As a high school student in Acadia University’s Student Research Lab, Victoria Martinez initially struggled with independence and speaking up.

After completing the 14-week youth-engaged research program, Martinez says she’s seen big shifts in her life.

“I started trying to do more things independently,” Martinez shares. “I’ve never been a super independent person. So that was a big step for me.

“It also helped me gain confidence. The Lab environment was very different from high school. It was more of an open-table discussion rather than raising your hand to speak.”

The Student Research Lab (SRL) is innovative because it treats high school students as co-researchers rather than subjects. They get mentorship from Acadia students and professors to learn real-world research skills.

That means students help design research questions, interview other youth, analyze real data, and contribute to findings that inform educators, employers, and policymakers.

The SRL is a signature program of the Prudentia Institute, a charity focused on youth empowerment through research, education, and partnerships. It’s an initiative of Dr. Kristin Williams, Associate Professor of Management, and the Founder, Managing Director, and Principal Researcher at the Prudentia Institute.

She launched the SRL in 2021 to engage youth directly in research relevant to them.

“I didn’t just want youth to participate in studies,” Dr. Williams says. “I thought it would be more interesting if they could be engaged in the research.”

She also adopted a co-op model so high schoolers could earn a graduation credit.

“It’s not just about enriching scholarship,” Williams notes. “It’s also directly tied to student development. Youth are directly engaged in every aspect of the research.”

The lab focuses on topics highly relevant to young people. Their past studies have examined what makes students feel empowered in schools, how young people navigate underemployment and precarious work, what sustains engagement beyond surface-level participation, and how youth translate concern into advocacy and action.

“We use a method called Youth Participatory Action Research,” Dr. Williams explains. “It’s a peer-to-peer approach where young people recruit their peers, manage informed consent, and conduct the interviews. The data they collect is rich, authentic, and meaningful.”

The peer-to-peer structure often leads to more open, honest conversations with youth than adult-led research.

Each week in the SRL blends research instruction with hands-on work. Students learn qualitative research methods, discuss ethical questions, analyze interview transcripts together, and reflect on what the data and process are teaching them.

They share their findings through reports, publications, and partnerships with youth organizations in Atlantic Canada. In her time at the SRL, Martinez and her peers studied student engagement.

“One of the most interesting things we found was how important support was to students,” Martinez says. “A lot of people we interviewed were looking for opportunities to engage with content independently, without adult help. They wanted autonomy, but still within a supportive environment.”

Her favourite part of the research was coding interview data, the process of theming and anonymizing the data collected.

“It was new and a bit intimidating at first,” Martinez recalls. “I remember stressing about it. But I talked with the other students in the lab, and they helped me figure out what I had missed. That collaboration was huge for me. It wasn’t something I had much experience with in high school.”

Acadia students like Becca Mian (‘25) served as mentors for Martinez and other youth in the SRL. Mian was Program Coordinator and Research Assistant at the SRL for two years while studying Community Development and Environmental Sustainability at Acadia. She became interested in The Lab after discovering the Prudentia Institute while researching co-op opportunities.

“The focus on youth knowledge exchange really stood out to me,” Mian recalls. “I’ve always felt that youth often have more to teach us than we assume.”

“Traditionally, we think young people learn from older people. And that’s true, but it’s not the only truth. There’s reciprocity, and we can learn a lot by listening to young people’s voices.”

Mian’s SRL experience began with a powerful, memorable moment.

“One of my first sessions involved recording a video with a cohort that was wrapping up, where they spoke about their experience,” she says. “The depth of what they shared gave me chills. You could see how much the experience had impacted them. It was powerful to witness that growth in the youth we worked with, not just the youth we collected data from.”

Mian, who graduated in October 2025, is now a project lead for a new nonprofit in Cape Breton. She says her SRL experience eased her transition to a professional role.

“It’s helped me make the shift from being a university student to being an adult professional—communicating with other professionals, reaching out to people across organizations and the municipality, and feeling credible,” Mian explains.

Martinez’s SRL experience helped her choose Acadia, where she’s in her second year of studying Law and Society. She also joined the Prudentia Institute’s board of directors as Youth Representative, where she’s excited to give youth a voice at the table.

“Being part of the board was completely new to me, but it made me feel proud of myself,” Martinez shares. “Being trusted to represent my peers—people I feel really close to—means a lot.”