Service Learning
My proposed service experience is my participation in the REACH Initiative through the Shiver Center and PRAC 096. The REACH Initiative is an outreach program that helps to educate high school girls on various areas in STEM and gender empowerment. The main goal of the program is to expose the high school students to the STEM field in the hope it sparks their interest to pursue a career in STEM. The program is yearlong and during this time, there are gender empowerment workshops and STEM workshops. During the STEM workshops, the time is split between a presentation or activity on a different STEM field and projects. Every year, mentors are paired with high school students and they pick a project together to complete throughout the year. Projects are important because they are an introduction to research to the high school students, and in some cases, it also introduces research to the undergraduate mentors.
During my semester as a mentor, my high school students and I decided to do a research project on stem cells. While, we could not work in a lab, we decided to use various scientific papers and online resources to answer a research question. We wanted to know if stem cells could create organs outside of the human body. We discovered that organoids (small versions of the organs) can be created, but full-size organs cannot be made due to problems with oxygen delivery to the cells in the middle of the organ. Through this project, my high school students were able to learn how to look for reliable resources and it also sparked their interest to continue researching stem cells in the future. Furthermore, I learned a lot more about stem cells and how they have many applications. I was able to connect this research to my current research lab where one of the projects being studied is creating full-sized organs outside of the human body using pluripotent stem cells. This has allowed me to become a more active member of my lab and contribute my own experiences to help further the project. In addition, in the Spring 2018, I helped two high school students on learning about cholesterol and how it affects the heart and its blood flow. This was also connected to my chosen grand challenge since I was working a project that was learning about health issues and we had to come up with possible solutions (preventative solutions as well) that would be able to help minimize the prevalence of heart disease in America.
In total, I have worked with the REACH Initiative for three and half semesters. This gives a total of 130 hours, making this a silver experience. Of those semesters, I was registered in PRAC 096 for two of the semesters. During Fall 2019, I took on a leadership role in the organization as STEM co-chair where I was in charge of creating STEM workshops for our high school students. Overall, I started participating in the REACH Initiative during Spring 2018 and I will continue until I graduate in Spring 2021.
Reflection:
Throughout this experience I have learned that to be a mentor, you need patience, compassion, and be willing to accept that you may not know everything, but it is important to always do your best. It also gave me a chance to learn more about STEM and how to relate it to other people’s experiences. This has changed my perspective on what it takes to be a mentor because I realized that it isn’t always easy to be there for someone and help guide them whether it’s just on life lessons or a specific topic. However, I learned that it is also very rewarding to connect to someone else and be there for them while they are starting their journey. This experience has helped me realize that in the future, I want to work with students and have a lab where I can mentor undergraduate students and high school students as they begin their research journey.
REACH Mentors 2018-2019
Program Wide Objective(s):
The program-wide learning objective that has contributed to my experience was flexibility. It is essential that as a mentor to high school students who do not have prior experience doing research, that I am able to think on my feet in order to adapt quickly to my plan that day. This is important because if I planned something that they do not understand, then we will have to change the plan that day to get them to understand the topic or goal of that week and that may throw off the plan for the next few weeks. In addition, since it wasn’t just my project, I may have had an idea on how I wanted the project to go, but once they gave their input, then I would need to go back and readjust either our presentation or my plans for the project.
Experience Specific Learning Objective:
This service experience has contributed to community engagement because we are an outreach program in connection to local high schools. We are constantly trying to engage the young adults of the neighboring community. In addition, we are also looking to start outreach in local middle schools as well.
Personalized Learning Objective:
One experience specific learning objective that resonates with me is capacity for reflection. As I get more involved in the local community, it is extremely important that I am able to reflect on what the most effective way to portray STEM to these young girls since they are still learning about all of the possibilities available to them in the future. It is important to not let my own biases be apparent in activities, so being reflective and acting based on that is extremely important.