The AMS is giving undergraduate students a new way to fund ideas aimed at improving the Queen’s community through its Student Innovation Grant.
According to the AMS website, the grant launched on Sept. 15 and awards students between $100 and $5,000 for student-led projects that address one or more of the listed areas, including affordability, engagement and accountability.
Applications are open to individual AMS members or clubs and will be accepted until Jan. 15.
In an interview with The Journal, AMS President Dreyden George said the grant is intended to give students more direct opportunities to build projects outside the AMS’s existing services and commissions.
“The purpose of the grant is to essentially allow ideas from students to try to innovate around campus life and the student experience, particularly through three lenses,” George said, referring to the three priority areas.
Under affordability, students could propose projects addressing issues like housing or food security, financial development, or energy consumption. Engagement projects could include research on student issues, community space development, harm reduction programming, or new engaging events. Accountability projects could focus on civic engagement, student representation, governance, sustainability, or advocacy.
George said the categories are intentionally broad.
“It can be quite flexible,” George said. “We’re trying to be holistic in the lens of what we’re looking at.”
The Student Innovation Grant does not have a fixed funding pool established through student fees. The grant is funded through revenue generated by the AMS’s partnership with CIBC. Under the agreement, the AMS receives a commission when students sign up for eligible CIBC accounts using an AMS referral code.
“[It’s] not necessarily like this is coming from a student fee or student fee dollars,” George said.
Because the revenue depends on commissions generated through the partnership, there isn’t a fixed amount available for the grant over the year.
George said the AMS can support individual requests of up to $5,000, but the overall amount available will depend on how much revenue the partnership generates. If available funding begins to run out, the AMS will direct students toward other available grants.
To ensure funding is used as approved, successful applicants must provide regular progress updates to the AMS, according to George. Before receiving funding, students must also confirm a project timeline, reporting schedule, and funding expectations through a Project Commitment Agreement.
Updates may be required every two or three months so the AMS can track project progress.
While the grant offers clubs another potential source of funding, not all student groups see it as a fit.
In an interview with The Journal, Queen’s Kaleidoscope President Richard Feng, HealthSci ’28, said Kaleidoscope will most likely not apply for the Student Innovation Grant.
Kaleidoscope is a buddy program that provides academic and social support to at-risk elementary school students in Kingston. Feng said the club’s programming is already planned.
“We don’t really meet the criteria for the Student Innovation Grant,” Feng said. “Kaleidoscope has a set of events that we like to repeat year by year that are very successful, but none meet the criteria.”
Megan Zhang, HealthSci ’28, and director of Undergraduate Geriatrics Conference, a student group focused on geriatrics and healthcare for older adults, said the club would be interested in applying for the grant in an interview with The Journal.
Zhang said her group is planning its annual conference, which could fit under the grant’s engagement and affordability priorities depending on this year’s topic.
“We’re actually working toward running a conference, which we do annually, which I guess would be to advocate for initiatives relating to geriatrics and healthcare for aging adults,” Zhang said.
She said potential conference topics could include housing and food security for older adults, while the event would also involve research and engagement with faculty and healthcare professionals.
Tags
AMS grant, CIBC, Innovation Grant
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