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College of Arts and Sciences Honors Association (CASHA)
Howard University currently offers the Honors Program in three divisions: the College of Arts and Sciences (COAS), the School of Business (SOB) and the Cathy Hughes School of Communications (CHSOC). The COAS Honors Association (or CASHA) became the first student organization I became part of at Howard, with my acceptance into the Honors Program in Chemistry. Both the Honors Program and CASHA have offered their support to me in numerous ways. As an Honors student, I have been able to register for classes one week earlier than most other students, which has simplified my course registration each semester tremendously. When selecting the required Honors courses, CASHA members provided valuable guidance as to which courses and which professors to take. In my junior year especially, the Honors Program and CASHA organized several professional development events - including an environmental justice / data science workshop - that have helped me understand other avenues of research besides my current one.
inSTEM Mentorship Program @ Howard
The inSTEM Mentorship Program has been another exceptional resource for my professional development at Howard. Organized by the National Science and Technology Medals Foundation (NSTMF), and currently available at Howard University and the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), this is a four-year program dedicated to ensuring students with STEM majors - especially those from historically underrepresented backgrounds - get to keep their STEM majors as they graduate. To learn more about the inSTEM Program, please visit: https://nationalmedals.org/instem/.
As part of the program, we scholars have biweekly meetings with mentors from different areas in science and engineering, from both academia and industry, spanning from aerospace and computer science, to the life sciences and even business management within STEM firms. In my freshman year, the mentors discussed and shared their insights with us scholars on topics such as study habits and time management, written and verbal communication. During our sophomore and junior years, we started to segue more towards building and growing our network (both online and offline), interviewing, resume reviews, writing good personal statements and cover letters, and even how to file a patent in the event that we come up with a new invention!
Another of the program’s strong points has been to assign mentors from the pool mentioned above annually to each of us scholars, so that from freshman to senior year, we all have four mentors whom we can rely on for advice. My personal mentors have shared with me tips for acing job and internship interviews and staying employable, checklists and best practices for preparing for graduate school, and personal advice that helped me overcome self-doubt and impostor syndrome.
At the end of the Spring 2023 semester, I was fortunate enough to attend NSTMF’s yearly Innovation Unscripted event. The event this year was organized at our very own Howard University, and it featured the distinguished biomedical engineer and surgeon Dr. Cato T. Laurencin as the guest speaker. Dr. Laurencin, in sharing his life journey with us, shared a great many insights on how to merge different fields under one common mission, and how to leave behind effective leadership that can sustain itself long after one steps down from the arena. For details, see my LinkedIn post: https://lnkd.in/eK7mB4cb.
Group photo with Dr. Cato T. Laurencin at NSTMF's Innovation Unscripted event at Howard University, April 4, 2023.
inSTEM Summit 2023 Testimonial Video.mp4
On July 27-29, 2023, we successfully held our first inSTEM Summit in Washington, DC! After three long years of primarily online meetings between mentors, coaches and scholars, this was the first time where all of us came together in person and celebrated our journey together! I served as a steering committee member, helping the organizers maximize both the benefit and fun in the event, and it's safe to say it was a blast! There were multiple panels and networking events where the speakers all provided some profound insights for building successful and fulfilling STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers. And to top it all off, the bowling event was an amazing opportunity for us to build a genuine sense of camaraderie over a few strikes, and lots of laughs!
On the left is my testimonial for the inSTEM Summit as a member of the steering committee (if the in-page video player doesn't work, please click the "open in new tab" or "pop-out" button).
Please feel free to also check out my LinkedIn post describing my experience at the Summit!
inSTEM Summit Official Website: https://nationalmedals.org/instem-summit-public/.
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