Many years ago, Darian Doblej (Artsci’18) made a life-changing promise to his great-grandmother, an elder in Whitesand First Nation in northern Ontario. He assured her that he would protect his younger sisters, who are now 13 and 15.

Mr. Doblej, a political studies major at Queen’s, has taken that promise very seriously. He not only wants to protect them – he wants them to have a great future. He wants to make the world a better place.

“Among my peers on the reserve, I was the only one who graduated high school,” says Mr. Doblej, who identifies himself as northern Ojibwe turned urban Aboriginal. “While I managed to find support, opportunities were scarce. I want my sisters, and all the children at Whitesand, to have greater access to the support – in education and health care, particularly – that will help them achieve their full potential.”

Mr. Doblej works on keeping his word to his great-grandmother in many ways. He first came to Queen’s through the Aboriginal Access to Engineering Program, but soon realized he could be of more help to his community by studying policy. In addition to his political studies honours degree, he’s pursuing a Certificate in Business through Queens’ School of Business, and he volunteers at Four Directions Aboriginal Student Centre.

But perhaps, most important for improving opportunities for Aboriginal youth at this time, is Mr. Doblej’s work on the Premier’s Council for Youth Opportunities. The group, recently on campus to help announce new provincial funding for youth mentorship, is made up of 25 members, including youth (ages 16-25), young professionals and leaders, appointed to advise Premier Kathleen Wynne and her cabinet on issues affecting youth and how to improve programs and services for youth.

“Ontario’s Youth Action Plan is especially great at addressing the needs of at-risk youth, and I’m really happy to be engaged in the broader process, of working with key actors and decision-makers in the province,” says Mr. Doblej, who is spending the summer working on Whitesand as a community liaison officer. “It’s shown me, too, that problems exist across many different backgrounds. Racialized youth and newcomer youth, to name a few, face similar challenges as Aboriginal youth, in terms of access to opportunities.”

Looking ahead, Mr. Doblej has many plans. He is thinking about running for chair of the Premier’s Council, or focusing his leadership activities on campus, running for the position of University Rector. Down the road, he wants to complete a Master of Public Administration. His ambitions don’t stop there – he’s also eyeing a Juris Doctor degree, and potentially, later, a PhD in legal studies or policy studies.

“The people on my reserve are my motivation and inspiration. Looking at them, and understanding what they’re capable of if they had the right tools is all I need to continue working hard,” says Mr. Doblej, who considers Premier Wynne a great mentor and role model.

“I want to help them, and part of helping them is creating the best possible opportunities, like access to education, health care, and other basic needs afforded to those who are not defined as ‘at-risk.’ I also want to make sure the cultural life, language and heritage of my community is protected, so they can be proud of who they are, and won’t have to fear how their identity affects them.”

Approxmately 450 Pita Pit franchise owners are on campus this week for a conference marking the restaurant chain's 20th anniversary where Pita Pit was founded, right here in Kingston. The conference is a big event for Queen’s Event Services, which hosts conferences of various sizes throughout the year.

Campus partners, who also work to keep things running smoothly, include Residence Facilities, Physical Plant Services, Hospitality Services, Residence Technology (ITS), and Athletics and Recreation.

Hosting such large events is important for Queen’s and Kingston – not only are they showcased, but the university’s role in the community is highlighted.

The first thing that Edward Nkole does when he arrives is ask that we move somewhere more comfortable. Together we head to the Queen’s University International Centre (QUIC), where he says hello to the staff and pours himself a mug of tea before we start chatting. Though he now works in the Department of Financial Services at Queen’s, Mr. Nkole first came to Queen’s from Zambia in 2006 to do his undergraduate degree in economics and global development studies. He says QUIC helped him adjust to life in Canada.

“I have a lot of wonderful memories of this place,” he says. “When I came to Queen’s, this is where I was welcomed. I encountered some culture shock when I came to Canada, and it was here that I could find people who could really hear what I said.”

Before coming to Queen’s, Mr. Nkole worked in Zambia as an accountant but had a strong desire to see more of the world. Both of his older brothers had studied engineering in England, and so he had his mind set on an international education. After what Mr. Nkole refers to as “divine encounters” that led him to making Canadian friends, he started to look at Ontario schools.

“Queen’s was very responsive and I had an instinctive good feeling about it,” he says. Once he came to Kingston, he got involved with the Queen’s community, volunteering at QUIC, and working as a residence don, as well as with Campus Security and the Education Library on West Campus (“I was working way too many jobs!”). Once his degree was complete, he moved back to Zambia and got married, but soon found himself thinking again about Canada.

When he and his wife decided to move to Kingston, Mr. Nkole took a job with the Department of Alumni Relations as an administrative assistant. His experience in accounting saw the job evolve into a more financial and merchandising role and he soon migrated to Financial Services, where he now works as a financial analyst. 

“I look at account trends, see the numbers and explain what’s going on behind the scenes,” he says. “Financial Services tracks what money is going where, why, how we arrived at those numbers and what they mean. All of the projects on campus, from research initiatives to the construction of a new residence, need financing — we make sure they stay on track.”

With nearly 10 years at Queen’s under his belt, Mr. Nkole is humble about his accomplishments and thankful for the people who helped him along the way.  

“I’ve been fortunate to find jobs that provided a learning environment here at Queen’s,” he says. “I wanted a challenge, and to expand my knowledge and my experience, I’m glad to have had supervisors who were so interested in my development.”

Elizabeth VanDenKerkhof is excited about being appointed the Sally Smith Chair in Nursing, but she also knows that there are expectations that come with the position.

She is the first to hold the chair after all.

Fortunately, Dr. VanDenKerkhof points out, she isn’t alone in this new journey.

“It’s exciting but it’s a little bit daunting because I want to be successful and I will because this is a very supportive environment and I have some great colleagues with whom I have worked with over the years, whether it’s research or supervising students,” she says.

The Sally Smith Chair in Nursing was created as part of a $10-million donation to Queen’s by A. Britton Smith, a continuing supporter of the university. The chair is named after his wife Edith “Sally” (Carruthers) Smith, who died in June 2012 after a courageous battle with cancer. The funding also helped create the Smith Chair in Surgical Research and the Britton Smith Chair in Surgery, as well as to support the revitalization of Richardson Stadium. It represents the largest donation to the School of Nursing in its 74-year history.

Dr. VanDenKerkhof says the establishment of the chair, to which she was appointed in early June, is a big step for the School of Nursing and will also help boost the university’s reputation in the field.

“It’s a huge honour for me and I am very lucky but I also feel that this is such a gift for the School of Nursing because it’s the first chair ever here,” she says. “There are other chairs in nursing across Canada but there aren’t a lot of them. So I think for this school to have a chair is significant and really speaks to a number of things, including the support from the Kingston community.”

As chair, Dr. VanDenKerkhof will be able to move her focus from her teaching responsibilities to her research and taking a closer look at how nursing is evolving.

Currently, she says, when most people think of nursing, they tend to focus on the acute care sector, taking care of patients in hospitals.

However, as she notes, nursing, and the health-care sector as a whole, is increasingly reaching further outside the hospital walls, especially as the population ages.

The Sally Smith Chair will allow her to spend more time looking at the current situation and where nursing, as it expands its scope of practice, is headed in the future.

“What I think we need to start looking at, and what we are starting to look at, is questions like: ‘What’s my quality of life? How much pain do I have? Am I willing to live with this pain? Is there something that can be done about that?’ It’s not just about surviving an illness,” she says. “And as the population ages, we don’t have the resources to care for everyone in hospital nor is it where most people want to be, especially in their last days, weeks or months of life. Nursing can and does play a major role in shaping what health care may look like in the future.”

With being able to spend more time outside of the classroom, Dr. VanDenKerkhof says one of her goals is to create stronger connections with the practice setting and help foster further links between researchers in nursing and in health care in general.

“We already have many collaborations in the School of Nursing but there remain opportunities to link faculty both within nursing and across disciplines. In this way projects can evolve into sustainable programs of research. My goal is to facilitate this process to improve our synergy as researchers,” she says. “I don’t have to necessarily be involved in every study and I don’t have time or the need to be, but I’ve been a faculty member at Queen’s since 2000 at the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine and I joined the School of Nursing in 2004. I started my career in nursing at KGH in 1981, so I know many of the players and I have a good sense of what people do. My hope is to connect people, provide support when needed and make studies happen.”

The chair should also afford her time to advance her research into the prevention of acute and chronic pain, and use of technology to improve care.