionary Relationships

Student: Sarah Newsted, Jessica Faye

Faculty Advisor: Paul Johnston

The Breaking Point" Fragmentation Patterns in Silurian Crinoids

Student: Jasmine Sigurdson 

Faculty Advisor: Paul Johnston

Orientation in the Water Column of Baculites, from Upper Cretaceous, Bearpaw Formation

Student: Thomas Hillis

Faculty Advisor: Paul Johnston

Structural, Optical, and Dielectric Insights to Transparent Integration of PZT for Sensor Application

Student: Frederick Harford

Faculty Advisor: Nicoleta Nedelcu

Reem Amin

Using bimolecular fluorescence complementation to test for protein-protein interactions between ABCG transporters

Program: Biology 

Supervisor: David Bird 

When walking in a park on a rainy day, most people focus on the vibrant greens of the damp foliage, the smell of petrichor hanging in the air, or simply getting out of the rain. They wouldn’t pay any mind to the way the water runs effortlessly off the waxy surface of leaves or wonder why that happens. While that may sound oddly specific, for student researcher Reem Amin, this was a major question for her in the fall of 2022. 

Reem Amin is a fourth-year biology student who is graduating this spring. While working as a research assistant for Dr. David Bird at Mount Royal, she dove into the world of plants and how they work. 

Specifically, she looked at the cuticle, which covers any part of a plant that isn’t comprised of wood. The primary function of the cuticle is repelling water, but there are still knowledge gaps in the scientific community about how the cuticle gains those properties. 

The epidermal cells beneath the top layer of the plant produce the wax components that form the cuticle. So, scientists know how the waxy molecules are made but don’t know the exact method for how they are transported from the epidermal layer to the surface. 

“This is where my research comes in. It is one part of a very large picture,” Amin says. To explore her primary research question, Amin studied four protein transporters that work together somehow to move proteins from the epidermal layer to the cuticle. They are ABGC 11, 12, 18, and 19. 

In the lab, Amin used a technique called bimolecular fluorescence complementation to test for interactions between the four protein transporter subjects to determine which combine to facilitate the creation of the waxy layer on the cuticle. 

It was a lengthy process comprised of various steps needed to prepare the proteins for study under the microscope. It included cloning the proteins, growing them in petri dishes, and performing gel electrophoresis. 

Amin states that while she has no interest in plants, she did like the technical aspects of the project, which proved to be quite rigorous. Amin continued, saying that “there is a whole lot of microscopy. Sometimes 6 hours straight of staring through the microscope, trying to see if there is any fluorescence. It’s a whole lot of lab work.” While challenging, this helped Amin engage in the aspects of research she appreciated the most. 

Apart from being an invigorating journey, the lab work for this project helped provide the practical technical experience needed for working in a lab in the future. Amin learned to perform essential lab work, like making stock solutions and petri dishes from scratch. 

The experience is one that Amin thinks is vital for any student who wishes to work in a lab as part of their career, and says that volunteering and offering their help to professors is a great way to move into research assistant positions. 

As for advice, Amin says that students should not agonize over making mistakes. While students should obviously not make major mistakes like “spilling a hundred-dollar reagent,” the process of making mistakes and asking for help is vital to learning. “ I remember being so apprehensive in my third year when you really start getting into rigorous lab experiences. I was so scared of messing up. But time and time again, my mentors and supervisors said it's ok to mess up. That’s how you learn.”  

Jess Ede and Sara Pauls

Kids in Care: The Impact of Behavioural Intervention Strategies on Success

Program: Child Studies

Supervisor: Monica Pauls 

For Child Studies students Jess Ede and Sara Pauls, their research project was far from a simple assignment on the path toward completing their degree. 

Their research project titled “Kids in Care: The Impact of Behavioural Intervention Strategies on Success” looked at the strategies used by residential care and group housing to help youth transition into adulthood. The project's ultimate goal was gauging their levels of success. 

The majority of youth in these homes have lived within these systems for most of their lives. Many have experienced traumatic events or live with developmental issues. These homes are used to teach them life skills by residing in a household meant to emulate living like an adult. 

Research focusing on this population group was made more meaningful for the pair as they share similar positions working in the field of child and youth care, where they work as counsellors providing emotional support and guidance. 

Their shared job experience wasn’t the only thing that helped make research seem a more promising proposition. Ede’s father used to work for the group Bikers Against Child Abuse. As she recalls, her fathers’ actions inspired her to follow in those footsteps. 

“My dad used to accompany kids going to court who were involved in cases where they had been abused by their parents. I always felt like I wanted to be a part of something like that,” Ede says. Following in those footsteps made the Child Studies program a no-brainer to be a part of. 

Pauls notes her experience at Mount Royal as a valuable step on the path toward her chosen career. “I love this program so much. I’m a big advocate of child studies and the way Mount Royal has created the child and youth care program overall.” Pauls continues saying, “the way the courses are scaffolded is really interesting. The structure allowed us to carry research over from previous semesters.”

Despite all of this, research was intially something they were skeptical jumping into, escpeially Ede. “Going into this class, I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to like research. I know what it is. It’s not for me,’” Ede says. However as they moved through their research and development design class, their teacher and supervisor, Dr. Monica Pauls was there to encoruage them and spread her passion for research and childcare. They both note that Dr. Pauls was so passionate "they were pulled right in. As they went deeper into the process, Dr. Pauls was able to show them how they can make a difference and promote real change. 

The opportunity to work together was also a nice perk to help the research along. The longtime friends found they work nicely together despite being polar opposites. As they describe it, Sara is ordered and responsible, structuring everything nicely and keeping it on time. Jess describes herself as the one that “comes up with some fun ideas” but always has Sara to “make it make sense.” Their personalities meant the collaboration process was smooth, and they could bounce ideas off one another. 

However, despite their investment in the topic and encouragement from ther supervisor, their research results were disheartening to see. 

Four qualitative interviews with staff members at residential care and youth housing initiatives showed that youth exiting those programs had little success transitioning into adult life. Previous literature reviews backed this up, demonstrating gaps in the system. 

Despite this, it leaves Ede and Pauls with hope that their research may help make a difference. While attending Research and Scholarship Days, the process of disseminating their research proved to be an uplifting experience. “It warmed our hearts,” Ede said. While the results of the study were disappointing, talking about it was a big upside. 

Pauls continues saying that the pair is “passionate about breaking the stigma around youth in group housing and letting kids have a voice about their experiences in residential care. Rather than letting others imagine for themselves what it’s like.” 

With one more year left in their program before graduation and their careers ahead of them, this initial research is something they want to see built upon.

Donald W. Golden, Jason Oliemans, Kalindra D. Walls, Eric C. Bennett, Esthevan Machado, Spencer Skaper and Ranita H.K. Manocha

Muscle Weakness in Joint Hypermobility: Contributing Factors and Implications for Improving Strength

Program: Athletic Therapy

Supervisor: Jared Fletcher 

Being flexible is usually considered to be a good thing. However, in the physical sense of flexibility, it can go too far sometimes. Hypermobility disorders are any conditions that allow joints to extend past their normal positions. This is known most commonly through double-jointedness. That benign quirk of the body can sometimes be fatiguing, however. 

That’s where a group of Mount Royal University students from the athletic therapy program come in. They specifically studied a hypermobility condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or HEDS for short. 

HEDS is a disorder that affects the connective tissue of your skin and joints. It can lead to overly flexible joints that cause pain, discomfort, and frequent dislocations. Focusing on this joint problem is specifically where the athletic therapy students come in. 

The team consisted of Donald Golden, Jason Oliemans, Kalindra Walls, Eric Bennett, Esthevan Machado, and Spencer Skaper. The team also had support from Dr. Ranita Manocha from the University of Calgary, who helped gather participants for the project. Initially, the project was spearheaded by Golden, Oliemans, and Walls, with each student overseeing a specific aspect of the study. 

Golden led the research on muscle weakness, how muscle weakness connects to HEDS symptoms, and what the potential causes of muscle weakness would be. Oliemans looked at the energy cost of locomotion and how that differed in someone with HEDS compared to someone without. Finally, Walls started the initial directed readings on this project and handled the quantitative surveys sent out to participants. 

Working from Dr. Jared Fletcher’s lab at Mount Royal, the team steadily grew as students working in the lab joined the project to gain experience, which ultimately proved invaluable for the team, as Golden recounts. 

“We worked as a team in a way that allowed us to actually perform the study and work with as many participants as we ended up having.”

Golden continues saying “we had one person to start the ultrasound, one person to start the patient walking. Everyone got experience in different roles. Everyone was always in a mindset of ‘I want to participate and learn more,’ we all bounced off each other, and I thought it was a nice process.”

The study had many moving parts, with each section of the project needing to gather its own data. Experiments and tests involved using ultrasounds to measure the composition of the muscles, looking at the size of muscles, and measuring the angles of joints in the legs and feet as they had participants walk. 

The main finding was that during walking tests, when the ankle was held in the 90 degrees position, it was much weaker in someone with HEDS. That is an important angle for the ankle when walking, pointing to signs of fatigue and less activity in that particular muscle. 

Golden states that it is a hypothesis based on their results, but the team believes that strength training focusing on the ankle during physical therapy could be implemented in HEDS patients. It could improve muscle strength and alleviate the symptoms of HEDS. 

This was a large project with many moving parts, and Golden says that the team hopes for several academic papers to come out of their work.

Aliya Jomha

“You’ve Got A Friend in Me”: Does Peer Support Help With Depression?

Program: Psychology

Supervisor: Dan Devoe 

Not many students could claim they were in a position similar to Aliya Jomha this past March. As the semester at Mount Royal entered the home stretch before exam season, Jomha was in Montreal helping the Mount Royal Cougars win the U-Sports national championship for women’s hockey. On top of that, she was also preparing her student research presentation for Research and Scholarship Days, which would be happening later in April. 

Jomha’s poster presentation, which focused on analyzing the effects of peer support groups on depression outcomes, was completed while Jomha was travelling from city to city as the Cougars competed in the Canada West playoffs for women’s hockey and ultimately, the U-Sports national championship. 

Trying to coordinate Zoom calls on the bus with Jomha’s coordinator, Dr. Dan Devoe, across time zones and late nights proved challenging as they worked together to bring Jomha’s poster presentation across the goal line.  

However, what would maybe seem like a daunting prospect for many, was second nature to Jomha. As Jomha states, she’s been balancing hockey and school since she was in junior high, and she has always been able to relate to the academic and athletic aspects of being a student.

She recounted that “as the years have gone on, I’ve gotten a lot better with my time management skills, and now that I’m in university and finding what I’m really passionate about, it’s not difficult to make time.” 

While hockey may have been a space Jomha was familiar with, research was a new endeavour. Jomha is wrapping up her second year in psychology, and the work she did for her Research and Scholarship Days poster presentation was the first time she had dived into the world of research. 

“I had done basic research papers in the past, but this is the first time I was looking at sample sizes, dealing with terminology, and having to understand things like ‘what is a bouillon phrase.’ A lot of it was just getting more comfortable reading the literature where the language can be hard to break through sometimes.” 

As a psychology student, Jomha was a part of Dan Devoe’s undergraduate research lab, where he encouraged everyone to participate in Research and Scholarship days, providing his students with research topics they could use as a starting point. 

Jomha picked the topic of peer support groups and their ability to provide positive outcomes in depression, stating that “I think everyone knows someone that struggles with depression. It aligns with so many aspects of life, like anxiety and stress, especially in the undergraduate context.” That seeming ubiquity of mental health issues in society today motivated Jomha to explore the topic further. 

With more dedicated research, Jomha believes that the topic can be deconstructed for the everyday audience and support actions that get people more involved. 

“You don’t have to be a clinician, you don’t need to know anything about pharmacology or drugs, you just need to know a few facts, and how to talk with people, to support people.”

Maria Salome Faria Blanco

Deconstructing family housing instability through a harm reduction lens

Program: Psychology 

Faculty Advisor: Ines Sametband

Abbey Matthews

Animals in the workplace

Program: Business: Human Resources 

Faculty Advisor: Christian Cook