Story by Laura Rosen Cohen
Photography by Jackie Shapiro
Aliya sits in the sun-filled Residence Life Office of University Family Housing (UFH) in downtown bouncing her son, Nazir, on her lap. Her husband Ualikhan, and doting mother-in-law Nurilya, look on with delight. Grandma, visiting from Kazakhstan, wants to take in all the grandson vibes she can before heading back home.
It’s a perfectly natural scene, and they all seem right at home. At first glance, you would never know just how far away “home” is for them. Spaces & Experiences recently had a chance to sit down with this beautiful family and hear all about their incredible journey from Kazakhstan to U of T and all the remarkable stops in between.
“Both my husband and I completed our Master’s degrees at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, founded in 2010 by the country’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, in collaboration with the World Bank. The university offered programs in English, developed in partnership with top global universities, providing us with incredible access to world-class educational opportunities right at home,” she explains.
“During this time, we were exposed to cutting-edge research and innovative practices, sparking my interest in educational assessment. This experience laid the foundation for my professional journey at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, where I collaborated with a team of dedicated educators to develop a completely new K-12 assessment system for Kazakhstan. The new system was designed to ensure objective assessments, helping students succeed and providing clarity for all involved. This added transparency also protected teachers from accusations of biased grading, as objective standards were now used to measure student progress,” explains Aliya.
“Although the introduction of these criteria was largely successful, we did have a lot of resistance from teachers. My professional journey has provided me with a deep understanding of the complexities and challenges inherent in educational assessment, motivating me to explore similar issues in the Ontario context, where EQAO faces similar teacher resistance. I hope to use this experience and knowledge to foster a global dialogue on how teachers can see themselves reflected in assessment and leverage this to improve student outcomes.” she adds.
When Aliya started to look for a PhD program, she relied heavily on the advice of Professor Duishon Shamatov, one of her professors for her master’s program. He had international experience and was an alumnus of OISE as well.
“He was one of the people who saw great potential in my work and in my research and said that I should try and apply for OISE U of T. OISE is one top three schools in the world for educational leadership along with UPenn and Stanford,” she says. Aliya was one of 22,000 students who applied to the PhD program in 2019 and one of the 22 students who were accepted. She’s one in a thousand!
While Aliya embarked on her PhD journey at OISE, her husband, Ualikhan, was also making strides in his professional path. With an MBA from Nazarbayev University, developed in collaboration with Duke University, he quickly adapted to life in Toronto and is now contributing to innovative projects at grocery delivery company Skip the Dishes.
“It’s funny because back in Kazakhstan, I was working for the largest telecommunications company in the country, which is called TransTeleCom. The shortform for that company is “TTC”, so maybe that was a hint about what our future would hold,” he says, referring to the acronym for the Toronto Transit Commission.
Ualikhan says that the whole process of Aliya’s application to U of T and the entire move to Toronto was easy and smooth, largely due to the support provided by her team of academic program advisors who helped them with every aspect of navigating the bureaucracy and making her academic and personal plan. Aliya had been accepted to the program in the fall of 2020 but deferred her admission to the PhD program in Educational Leadership and Policy at OISE for fall 2021, when they felt that there was more of a chance that at least part of the program would be in person by then, or a hybrid learning model instead of fully online.
“We had an amazing team of program assistants advising us and they provided us with all the information we needed during Aliya’s ‘gap year’. Participating in online seminars and orientation sessions gave them both a lot of chances to ask questions and get online support from fellow students and even the global alumni community,” he says.
Aliya says that it was her academic program advisor that first sent her information about the University’s family housing program.
“My advisor, Carly Manion, sent us the information about UFH and by May 2021 UFH let us know that we had an apartment. After that, things moved really quickly! We had to get our visas, and I registered for ACORN (the student course registration system), we wound down our work, and let our parents know we would be moving soon. Once we had our housing in place, everything was accelerated. We went from 0-100 km an hour really fast,” she says.
“Like Aliya says, everything moved quickly once we knew we had a place to live. It was a really pivotal moment for us. We got great information from all of the U of T websites, and we always had a real person to ask when we had questions. Plus, a lot of other U of T students put up blog posts, Vlogs and videos on YouTube explaining various things about the U of T experience. Having a place to live made all the difference for us,” says Ualikhan. Aliya now serves as a Residence Advisor to other Charles Street residents, taking on a leadership role in the community and paying her great experience at UFH forward.
Welcome back to the Student Parent Perspective, our series where student parents living at UFH share their advice on balancing the responsibilities of parenting and school. Today, meet Aliya, a fourth year PhD student in Educational Leadership and Policy at @oiseuoft. She is the mom two year old Nazir! 💙
Want to hear more about Aliya’s experience as a student parent and her journey to get to @uoft and UFH? Check out our interview with her and her family, “From Kazakhstan to Toronto: Aliya’s Inspiring Journey with U of T Family Housing”, at the link in our bio!
#livewithufh #universityfamilyhousing #uoft #uoftstudentlife #studentparentsuccess #studentfamilyhousing #oiseuoft
Welcome back to the Student Parent Perspective, our series where student parents living at UFH share their advice on balancing the responsibilities of parenting and school. Today, meet Aliya, a fourth year PhD student in Educational Leadership and Policy at @oiseuoft. She is the mom two year old Nazir! 💙
Want to hear more about Aliya’s experience as a student parent and her journey to get to @uoft and UFH? Check out our interview with her and her family, “From Kazakhstan to Toronto: Aliya’s Inspiring Journey with U of T Family Housing”, at the link in our bio!
#livewithufh #universityfamilyhousing #uoft #uoftstudentlife #studentparentsuccess #studentfamilyhousing #oiseuoft
Aliya shares her advice and insights on balancing the responsibilities of parenting and school in UFH’s video series.
Little Nazir, the youngest member of the family, is thriving too. With access to on-site daycare, healthcare, and a vibrant community of young families, Aliya and Ualikhan have found an ideal environment to balance student life and parenthood. Their story is a heartwarming example of how U of T’s family housing program makes it possible for international students to not only pursue their academic dreams but also build a home away from home.
For Aliya, the experience has been a full-circle moment, from being supported by advisors and fellow students to now offering that same support as a community leader at UFH. Her story is a reminder that while we may come from different corners of the world, the sense of community and belonging at U of T unites us all.
Student and family life coexist beautifully at U of T and within UFH, and smiling baby Nazir (Class of 2044) is the best proof of that.
