Secretary of the Women in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (WEMS)
(August 2022 - May 2023) WEMS is a social and professional development club at Penn State. The club's goal is to provide a place for people of all genders to connect with others and grow during their time at Penn State as a part of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. We host events such as fun socials while offering nights to meet with academic professionals and Elevator Pitch Nights. As secretary of the WEMS, I handle communication with members outside the board. My job is to send out emails detailing our events as well as any opportunities and information our club members would benefit from hearing. I also handle designing and creating informational flyers about our events.
President of the Women in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (WEMS)
(August 2023 - Present) As President of WEMS, I run both executive and general body meetings and act as the main face of the club. I also handle some of the communication with speakers to invite them to general body meetings and do the majority of the event planning and organization
Secretary of the Penn State Undergraduate Geography Club (UnderDOGs)
(August 2023 - Present) Undergraduate Geography Club is a student-run organization mainly dedicated to students with the Geography Major, minor, or certificate, and those who are interested in the topic. The club focuses on community building and professional development the organization of various activities such as club hikes and social events as well as helping members get the funds and information necessary to travel to geography-related conferences. As secretary, I helped out with club communication and ensured members got information about various events of interest.
Leadership Positions
Activities
Student Dialogue Facilitator for World in Conversations
(January 2022- April 2023) World in conversations is an organization that seeks to bring strangers together to talk about social issues and ideas so that they may learn from each other's unique perspectives while sharing their own points of view. As a student dialogue facilitator, I was one of many who helped run those conversations by overseeing the conversation, asking questions, and making connections to allow the participants to think more critically about what others are sharing at the time. I was able to host conversations with Penn State students from all walks of life while having some experience with international, non-Penn State participants from places like Iraq, Russian, Colombia, and more.
Minorities in the College of EMS
(September 2021 - Present) MEMS is a club designed to uplift minority students across the College of Eart and Mineral Sciences and to create a sense of community where students can engage and connect with each other.
Campus Band
(Spring 2022, 2023) Campus Band is a semester-long commitment where I played clarinet multiple times a week for the band. All the practices happen after normal school hours to prepare for a concert held at the very end of the Spring semester.
EMS Ambassadors
(August 2023 - Present) Student Ambassador for the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. As an ambassador, my job is to give tours of the college and the university to prospective EMS students, sit in on student panels to share my experiences as a current student, and help future students get a feel for what being a student at Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is like.
Geography Guides
(September 2023 - Present) Geography Guides are student ambassadors for the Penn State Department of Geography. As exemplary students with the major, our job is to visit different lower-level Geography classes to talk to students about our experiences as a geography major and convince students to consider switching their degree to geography (if they’re undecided) or take on a geography minor/certificate to enhance their education.
EMS Diversity Council
(August 2023 - Present) As a member of the college-wide Diversity Council, I can offer my perspective on issues relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as collaborate with members of the faculty and staff in the Penn State College of EMS to promote DEI principles in the classroom and in my clubs.
Internships and Career Experience
NCAS-M Experiential Training Summer Program for Rising Sophomores
(June 2022 - July 2022) The NCAS-M ( NOAA Cooperative Science Center in Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology II) ETSP program was a summer program that partnered with Howard University. They spent time educating rising sophomores about jobs and careers at NOAA while focusing on overall professional development, networking, and what to do after finishing your undergraduate education. Additionally, this program allowed me to start doing some undergraduate research. I studied changes in the Mid-Atlantic air pollutant concentrations with guidance from one of the Howard University professionals at the Beltsville data collection site. There I was taught some background about my project and how to use the coding language R to create graphs from my raw data. Lastly, the program allowed me to present at a Research Colloquium for NOAA officials and answer questions about my research.
Penn State Department of Geography Teaching Internship
(October 2022- December 2022) A Penn State offered teaching internship in the Geography department where I had a hand in designing a Climate Change-centered class that will be taught at the school. Throughout this internship, I used all the information created for an online class to design and reorganize the exact same course so the content could fit into numerous PowerPoint lessons to spread across a 16-week semester. Additionally, I reshaped some of the assignments to fit better for the class and researched new and outside material to include in the lessons.
Poster Presentation at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (2023)
(March 2023) Presented Sorting Food Waste at the University Level: An Examination of Penn State Students' Composting Habits poster at the American Association of Geographers' (AAG) Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado during one of the poster sessions. While there, I practiced my public speaking and relayed my conclusions to people who were interested in my research.
Poster Presentation at Celebration of Undergraduate Engagement
(April 2023) Presented Sorting Food Waste at the University Level: An Examination of Penn State Students' Composting Habits poster with a partner at the Celebration of Undergraduate Engagement Poster Session for the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. While there, I practiced my public speaking and relayed my conclusions to people who were interested in my research. I also received a Sophmore Submission Award for my work.
Summer Research Assistant for Penn State Geography Department
(May-August 2023) I worked with a Penn State Geography Professor and offered some assistance on her research about energy preferences for cooking in sub-Saharan Africa. I assisted by creating literature reviews, and presentations and performing data analysis on her findings alongside using Stata to help program some of their graphs.
Summer Internship at UrbanKind Institute in Pittsburgh, PA
(June - August 2023) I worked with the UrbanKind Institute in Pittsburgh PA on their Trust Trees Initiative. This initiative's goal was to bring trees into urban environments by educating the community about the benefits of trees and involving them in the tree-planting and decision-making process. As an intern, I created educational material such as presentations, infographics, and video scripts based on independent research I did about the benefits of trees. I traveled to Pittsburgh to attend a tabling event in the Beltzhoover neighborhood during a community day to engage directly with residents about the benefits of trees.
Study Abroad Trip in Iceland through The GREEN Program
(March 2023) The GREEN Program is an organization that offers short-term study-abroad programs that focus on teaching students about sustainability using different countries as case studies. My trip was an eight-day-long experience in Iceland where I got to learn about Renewable Energy Innovation and Sustainability (with specific focuses on Iceland's Geothermal and Hydroelectric energy systems). I was able to attend lectures about energy and policy at Reykjavik University's School of Energy and visit different power plants throughout the southern coast of Iceland alongside visits to a greenhouse, a soil conservatory, and multiple national parks to further our understanding of how Iceland uses its natural resources for energy.
Study Abrod Trip in Austria, Germany, Slovenia, and Czechia
(May 2023) A study-abroad trip that I attended through the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences for two weeks in May. During this experience, I got to work on a geospatial capstone project with undergraduate and graduate students from Penn State as well as a few students from the Vienna University of Technology. On top of exploring the cities we were in, we were also able to fit some activities related to our education into the trip as well. In Vienna, Austria, I visited the Globe Museum and the Natural History Museum. And in Prague, Czechia, our instructors organized a visit to the country’s office for Surveying, Mapping, and Cadastre.