Service & Administration
Experience with Undergraduates
Service & Administration
Experience with Undergraduates
Mentored and guided undergraduates participating in the REU to ease their transition to the CMSE community and the greater Lansing area.
Assigned as the contact for one intern (not in my research group) for the 10-week program. This mentoring program came with funding for biweekly meetups such as coffee or lunch, to provide a safe space, outside of the office.
Helped manage and set expectations of graduate life.
Explained and highlighted real life as a graduate student to best mitigate the allure of academia that accompanies the visibility bias.
Encouraged the students to partake in the graduate student community.
Connected them to resources and events happening among the graduate students of CMSE that summer.
Assisted with strategies and timeline of applying to graduate school while mitigating stress.
Provided some tips and suggestions from my experience and the material I used for a seminar on applying to graduate school.
Served as president for the University of Alabama's chapter for two years.
Elected just before the COVID-19 pandemic, I served as president for just over two years until I graduated from UA.
Figurehead of the undergraduate physics program.
Served as the primary contact for faculty, graduate students, and perspective undergraduates, connecting each group to resources or collecting and providing the appropriate feedback.
Led the rest of the executive committee.
Expanded the executive committee roles to include two social chairs, which served two purposes. The first of which was to spread the workload and include more lower class students; before this expansion, there were five positions, four of which were held by seniors. In order to help institutional knowledge and transition, younger leaders were required. Additionally, social chairs helped mark the transition to more targeted social activities to ramp up the undergraduate physics community post-COVID.
Set and planned chapter meetings, executive committee meetings, and other events.
I created a schedule of biweekly chapter meetings, pertaining to social and professional development events; most of meetings were both, with a presentation leaning more toward professional development, such as undergraduate research, REU applications, applying to grad school, and more, and then ending the event with pizza, board games, and music.
We also had more pure professional development events such as The Life and Career of Faculty Panel and a Graduate Student Panel.
Additionally, some social events were a sponsored tailgating event, an egg drop with the device would have to be made out of a miniature pumpkin, and ending the year with a slideshow swap night.
Created the SPS Tutor Program.
Further expanding the executive committee, I created two SPS Tutor positions to oversee the newly formed SPS Tutor Program.
These tutors hosted review nights for some of the harder undergraduate courses, kept a database of undergraduates who would like to tutor, and then connecting them to those who need tutoring, and working with the Outreach Coordinator to help run the AP Review nights.
Additionally, this program was connected to the Athletic Tutoring Program.
Increased participation from roughly 10% of the undergraduate physics majors to ~45% through targeted recruitment and interaction.
My proudest accomplishment during my tenure as the president of SPS, I was able to take a dwindling community, keep it afloat over the pandemic and isolation, and then watch it flourish during my final year without any restrictions and social distancing.
With a department of ~115 undergraduate majors, with a decent percentage of them being double majors with their primary identification elsewhere, I was able to get attendance at any given event to just under 45% participation.
My senior year the chapter was recognized with an Distinguished Chapter Award for 2021-2022!
Served as the president for the chapter's Sigma Pi Sigma national honor society.
Sigma Pi Sigma is the premier honor society for undergraduate physics within the United States.
Rebooted the local chapter for first time in several years.
While UA had a chapter previously, the charter had long since lapsed. I coordinated with the department's Undergraduate Director Dr. Adam Hauser, and Sigma Pi Sigma chair Dr. Brad Conrad to do the necessary paperwork and gain the required number of applicants to restart the chapter.