The GOALS of the Honors and Scholars program at the Ohio State University are Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. All of these are important endeavors but some will affect my education and career goals more than others.

The goal of the Honors and Scholars program at OSU that I think will by the most applicable to me as a further my studies and move towards my career is that of academic enrichment. As I continue on the honors theoretical mathematics track working toward my B.S. in Mathematics I will being taking continually challenging courses. Though some of these are more general such as honors linear algebra and differential equations some are much more specialized such as honors combinatorics. By taking these more specialized courses I will be greatly enhancing my academic ability by helping myself discover what specific type of mathematics I enjoy the most and ultimately want to pursue in my graduate education. Furthermore, I am also pursuing a statistics minor along with my math major which will enrich my skill set for when I am applying for graduate school and looking for a job. Another way in which I am involved in academic enrichment is through the STEM EE scholars program through which we attend many different events that cover topics in a variety of different STEM fields. These events allow you to learn about fields of STEM you may never have hear of and further your overall knowledge and appreciate for all fields of STEM.

I also find the goal of Service Engagement to be one that is very important to me. Ever since I was about seven I have volunteered my time, and continue to do so, at my local library to help the Friends of the Kingston library, a nonprofit fundraising group, raise money through three book sales per year. The money raised in these sales go to Children’s Library programs where the library brings various people and groups for free children’s’ Saturday programs. Furthermore, the used books sold, which are all provided through donations, are sold at very low prices ($0.25 kids’ books, $0.50 paperbacks, $1 hard backs, etc.) which allows for low income families to have access to books and helps promote literacy within the community. In addition to help running the sales I also help shelve and organize donations throughout the year in preparation for the sales. Another way in which I am involved in service engagement is through my Experimental Development group as part of my service for the STEM EE scholars program. For ED I work with a group of two other STEM scholars to develop and experiment that we will present to children ages 7-16. We then bring our experiment to either a local Columbus elementary school or to a Columbus Metropolitan Library bench. There we show and explain the experiment to the kids in hopes of sparking their interest in STEM fields.

Overall, the GOALS of the Honors and Scholars program are very important both to me and to the community and I can’t wait to extend my involvement with them as my college education continues. In particular I plan to further my Academic Enrichment by going on to graduate school and obtaining a career in some sort of higher level mathematics. In addition, I will be participating in OSU’s STEP program in which I will make a plan to use $2,000 to somehow enrich myself either academically or culturally. As for service engagement, I will continue to work with the Friends of the Kingston Library and next year will be participate in a service project to STEM EE scholars.