What Actually Changes the World: Opportunity

Well Howdy, and welcome back to the Resilience In STEM podcast! I hope you all have had a wonderful spring break. I slept a lot during my spring break. I did a lot of lab analysis. I also know daylight savings was happening, and I had a wonderful idea that I can sleep later since it's daylight savings time. Even if I’m sleeping at midnight it’s the same thing as sleeping at 11 pm. Yes, that is true. But I didn't account for the fact that I would sleep in, which is counterintuitive since you would theoretically wake up earlier. So instead of waking up at 8 am, you should wake up at 7 am. I did instead of waking up at 8 am I woke up at 10 am. So my sleep schedule was severely wrecked. But I was able to recover and were all good. I survived the first week back from spring break and I feel a lot better. So that’s good 🙂

 

A little bit of a grad school update. I’m currently making a list of schools I want to apply. It’s looking like 9-10 schools. Two pieces of advice from this:

1. Look at the graduate readiness exam (GRE) requirements in the application. Most Ph.D. programs are not going to have this requirement. I don’t know exactly why, but I’m kinda happy about it. But a majority of Master’s programs do still require the GRE. So I highly recommend looking at programs you’re interested in and seeing the testing requirement. This is because it wouldn’t be fair if you didn’t take the GRE and then you realize you have to take it while you are applying. It’s not gonna be good. 

2. I know graduate school application costs can start adding up. Just looking at my list, my application cost may go up to $1000, which is a hefty price tag. So I know in a lot of schools you can email the admission board or the person in charge of financial aid if there is any way you could get a reduced fee for your application or get an application waiver. Just explain your situation and that you’re interested in applying for the school. This is because the cost can be a barrier for students for applying for these programs. Usually, they’ll say yes, but you do need to demonstrate financial need. In the end, you might have to pay a reduced fee instead of getting the entire fee removed, but it's better than paying $100 for one application. Depending on the number of programs you apply to, the costs can start to add up. 

 

So those are some initial pieces of advice. But as you can see from the title, “What Actually Changes the World: Opportunity”, I want to start this episode talking about my involvement in the student senate, as I mentioned in the first episode and the student success work that I've done. 

 

So it started my freshman year, I was going to my introduction to coding class. All freshman engineers had to take that class. I realized I was the only Hispanic female in the entire classroom (it was so obvious). It felt kind of weird to me because my high school did a really good job of having an equal ethnic representation that was similar to the state. So we had a lot of cultures and a lot of different backgrounds. So I didn't feel like I was “out of touch” personally. But especially when I went to A&M it made me feel a little weird. In addition to that, I noticed a lot of professors in my department weren’t ethnic minorities (meaning they didn’t look like me). That felt kind of weird to me. I remember at the end of my first semester during winter break, I started to do some research to answer my questions,” Why was I the only Hispanic female in my classroom? Why is there such a small group of Hispanic female engineers? What is going on here?”. There are a lot of reasons for this. There is no one big reason why. But a reason that caught my attention was the low retention rate undergraduate students face, especially for underrepresented students. So I noticed on my university database that underrepresented students tend to graduate later and with lower GPAs on top of that. So that felt weird to me and I kept asking myself, “Why is this happening?”. During that time I had the realization that this wasn't okay for me and I wanted to do something about it. 

 

This led me to run for the student senate within my student government association because I had some friends involved in that organization. They’ve always told me,” If you want something to change this is a really good place to start, and have the connections to make sure it happens”. I’ve been involved since the end of my freshman year (but at the beginning of my sophomore year). So in my first year, I was the Off-Campus Caucus Leader. That means I was the person in charge of the group I got elected into. This allowed me to be the founder and director of the student senate town hall, which taught me the importance of advocacy. It’s important to have student voices and the policies carried throughout the university are rooted in student ideas. Especially when talking to the administration, they want to know the student's perspective, and it’s important to have a representative view of the student's voice. So when they are making their plans it matches the goals of what students on campus have. During my second year, I served as the Academic Affairs Chair. That means the role allowed me to pursue a lot of independent projects related to academics and network with top people in the administration, such as the Provost's office. This role allowed me to work on projects such as creating a centralized advising website, helping students get involved on campus, submitting a proposal for a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Latinx Center (now that Texas A&M is an HSI), hosting numerous town halls, and so much more. 

 

A lot of the work I have done has focused on student success and making sure we create academic opportunities. This allows students to not see college as a barrier or a massive obstacle, and instead see going to college as an opportunity for bigger things or a stepping stone for more opportunities. We want to make sure that not only do students graduate on time (which is already really important), but they also have the skill set to be leaders in the community. That’s what is so important about this. 

 

So you might be thinking, “You’re involvement is so great and all, but why is it so important? Why does it “change the world”? Throughout my experience, what helps propel student success is academic opportunities. We cannot change the research culture without increasing academic opportunities. Let me give an example. So we know there is a huge discrepancy in underrepresented students pursuing graduate studies. As I said in my first episode, there’s around 1% of people pursuing a graduate degree are Hispanic females. It begs the question as to why this is happening and how we can change this. In addition to that when you look at the workforce the people in the top positions are, frankly, non-representative of our society. So we have to look at why not everyone is advancing to their higher positions.

 

It all starts at the education level. You could even go back to K-12, but it all starts around when people receive their education. So if we work to increase these academic opportunities and get students prepared not only to graduate on time with good grades, but we also give them the experience to be involved in these opportunities to expand their horizons, try new things, apply what they have learned during their undergraduate education, and be more culturally diverse. With these skills, students are more likely to be better candidates for graduate school or better job opportunities. It helps that this will be eventually reflected in our workforce and academia, Honestly, this will happen in a matter of time. You can see there is a domino effect of what happens when you create academic opportunities for everyone. In my experience, that is why it's so important to be part of the change and create new academic opportunities because the world can be changed by just changing things at your university. This will create better opportunities for all students for many generations to come.

 

So all of these experiences have taught me the importance of advocacy, why it’s important to have students collaborate with the administration, and communicating things to students. Sometimes students just don’t know about these opportunities and where to find them. Lastly, these experiences have also taught me how to create academic opportunities and the massive impact it has on students. I feel if we don’t start taking the first step, not all students will have a voice and progress won’t be made. This domino effect, as I stated before, it helps advance our society. We want people in these top leadership positions that are representative of our society. That will advance it. If we are creating solutions that are representative of everyone, they will be more accurate and will have a bigger impact. That’s my little synopsis of academic opportunities. 

 

Well, where do we start? Let's just say you’re sold on the idea and have room in your schedule to help out. At least at Texas A&M, you can get involved in your student government and non-profits. I know a lot of organizations on-campus have a philanthropy aspect so there is something you can do to help our campus community or the community surrounding the university. You could start an academic organization, be in a leadership position within an organization, or just start networking with the administration. A lot of people may think,” the administration doesn't want to hear from me”. You’d kind of be surprised. The amount of times you can just email members of the administration and will respond is pretty high. The reason why is that they want to hear from students. Often when they’re in a higher position they don’t have a constant source of the student perspective unless someone reaches out. So they are very willing to hear what you may have to say because you work together and create better ideas for the university. 

 

But if you’re thinking, “okay you keep mentioning this, but where can I find these academic opportunities?”. You can go to your university’s student success or honors website. I will attach the links that Texas A&M has. Or you could look at your organization's websites and try to get involved in a student organization by joining an organization or starting one. So these are some great opportunities. 

 

Something I want to end this episode with is academic opportunity is what propels us forward in our education. Even our society. We need to apply what we have learned. If I just got a degree in Biomedical Engineering, and I can just tell you what classes I took, it doesn't make me a good candidate. This is because I wouldn't know what going on in my society, think totally outside the box in fields I am not familiar with, or help to create new solutions. You can do your curriculum, but academic opportunities can also make sure that you participate in enriching experiences and get involved. So research can be included as an academic opportunity. Studying abroad can as well because it allows you to immerse yourself in different cultures and think independently.

 

I wanted to add that I would never be who I am today without the opportunities I was given. As a Hispanic female/Latina, I saw myself as being one of the few people in my coding class, and it felt a little isolating. But without the opportunities of joining the senate or having the connections to help create academic opportunities, I would never be who I am today. Just having the opportunity to apply for awards and being communicated about it has changed my perspective, it has allowed me to get involved a lot more, and how I can help change my university for the better. So that’s the impact I want to give to my university. I know this is a little short episode, but I wanted to highlight what is so important about opportunity and getting involved at your university to help increase academic success.