My Global Learning Experience
CERTIFIED STUDENT LEADERSHIP PROGRAM
FOOD RECOVERY NETWORK
Communication
The Food Recovery Network is a national nonprofit that unites students at colleges and universities to fight food waste and hunger by recovering perishable food that would otherwise go to waste from their campus dining halls and donating it to those in need. Our goal is to change the norm from food waste to food recovery in the United States. Through my involvement as the Secretary for the Food Recovery Network, I learned how to negotiate conflict with effective communication skills. One way that I did this was by providing clear expectations to the members by creating presentations for our general meetings. I assisted the members with plans on how to achieve the club’s objectives. If there were any disagreements I would listen carefully, identify any points on agreements or disagreements, prioritizing the conflicts on which to resolve, and then discuss to work on a plan to modify my assessments, if need be, until everyone comes to a collaborative agreement. Being open-minded was key for me because it was important to understand the other person's point of view in a cordial fashion. My goal was to create an environment where everyone can be comfortable enough to express any ideas. To facilitate the organization's goals, I was responsible for point -collecting for active members, proofreading documents, and drafting emails to be sent out to members. For E-board meetings, I would take notes on the meetings and would follow-up with other E-board about previous tasks discussed. My other duties included canceling or rescheduling E-board meetings, checking and responding to emails in a timely manner, and updating members of upcoming events. As can be seen, through this experience I learned that everything can be resolved through good communication.
MLK DAY OF SERVICE
Civic Responsibility
MLK Day of Service is intended to empower individuals, strengthen communities, bridge barriers, create solutions to social problems, and move us closer to Dr. King's vision of a"Beloved Community”. On this day, I helped beautify walls into murals in Jessie J. McCray Jr. Elementary School by painting images that recognize their own culture and positive messages such as words like responsibility and honesty and their corresponding definitions. We hoped that these encouraging words would serve to spark self-discovery and growth to children as guidance for a positive education and life. Through this project, I learned the importance that children need to be encouraged to be themselves so they can discover their own solutions to problems and their unique paths through life. Since most of their time is spent in school, it’simportant to have a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive environment for all. The youth is the future of our community and education is directed to the development of our personalities and identities, strengthens our perspective on human rights, promotes the understanding of similarities and difference of others, and teaches tolerance for all individuals within the community. I admire how this community even with the lack of resources still makes an effort to improve the life and environment of their youth.
WINTER AB PARTICIPANT
Group Dynamics
Camp Ramapo is a year-round residential transition-to-independence program that helps young adults with social, emotional, or learning challenges develop social, vocation, and life skills, preparing them for next steps including college and employment. The program offers participants an opportunity to practice vocational and life skills in a communal setting that includes typically developing co-workers and role models. Participants improve and reinforce interpersonal, independent living, and job skills while building resilience and self-determination. Through Alternative Breaks (aB), I was given the opportunity to go to Rhinebeck, New York with a group of eager volunteers to help these young adults. As a group, we would meet weekly to get to know each other as we prepared for the mission trip and to create workshops. We created workshops for these individuals such as hygiene/grooming, mindfulness, meditation, organization, time management, resume building, budgeting, physical fitness, healthy eating habits, meal planning and preparation to reemphasize coaching on life skills that have been done with their mentors. By creating these workshops, we hoped to increased self-sufficiency among these individuals who seek exploring college coursework, employment opportunities, and independent living. As a group, we would reflect on our day with highs and lows, personal experiences, feedbacks, improvements, etc. Through this experience, I gained so much insight into who I am as a person and my interactions with others. I learned the importance of breaking down barriers and the value of not turning someone down that we perceive as being different from us. People that have learning differences face the same difficulties as we do, and it is much harder for them. I also gained the perspective on how hard these individuals try to overcome these difficulties such as coping with emotions and managing their free time and the importance of asking for help when needed and how influential you can be to someone’s life.
BIOCHEMISTRY LEARNING ASSISTANT
Interpersonal Interaction
Being the nation's largest Learning Assistant (LA) program, FIU’s LA program provides undergraduates with the opportunity to experience the reward of teaching, develop skills to engage in the challenges of effective instruction, and deepen their content knowledge. At the same time, they serve a critical role as dedicated and skilled facilitators in the classroom, thus easing the transition to active learning.
As an LA, I had weekly preparation with faculty and co-LAs to help facilitate discussions among the student groups for the upcoming classes to promote active-based learning. I planned lessons and prepared other resources to help students be successful in interactive classroom environments.
My experience in being an LA for Biochemistry taught me how to collaborate with others. This opportunity put me in a supportive role by motivating and empowering students so that they stay fully engaged in the course throughout the semester with office hours and positive reinsurance. I especially acted as a motivator when students tended to feel discouraged after taking a test or not understanding class material. I helped them realize that I was also in their shoes and it is more than possible to succeed. I also assisted those who were struggling by guiding them with direct instruction towards an understanding of the content through questioning and how to address common student misconceptions. In addition, I helped prepare resources and other activities that capitalize on their skills in identifying and addressing student difficulties with conceptual content.
TRI-BETA COMMUNITY SERVICE CHAIR
Learning and Reasoning
Beta Beta Beta (Tri-Beta) is an honor society dedicated to improving the understanding and appreciation of biological study and extending boundaries of human knowledge through scientific research. As the Community Service Chair, it was a learning experience for me. I learned how to lead volunteer events and give volunteer participants appropriate roles and responsibility for implementing solutions. I gained the knowledge to plan ahead and solve problems effectively. I had to learn through experience how to keep the volunteers engaged, empowered, and for them to recognize the reward of volunteering. After every service project, we would reflect on what we did and how we felt to give us a sense of shared purpose where people feel that their contribution can make a difference. It was hard to make the decision whether or not the events were too far away for the students to commute to or whether they were going to be events that the members would want to attend. I made it possible to have community events in the downtown area since it’s an area that has a big homeless population, and around campus, such as in the FIU preserve or other on-campus events. By doing this, I was able to provide members different options for what events they could attend. As an e-board of the organization, I would also be caught in situations where problems would arise, either where the community partners would tell us last minute that they were canceling the event or that locations for volunteering events were suddenly changed. I realized that the main way to effectively solve problems is to communicate effectively and make sure you tell everyone, with reason, what is going on. Members appreciated when I would constantly communicate with them and let them know of any issues that would happen. By learning all of these values, I can see myself applying these learning and reasoning skills to future experiences and, for that, I'm thankful to have added these tools to my toolbox.
SPRING AB PARTICIPANT
Personal Behavior
As an Alternative Breaks (aB) site participant, I was able to develop workshops for adults with disabilities that will hopefully transition them to be independent adults. I create workshops in hopes of establishing healthy behaviors and satisfying lifestyle habits such as good hygiene, safe sex, organization, time management, aromatherapy, and self-awareness. I learned through this experience how excited they were to see FIU students come to visit them. As well as the mentors being excited for us to reteach what they have been teaching them throughout the year. It was great to have that responsibility to represent FIU in a positive light. I learned how to demonstrate confidence and be a leader in workshops that we created. In the process of developing the workshop, I valued the unique talents and social assets that each person in my group was able to offer for the good of the whole. I also learned that the opinions of others are vital for completing and correcting our own limited vision. I learned the ability to coordinate with others to achieve a goal that wouldn't be possible on my own. This helped me to try new things, experience more confidence through my willingness to assimilate new ideas. Through this, I overcame my fear of public speaking, traveled to a place unfamiliar to me, and met new people. I was able to build new friendships and develop my own self-awareness. My experiences brought about changes in the Ramapo staff assistants and in myself that I really didn't expect to see. I'm so thankful for this experience and its impact on my life that I went twice.
TUESDAY TIMES ROUNDTABLES
Self-Awareness and Development
I would attend The Tuesday Times Roundtable (TTR) which is a series of conversations on The New York Times articles from the multiple viewpoints of students, faculty, and staff. I attended speakers that spoke about topics that include religion, migration, race, technology, restorative justice, language, and the LGBTQ+ community. All these topics were interesting and relevant to the world that we are living in. All the speakers motivated me to gain global awareness, global perspective, and an attitude of global engagement. These conversations helped me become more of a globally engaged citizen by becoming more self-aware as who I am as an individual and understanding the benefit in acting in alignment with my values. Participation in this connects me to invaluable opportunities on international and intercultural issues and the opportunity to exchange ideas and to network during roundtable discussions. I embrace global learning, which is the process of diverse people collaboratively analyzing and addressing complex problems that transcend borders, and how the world is shaped by our social interactions, issues, and our learning is limited and shaped by the range of our own experiences. Just because I'm not seeing it in my day to day interactions doesn't mean that it is not occurring. I understand how systemic inequities divide our world and I recognize that effecting change requires the cooperation of society's various sectors. I value the differences among us as a way to enrich everyone's experience of the world around us.
PANTHER CHOW CO-FOUNDER
Strategic Planning
I co-founded PantherChow which is a student-led organization at FIU that involves the repurposing of food from events and distributing it to food insecure students on campus. Our mission at PantherChow is to be able to distribute hot meals to those students who do not have access to one. We took the initiative to help those lacking reliable access to sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food as we thought it shouldn't be part of student's worries. Co-funding a club involved a lot of planning and preparation that our founding team was ready to take on. With getting to know each other in this new process we began seeing what requirements were needed by the university to adequately start and plan the steps for creating this organization. As a team, we had weekly E-board meetings, where we would lay step-by-step plans on how we were going to get to a finished product. As a team, we developed three operational plans that were essential to us. The plans we came to conclusion with were the following: Plan 1 involved the acquiring of foods, Plan 2 involved food collection and food distribution, and Plan 3 involved providing service to food-insecure students. With the process of planning and creating PantherChow, I learned how to be comfortable in decision-making and implementing plans. As a team, we also placed each other in roles that we would be the most successful in. Since this was a new plan, we had to make improvements to the plans by altering it on unforeseen operational difficulties. As one of the co-founders, it was one of my jobs to always complete tasks and requirements by certain deadlines. In this position, I learned the importance of budgeting and became certified on food safety which led me to receive certification as a food manager. We were also able to develop an app, "Chow", which was powered by the Bridgit app, where students would get a notification as to what meal is being offered at what location, time, and date. This app sends out GPS notifications up to 3 miles around FIU. They can then claim the meal through the app, and it shows us how many meals have been given away. As the Director of Outreach, I was responsible for reaching out to charities and volunteer recruitment and supervising food handlers. Through my involvement, I learned how to prioritize tasks, coordinate one's efforts with those of others to achieve goals, make effective tactical decisions, and act in alignment with the organization's values. One of my proudest accomplishments was teaming up with Chartwells for a Friendsgiving where students with meal plans had the ability to donate their meal swipes. These were put in gift cards and given to food insecure students on campus.