The 2024 Health Sciences Society (HSS) elections are kicking off with contested and uncontested races through the ballot.
HSS Presidential candidate Sunaina Vallamkonda, HealthSci ’26, HSS Vice-Presidential (Operations) candidate, Stella Murphy, HealthSci ’26, and HSS Vice-Presidential (University Affairs) candidates, Eileen Danaee, HealthSci ’26, and Maddy Farquhar HealthSci ’26, sat down with The Journal to discuss their campaigns.
Sunaina Vallamkonda
Vallamkonda is running her presidential campaign on three pillars—improving mental health services, encouraging greater Bachelor of Health Sciences (BHSc) participation at HSS assemblies, and connecting students to learn about graduate school options.
Given her previous positions as first-year intern and HSS speaker of the house for, Vallamkonda has a history of advocating for students’ needs. She believes her experience working in the HSS has prepared her for the role of president.
High-achieving BHSc students often become stressed with the self-paced format of the program and find it difficult to keep up with modules, according to Vallamkonda. Following in the footsteps of the Faculties of Engineering and Commerce, she also hopes to have embedded mental health counsellors for students in the BHSc program.
Mental health support doesn’t end with BHSc students. Vallamkonda wants to provide tailored mental health support to the entire Faculty of Health Sciences which includes the BHSc, nursing, and the School of Medicine and Rehabilitation Therapy. She promises to push for tailored care by advocating for the implementation of faculty-specific mental health counsellors.
Boosting student engagement in HSS assemblies is a priority for Vallamkonda.
“The only people who mostly attend these assemblies are council members. This sort of defeats the purpose of having a public forum,” Vallamkonda said in an interview with The Journal.
She wants to introduce a student feedback form where voting and non-voting members can voice their concerns to the HSS executive team. Committed to transparency, she will published a periodic review showing students how their feedback from the forum was addressed.
Eileen Danaee
For Danaee, advocating for student needs is a priority.
Through Danaee’s position as year representative, she’s witnessed the impact vice-president (university affairs) can have on students, including the introduction of an opt-in fee for the University’s health and dental plans.
Given the competitive nature of the program, one of the needs identified by Danaee is for the BHSc community to be more cohesive. She wants to host disco night charity events, creating a space for BHSc students to socialize and interact with each other in a non-academic setting.
Danaee will make research opportunities more accessible to health sciences students. Using her experience running a summer research information session, she wants to create a social media or website page updating students on summer research positions.
“A few actions I would take to address this is to primarily create a streamlined social media page or website in which students would be able to access information on different upcoming research opportunities and case competitions,” Dananee said in an interview with The Journal.
Students will be able to book meetings with research mentors who have already gone through the experience of getting a research position.
Maddy Farquhar
Farquhar has a long-tracked record of being an active student leader. After holding leadership positions in high school, she came to university seeking further opportunities.
“One of the reasons I decided to come to Queen’s is because I saw that there were opportunities for student leadership positions due to the student government [AMS] that we have here,” Farquhar said in an interview with The Journal.
Prior to landing Academic Deputy for HSS, Farquhar admitted she lacked adequate support in navigating programs such as OnQ and SOLUS during her first year at the university.
Using the Peer Academic Support Service program ran by ASUS as inspiration, Farquhar hopes to recruit upper year advisors who will provide academic support via drop-in Zoom calls.
She promises to create more diverse research opportunities via workshops catering to students with interests beyond medicine and dentistry.
To alleviate feelings of isolation BHSc students might experience when navigating university and graduate pathways, she hopes to build a community focused on supporting each other to achieve academic success.
Stella Murphy
Having managed social media accounts as HSS Marketing Commissioner, Murphy is well-versed in planning initiatives and supporting ratified clubs.
“My campaign promise for vice-president (operations) is optimizing operations. I want to optimize the initiatives we already have,” Murphy said in an interview with The Journal.
Murphy wants to create a dynamic calendar featuring dates of HSS club events and Assembly meetings.
Helping HSS clubs thrive is at the top of Murphy’s agenda. She promises she’ll work closely with the clubs deputy to provide periodic check-ins with clubs to ensure they have the tools to fulfill their missions.
She wants online health sciences students to know she hasn’t forgotten about them too. She plans on hosting hybrid events for both in-person and online students in addition to creating a newsletter solely for online students.
Tags
Elections, Health Sciences Society, hss
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