These courses were the foundational first-year classes required by PLC. The first course introduced fundamental principles of leadership and ethics and emphasized the application of the principles for self-development and organizational effectiveness. The second course explored challenges to leadership at the community level such as drug abuse, poverty, decline of infrastructure, care of the aged, etc. Additionally, this course gave particular attention to the development of effective leadership responses to community difficulties at university, city, state, and national levels.
These courses laid the foundation for my understanding of being an ethical and influential leader. These courses were most impactful in that they allowed me to connect with other members of PLC and find a close-knit community during my first year of college. The PLC community has allowed me to find some of my most rewarding friendships and encouraged me to be surrounded by amazing leaders and innovators.
This course focused on wicked problems, their creation, and their possible solutions. We studied multilevel issues that originate in organizational settings but carry community and global implications, which encouraged us to fully explore the complexity and interrelatedness of issues with a special emphasis on leadership and ethical implications.
For this course, I focused on the wicked problem of racism in adoption. Throughout the course, I looked at this complex issue from multiple perspectives, evaluated its consequences, and brainstormed feasible solutions. This was certainly one of my favorite leadership courses as it was highly informative and extremely interesting. I am highly interested in learning more about the world's intersectionally vicious problems and the groups they affect. This course was also extremely influential for me as it allowed me to process some of my own trauma I experienced from a racist adoption and it helped me connect with the professor of this course through our shared adoption experiences.
This course explored issues on a global level by examining the role of the UN and the Sustainable Development Goals. During this class, we examined the challenges to leadership posed by major global issues in the areas of human rights, hunger, disease, large-scale collective violence, and environmental deterioration. These problems were explored with a special emphasis on the development of effective, long-term leadership strategies.
This course was very interesting and impactful to my leadership jouney. As an immigrant, I love learning about global issues that affect international communities. In the future I hope to work in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as a public health specialist and this course provided me with a foundational understanding of some of the issues affecting these regions and the solutions being implemented.
This course was "Education & Society" which gave an indepth teaching of what the American school systems have looked like the past decades based on societal influecnes.
This course will be taken in the Spring semester of the 2025 school year. My Advanced Leadership Experience (or ALE) is my involvement with the Well-being, Environment, Livelihoods, and Sustainability group at the University of Colorado. Through my continued involvement with this research laboratory, I am completing my thesis on the impacts of the overuse of pesticides on the Ugandan public health system by increasing rates of malaria.
*No assignments or projects yet but I included the WELS Group website
This course and practicum allowed us to explore wicked problems affecting Colorado communities and the organizations working to alleviate these issues. Using advanced critical thinking skills, this class required students to evidence their knowledge, competencies and skills related to leadership theory and practice through examining contemporary leadership challenges. Further, the seminar directed students to justify decision-making processes, demonstrating their ability to synthesize prior knowledge to effect desirable, ethical outcomes.
The wicked problem my group and I addressed during this course was Reproductive Justice in a Post-Dobbs Landscape. Our group worked with Rocky Mountain Equality, New-Era Colorado, Boulder Valley Health Center, and Planned Parenthood across the US to determine the impacts of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We were especially focused on how this issue affects marginalized communities such as the LGBTQ+ community and People of Color. Below is the issue map we constructed and our Story of Now, which explains how this problem affects people across the United States, various leadership organizations involved in solving this issue, and a call to action so everyone can contribute to the future world they want to live in.