This spring, 10,380 students will graduate from UBC Vancouver and 2,618 from UBC Okanagan. Among them are Faith Trottier, Maryam Begzada, and Robyn Birch, whose journeys to UBC were shaped by determination and a commitment to making a difference.
Left to right: Maryam Begzada, Robyn Birch, Faith Trottier. (Photo: UBC Media Relations.)
From overcoming personal hardship to advocating for others, their stories reflect the strength and hope that define this year's graduating class.
Charting her own path to the podium
When Faith Trottier was growing up, she never imagined she would one day walk across the graduation stage at UBC Vancouver as the first in her family to attend university.
She moved between B.C. and Alberta throughout her childhood, attending 12 schools during her elementary and high school journey. As a former child in care and survivor of intergenerational trauma, stability was hard to come by.
"I've always wanted to go to UBC. It felt like that's where my dreams would come true," she said.
This week, Trottier is graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and a minor in First Nations and Indigenous studies. She will also take the stage as class speaker during her ceremony.
But her path to university was far from straightforward.
"I never actually applied to UBC after high school because I dropped out in Grade 12," she said.
Still, Trottier remained determined to learn more about Indigenous mental health and her family's history and to find ways to support her community.
Inspired by research from the late Dr. Michael Chandler, a UBC psychologist known for his research on identity formation and Indigenous youth well-being, she helped establish the Indigenous Student Society (ISS) with the UBC Indigenous student community. The ISS is the first Indigenous constituency recognized by UBC's Alma Mater Society.
As the ISS's first president, Trottier helped create its constitution and ensured it would serve all Indigenous students at UBC.
"As a collective, we lead campus-wide consultations and Indigenous events, including the first student-led powwow at UBC in nearly a decade," she said. "We wanted to create a space where Indigenous students didn't have to constantly explain ourselves and our trauma. We just wanted to have a place for us to spend time together where we can be ourselves and be a community."
Now headed to the University of Manitoba to pursue a master's degree in social work, Trottier reflects on the importance of giving back.
"In our culture, if you have a gift, you're supposed to give it back to the community," she said. "For me, this strength that I have, I want to give it back."
One of Trottier's main goals is to create an intervention program for Indigenous youth aging out of foster care. Having experienced that transition herself, she knows how vulnerable people can be during that time.
"Many kids like me face homelessness or get pulled into the wrong crowd, continuing the cycle of trauma," she said. "I want to help create a transition program, with support from elders and the wider Indigenous community, that interrupts that cycle before it begins."
Engineering health and hope, one solution at a time
Robyn Birch will graduate next week with a master's degree in biomedical engineering, but for her, engineering was never just about equations or efficiency it was about impact.
Her master's thesis, now published in JBMR Plus, explored how drug treatments affect bone quality in young patients with aggressive tumours findings that could influence how therapies are selected for vulnerable adolescent and young adult populations.
Birch has always found ways to apply her learnings and research directly to patient care. Through UBC's Engineers in Scrubs program, she collaborated with clinicians and engineers to develop a portable phototherapy device for newborns with jaundice.
"We were working with a team of engineers located in Uganda," said Birch. "Power grids in Uganda are not always reliable, so developing a tool that didn't rely on the use of electricity and was portable enough to serve rural communities was key for us."
"I related personally to the project and the need to provide medical care to remote communities because I grew up in rural Manitoba and witnessed the impact healthcare access can have on vulnerable populations," she said.
That theme meeting people where they are also shaped her volunteer work. As part of Engineers Without Borders, Birch advised on the development of a low-cost, urine-based HPV screening test to expand cancer detection in underserved communities.
"Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable diseases, but only if people have access to testing," she said. "This project was called Access, and our goal was to reduce the barriers for HPV testing for women in parts of the world where screening is still out of reach, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa."
"The team of engineers is working on a design and will develop an at-home testing kit soon that can be hopefully used to raise awareness of HPV in these communities and will lead to increased access to care."
Looking ahead, Birch hopes to keep pushing the boundaries of what biomedical engineering can accomplish.
"I want to design with purpose, with empathy," she said. "I really like working with clients, and whether it be a patient client or a clinician client, just having that clinical interaction is something that I really value. Having those different perspectives that help shape your design, I think is so important, especially in the biomedical engineering and healthcare sector."
An Afghan student's journey to empower girls' education
For Maryam Begzada, the opportunity to continue her education at a university, especially at UBC, felt like something she had only seen in movies.
"Coming from Afghanistan, where education for girls is limited and discouraged, I am thankful my parents strongly encouraged me to pursue a university education," she said.
This week, as she crosses the stage to receive her bachelor's degree in political science, Begzada will be thinking about her future goal.
"I want to break the stigma that women are incapable of achieving anything," she said. "My goal is to inspire girls who face similar struggles and show them that it is possible to create a better life."
Begzada still remembers the day she was accepted into UBC.
"It was one of those nights when we didn't have electricity at home because the Taliban usually cut power lines across Afghanistan," she said.
She usually waited until midnight to check her emails, when her internet worked better.
"When I received the email, I read it a few times to be sure," she said. "Then, I ran to wake my parents up."
Arriving at UBC was a dream come true, but Begzada's transition wasn't easy. It was her first time taking courses in English, and she failed her first midterm.
"I felt like I had let myself and my family down," she said.
With encouragement from her teaching assistants and professors, she worked hard to turn things around.
"I didn't want to let them down, so I worked hard," she said. "I went from failing my midterm to getting an A."
While at UBC, Begzada worked with Dr. Jenny Peterson, associate professor in the department of political science, on a research project in collaboration with Carleton University. The project aimed to help Afghan scholars and students who had been forced to flee Afghanistan.
"My research looked at how we can support displaced scholars by strengthening knowledge-sharing networks," she said. "My goal was to create a resilient framework that would support and sustain scholars' work in the face of displacement and adversity."
This year, Begzada also voted in her first federal election after becoming a Canadian citizen, and worked as a central poll supervisor at her riding's voting station.
"I know people fought so hard to help people like me vote," she said. "I felt agency and power being part of the democratic process."
Begzada said she's grateful for her experience at UBC.
"I'm thankful for the community and the students who were kind to me," she said. "I hope they keep being kind to each other you never know what someone might be going through."
Now, Begzada is hoping to pursue a career in policy and help expand access to education, especially for women and girls.
