Collaboration

How have you developed or demonstrated this competency this semester?

In the course I took this semester and will continue next semester, Informal Science Education, our goal is to create science lesson plans and implement them at local elementary schools. We also throw an event called Science Saturday where we bring around 40 kids and their parents to Wesleyan and organize a 3 hour science event around a specific theme. This semester, we worked on planning that event for February. The seven of us have a variety of different science interests, all of which we want to display for kids to learn about. We came up with a bunch of ideas for a theme of 5 senses, but it was incredibly difficult to narrow them down. To approach this problem, we decided to each take a few of the activity ideas and flesh them out to determine how strong of an activity it would be. From this, we were able to significantly narrow down the activities for the event. We then analyzed how long they would take and settled on 4 specific activities. This approach was systematic and effective.

This semester, I have actively worked at expanding my network. Although I am still working on establishing relationships with my professors, I met a great deal of academics at Psychonomics who I received contact information for. I plan to reach out to them over winter break to facilitate conversations about their path through academia and how they discovered what they wanted to do. I have also been working on establishing a good relationship with my lab coordinator, Erin, and PI, Hilary this semester. I do think that I have proven myself reliable to them given the time and quality of work I have provided throughout this semester, but I know that that there is always room to improve. Although they are aware of my health condition, I never want that to limit their expectations for me, and although I may need more flexible lab hours, I do always get all of my work done.