About

Immigrant Insight Scholars Initiative (IISI) Program

Program Objective: To enable internationally educated researchers build Canadian experience, track records, and professional networks needed to transition to a successful career as a researcher in Canada.

Program Target: The project’s target are internationally educated researchers/analysts (e.g. epidemiologists, statisticians, clinician scientists, evaluation experts, and community-based researchers) who are currently under-employed or are in precarious employment.

Program Components: The program has two components, fellowships and IRSN.

Fellowships:

With structured support from mentors, the Insight Scholars conduct research, analyze data, write reports, and engage in knowledge translation (KT) activities to mobilize knowledge and action. In addition to mentorship from established researchers, the fellows receive professional development, collegial support, career networking opportunities, and other supports to transition to a successful career as a researcher in Canada.

The program offers two types of fellowships:

• The Immigrant Insight Scholars (IIS) fellowships for internationally educated researchers/analysts, who have arrived in Canada within the last 7 years, to develop their Canadian experience and professional network to transition to a career as a researcher; and,
• The Young Insight Scholars (YIS) for young and emerging scholars/advocates, who are less than 30 years old, and are passionate about mobilizing evidence to advance equity. YIS fellowships are open to immigrants and Canadian-born.                                                                                                          

Fellow's Major Achievements Highlight to the Date

We have successfully organized seven cohorts of fellows since the launch of the program in 2017. Some of the achievements from each fellow are:

Immigrant Researchers Support Network (IRSN): is a peer support to a broader group of internationally educated researchers. The IRSN component provides in-person and online peer networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities for internationally educated researchers across Canada. We also offer workshops on topics such as bridging programs and building knowledge about research in a Canadian context

IRSN Major Achievements Highlight to Date

The Peer Support Network called Immigrant Researchers Support Network (IRSN) launched on November 30, 2017:

• The IRSN meetings/coffee chats provide valuable professional networking opportunities for IERs; including Career Bridging development workshops.
• The virtual platform and peer support network address is: https://immigrantresearchers.ning.com/
  • This web portal has more than 300 members.
  • Networking, resource sharing, forums, job postings and blogs are some of the valuable features of the portal.
  • We organized more than 70 Coffee Chat meetings and 7 webinars to provide continuous “shared learning” on research, knowledge translation, and policy development.

Join us today to recieve regular updates about coffee chats, trainings, fellowships and other opportunities in your email!

Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services (Access Alliance) works for most vulnerable (socially marginalized and/or medically complex) residents of Toronto, for over 30 years, irrespective of their immigration or health insurance status. While working on the social determinants of Health, the research department of the agency identified that internationally educated researchers (IER) are a potential group of immigrants who requires a particular range of settlement support for successful integration into mainstream research. As such we created two intertwined projects- Immigrant Insight Scholar (IIS), and Immigrant Researchers Support Network (IRSN).

Insights, that we generated from anecdotal stories of our Immigrant Insight Scholar (IIS) fellows, and research findings of our labour market study project have made us realize that short term fellowship opportunities is the most efficient means for IERs to launch their career in Canada. We created evidences that a newcomer researcher would be the most eligible candidate to carry out this task for two reasons:

1) lived experience as a newcomer might have provided this candidate with insights on use of Labour Market Information (LMI) data by immigrants, barriers preventing them from accessing this and its relevance in guiding them in making informed choices to undertake skill development and educational opportunities

2) by assisting a newcomer to launch their career in Canada through a project which is intended to create positive impact for newcomer job seekers, we will be enabling this candidate  to become the co-producer of knowledge and change thus making this research initiative impact oriented at its very nascent stage.

We have created the Immigrant Researchers Support Network (IRSN)to promote professional networking and peer support for internationally educated researchers. Goal of the IRSN project is to support the professional success of internationally-trained researchers and evaluators by promoting active peer support and providing appropriate opportunities for career networking and professional development.

IRSN provides support to unemployed and underemployed immigrant researchers and evaluators by:

• Developing opportunities for peer and professional networking
• Promoting awareness of relevant employment services
• Developing links with potential employers, and
• Offering selected one-time training and learning opportunities

Scopes for learning and training opportunities include (not limited to):

• Training on Canadian research practices and standards, e.g. TCPS
• A review of existing employment supports from a community provider
• Use of social media for professional networking
• Introduction to Canadian labour market data and databases
• Knowledge Mobilization (more hands on with individual exercises and small group review following presentation and examples)
• An introduction to the Canadian Evaluation Society