President
Born and raised in Calgary’s north east, Shaziah Jinnah Morsette continues to call the area home. Shaziah describes her childhood self as a “major nerd” who was also obsessed with dance and fashion. As a daughter of a refugee, she always had questions to ask, and was always creating connections in her mind, which she now attributes to undiagnosed ADHD.
The academic landscape is not friendly to all identities; including racialized folks to those with neurodiversities, and all the intersections in between. This is an issue that Shaziah can speak on with experience, having been placed on special academic probation in 2017 and navigating the process that took her from the Academic Turnaround Program to the Dean’s list, and being elected to Vice President Academic of the Students’ Union (SU).
Shaziah was featured for a Community Stories video with the Campus Mental Health Strategy, empowering others who share similar barriers to aspire to leadership positions. Ultimately, Shaziah prides herself on being an authentic and vulnerable leader, bringing both her failures and successes to the table.
In 2022-23, as the SU’s Vice President Academic, Shaziah advocated for a formal policy to prevent online exam proctoring and breaking down the stigma between mental health and academic success, leading her to continue to advocate for several policy changes regarding due dates over term break and access to experiential learning opportunities.
As an interdisciplinary student in the Faculty of Arts, Shaziah is pursuing an honours degree in Communications, and a degree in Multidisciplinary Studies with a primary focus on Political Science, and a secondary focus on Psychology. She also has two embedded certificates in Mental Wellbeing and Resiliency, and Pluralism and Global Citizenship. Her studies have led her to focus on post-secondary pedagogy practices and policies, including the future directions of liberal arts institutions and market-driven educational discourse.
You can find Shaziah spending time with her husband and their pitbull, Xena, catching up with her close friends, camping or gardening through the summer, and listening to audiobooks year-round.