It’s just after 10 a.m. on a Saturday and Sofia Tuberquia could be sleeping in like most teenagers.
Instead, the 17-year-old is one of the first to show up for the March edition of MePLUS. She settles into her usual seat, second row from the front in a Burke Science Building classroom. When she’s told serious students sit in the front rows, she smiles and doesn’t disagree.
MePLUS – McMaster Equitable Pathways to Learning University Sciences – is a free, September to June outreach program for Black, Indigenous and Latin American / Latinx high school students. More than 90 students from Hamilton and across the Greater Toronto Area registered this year. They spend one Saturday a month on campus, meeting with mentors, taking courses in leadership and professional development and doing hands-on science workshops. Launched in 2023 and supported by the Provost’s Strategic Alignment Fund and the Office of the Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigeneity, MePLUS aims to demystify university and postsecondary STEM programs. It’s also a chance for students to have some fun and make friends – they spend their lunch hour and breaks playing UNO and Connect 4 and listening to music.
This month, students are learning time management skills in the morning and then taking part in a Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior-hosted workshop with five experiments that test their powers of attention and observation. The day starts with students rating their stress levels and reporting how many hours of sleep they got last night.
Tuberquia – who got lots of sleep and doesn’t feel stressed beyond waiting for offers of acceptance – found out about MePLUS during McMaster’s fall preview open house. She struck up a conversation with access and outreach coordinator Aaron Parry who extended an open invitation. At the start of Grade 12, Tuberquia took him up on the offer.
She lives in Milton which means a 40-minute drive to McMaster if the traffic and weather cooperate. Tuberquia’s mom drives her there and back while her dad works at their family-owned cleaning company. She’s inherited her parents’ entrepreneurial drive and wants to study international business or become a vet – their home is full of cats and dogs.
Being in MePLUS meant putting her Saturday jujitsu classes on hold but she says it’s worth it. “I love being on campus and getting inside tips.”
MePLUS mentor Danielle Berges Santana (left), mentor Carla-Sophia Rodriguez (centre) and Grade 12 student Sofia Tuberquia (right) complete one of the online experiments organized by the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior.
Tuberquia will be the first in her family to go to university so she has many questions, especially around applying for scholarships and completing supplemental applications.
She says the highlight of MePLUS is the mentoring that happens between the morning classes and the afternoon workshops. This is when she gets the tips and advice from McMaster undergrads and graduate students. The program has 15 mentors who, like the high schoolers, identify as Black, Indigenous and Latin American / Latinx.
The afternoon spent at the McMaster Learning and Discovery Greenhouse remains her favourite workshop. The lemon-scented plant she took home in a hand-painted flowerpot is still growing and has yet to be eaten by her cats. “My mentor said her plant died after a couple days so I must be doing something right.”
Those small group conversations between mentors and mentees is the reason why global politics graduate student Danielle Berges Santana has volunteered with MePLUS for the past two years.
An international student from the Dominican Republic, Santana arrived at McMaster with just as many questions as Tuberquia but didn’t know where to go for answers or who to ask for help. She felt lost and overwhelmed. “I didn’t know how to apply for scholarships. I didn’t know how to get involved in research, find a supervisor, get an on-campus job or work as a teaching assistant. It was incredibly stressful at the start.”
Faculty members Stacy Creech de Castro and Rodrigo Narro Pérez – who co-founded the Latin American Network at McMaster University in 2021 – saw that Santana was struggling and stepped in as mentors. “They made me feel at home and welcomed me into the Latinx community at Mac.”
Helping out at MePLUS is her way of giving back. “Giving up one Saturday a month isn’t much of a sacrifice.”
She knows the answers to the questions being asked by her mentees. She spends most of her time highlighting all the ways they can offset the cost of going to university, from scholarships and bursaries to work study programs and part-time jobs. She’s reviewed and helped fine-tune supplemental applications. And she’s helping to build a sense of community within MePLUS. “We want every student to know they’re welcome at McMaster and that they belong.”
Community also matters to Tuberquia, who’s proud of her LatinX roots. Her dad is from Colombia and her mom is from Ecuador. “There aren’t many families like us in Milton and not many students like me at high school.”
She’s bilingual thanks to her dad. “He only speaks Spanish to me at home. He sacrificed working on his English so I’d learn how to speak Spanish.”
And for five hours once a month at McMaster, Tuberquia gets to speak both languages with other students and mentors who are equally proud of their roots and heritage.
“McMaster has set high expectations for what I want from a university. I really like all the people I’ve met here and how open and welcoming they are.”