Yuliia Holik once dreamed of coming to McGill to study air and space law.
But it was not to be: Despite being admitted to the Faculty of Law in 2019, she was unable to come for financial reasons. Instead, she continued her studies as a PhD student at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University – considered to be among the best law schools in Ukraine – in her hometown of Kharkiv.
Then, in February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sending the inhabitants of Kharkiv into hiding from Russian airstrikes. Yuliia’s work on her PhD dissertation (on international cooperation in the sphere of civil aviation cybersecurity) came to a sudden halt as she, her mom, and her 90-year-old grandmother huddled together on the corridor floor in the darkness for days, with the sounds of Russian shelling in the background.
At last, she and her family fled Kharkiv to stay with relatives in Smila, a small town in central Ukraine. Initially thinking they would only be gone for a couple of weeks, Yuliia had brought with her only an emergency bag stocked with a few items of clothing, medicines, materials to build a makeshift tent, and a rope to line-dry clothes. She had left everything else behind – including her laptop and all the files for her dissertation.
“My grandma has told me over and over again the story of when she moved to Kharkiv in 1951 with just one suitcase and one dress,” recalls Yuliia. “I remember every word of that story, and I always thought, how do you leave home with only one suitcase? Now here I am with one carry-on suitcase, and not even a dress.”
From the relative safety of Smila, and at the suggestion of the dean from her alma mater, Yuliia began to look abroad for avenues to start her dissertation over – from scratch – in safety.
She connected with Dr. Josephine Nalbantoglu, Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at McGill, who was able to offer Yuliia a one-year position as a Graduate Research Trainee, thanks to the newly launched McGill Students and Scholars at Risk Fund. The fund empowers the University to provide urgent financial support to international students, postdoctoral fellows, and scholars/researchers who have been displaced by humanitarian crises so they can continue their academic journeys in an environment of safety and stability.
“Humanitarian crises can disrupt years of effort and academic work,” says Nalbantoglu. “Access to academic resources is lost, experiments decimated, data collection interrupted. Those fleeing a crisis may come here with nothing. This fund enables McGill to provide these students and scholars with a safe haven, access to resources to pursue their work, and the necessary funding to meet their basic needs.”
Support for students in need may include tuition waivers, health insurance, scholarships for living expenses, housing, and language support. In addition, the fund will help provide an academic home to displaced scholars and researchers through temporary research and teaching positions as well as stipends or fellowships for living expenses. The fund will also allow McGill to further its existing collaborations with organizations such as Scholars at Risk, the New University in Exile Consortium, and the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund.
According to Cara Piperni, Director of Scholarships and Student Aid, the creation of this fund is a signal to displaced students like Yuliia that McGill is a place where they can thrive.
The Ukrainian conflict is, sadly, only the latest of many humanitarian emergencies, and Piperni’s financial aid team has long been involved in helping impacted undergraduate students.
“We see difficult scenarios all the time,” says Piperni. “We work with students who have come out of refugee camps. We’ve dealt with the Beirut explosion; we’ve provided support to Syrian and Afghan students during times of population displacement. When these types of global events happen, they make students and their families so vulnerable that sometimes education has to be deferred or put on pause. One day they have a plan and the next day that plan falls apart without a lot of options. What we want to do is take care of the immediate, practical concerns – the basic costs of attendance – so they can focus on their studies.”
“Graduate students in particular are at a crucial stage in their academic journey,” adds Nalbantoglu, “challenging the boundaries of knowledge and helping shape a better future through their research. We want them to be able to focus full-time on their scholarly work and find a sense of belonging as part of the McGill community.”
Yuliia, who arrived in Montreal in mid-May, is one of the first beneficiaries of the Students and Scholars at Risk Fund. As a Graduate Research Trainee, she will have access to the University’s libraries and faculty supervision as she continues her research and dissertation – thankfully not from scratch. Her father was able to retrieve her laptop in Kharkiv and she now has the files on a hard drive as well as a handed-down laptop – a generous gift from a friend of McGill staff.
Yuliia has also been provided housing in New Residence Hall, alongside several other Ukrainians who have come to Montreal with the assistance of the Canadian government, while she finds an apartment. She says it is comforting to hear her two native languages (Ukrainian and Russian) nearby while she adapts to her new surroundings and slowly begins to recover from the trauma of life in a conflict zone.
“I love planes,” says Yuliia. “I used to hear them everywhere I went. Here in Montreal, I hear them a lot and for the first few seconds they make me freeze inside. Some buses sound like air-raid warning sirens when they start and brake. I can’t just leave Ukraine and lose the feeling of being there, at war.”
The separation from and worry for her family and homeland takes its toll. But Yuliia is also amazed at the generosity and kindness of the McGill community, and grateful for the “huge present of a new life” that donor support has helped make possible for her.
“If there is a way to give a new life besides giving birth,” says Yuliia, “it’s making a gift like this.”
Make a gift to support the McGill Students and Scholars at Risk Fund.