 The biggest benefit of grad school has been this concentrated time to focus on my artwork. This program is there to give you the words not only to express your own practice, but to situate your practice within a city, within this country, within the world right now. Emily Kerr provides you the opportunity of combining art and design through the MDS and MFA programs. The Master of Fine Arts program is interdisciplinary in nature. It allows students to experiment with various forms of material practice and to really take their studio production to another level. In Master of Design we have two separate programs. We have an interdisciplinary stream and then we have an interaction design stream. The program consists of studio class, which is very hands-on, building, making, doing. After one semester of students become very concentrated on their thesis for a year and a half. Research at Emily Kerr is a really significant part of the work we do and it offers a huge amount of opportunities for the students that are coming in. There are a lot of faculty doing research and along with that are a series of research centers. I have entered this program and was immediately offered teaching and research opportunities. Emily Kerr is great because I feel that not only they do offer the teaching fellowship for some of the students, but they put a lot of trust in you once you get it. The instructors at Emily Kerr have been fantastic. Everybody's very engaged with what you're doing. People care about what you're doing here. A large percentage of the student population comes from outside of Canada. I decided to shift from India to Vancouver because of Emily Kerr University. Everything around here is so welcoming, so warm. At Emily Kerr I think the cohort is a bit like a crazy family because we spend so much time together. So for me it was important to be surrounded with people who don't necessarily do the same thing as I do. I think the cohort is the best space to develop a critical mind. I think what sets Emily Kerr apart from other universities is its size, is its location and its technical resources. We're a nimble institution. We're small enough that grad students can play with practice in a way that's just not available at other institutions. You look outside and you can see the North Shore Mountains. It's something about the close proximity that affects the way we think about the world we're designing for. Another reason that students come to Emily Kerr is the exhibition and critique. I was looking for something that would help me connect my art to the professional experience that I gained. I always tell students that they come here with a practice. Our job is to make them question that practice. Grad school has been a pivotal point in my life. It provides a new way of thinking, a new way of learning and it really is helping me to further my own creative practice. I'm very excited to see where that leads me.