All in the Community 

How U of T Mississauga aims to enrich the student experience with many opportunities to engage with academic research, local industry, and businesses.

Andreas Bendlin, an associate professor in the Department of Historical Studies, has lofty ambitions for the learning landscape at UTM. 

He says it’s all about expanding the current opportunities that are already well established by the Experiential Education Unit (EEU), which he oversees in his portfolio as UTM’s current Vice-Dean, Academic Experience; a term he serves until 2027.

“An experiential learning opportunity can come in different forms, for instance as an academic or a service course, an internship, a placement, or our Research Opportunity Program [ROP],” says Bendlin in an interview on the latest episode of the VIEW to the U podcast.

“Ultimately, our goal is that every student at UTM, if they choose to, can have an experiential learning opportunity of some kind while they are at the University of Toronto Mississauga.”

Bendlin helped kick off the ninth season of VIEW to the U with its theme for this year: “UTM in the community.”

In this interview, Bendlin, who has been a faculty member since 2005, touches on his own research in Classics as an ancient historian, with expertise in ancient religion and other areas in the Graeco-Roman world. As one might expect, he also talks about the importance of the humanities.

On the episode, Bendlin further discusses some of the current challenges that come with his other portfolio in the Academic Integrity Unit (AIU), such as new technologies for cheating, as well as guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in academia.

“Artificial intelligence is here and it will not go away,” says Bendlin.

“I think that is a good thing for many of us, and there are some exciting possibilities for its usage, but we need to have these ethical discussions now about where we want to go with this technology.”

He also provides his thoughtful insights on the importance of community-engaged learning and how students gain valuable and practical experience outside of the classroom to better prepare them for future career paths.

One of the initiatives on the horizon for the EEU is a co-op internship program, which has been in the works for some time in order to deliver the most fitting opportunity for UTM and its students. The EEU has also made the most of this planning phase to continue to build on its strong ties with the city of Mississauga and local industry so there will be more options for students participating in the co-op program.

With all of these new ways to engage students and expand the experiential learning opportunity programs that EEU offers, Bendlin says that ultimately this will provide benefits to the community as well as the students, and he emphasizes the importance of the role UTM plays in this enterprise.

“I think it's our responsibility as a university, as a public institution that is funded by the taxpayer, to do what we've been doing, and to do even more of that” says Bendlin.

“For our students, it means they will actually have this additional learning-by-doing experience in the field, and then they will come back enriched in a variety of ways, not just because they have learned some practical skills. They come back, not just as better scholars: I think they come back as better citizens, and that is another service we need to provide to society, and we can do that partly through experiential learning.”