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Research and PhD info Night – 3/29/21

IA Scholars alum Jacob Caponi came to share his experiences doing undergraduate research at Ohio State and his Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan. As an Economics and Math major, I am also interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in Economics after I finish studying at Ohio State, so it was great to learn more about the application process and how getting funding for a Ph.D. program from universities works. At OSU, Jacob was involved in research with Dr. Hollie Nyseth Brehm from the Department of Sociology, where he studied the Rwandan genocide by reexaming the re-entry and re-integration of those who were incarcerated for genocide perpretation in Rwanda. He also worked with other PhD students and faculty members of the Ohio State Sociology Department, such as Dr. Evelyn Gertz who was a sociology PhD student, with whom he studied sibling influence in committing genocide during the 1994 Genocide against the Tusi and many others. Jacob also discussed taking the GRE for graduate school and the importance of being passionate and dedicated about the PhD programs you want to study for. I learned a lot more about the PhD admissions process and I am a bit scared about applying to graduate school, but I am glad that my research involvements and coursework are currently keeping on track for being a competitive applicant for Economics PhD programs. 

 

IA Research Panel – 2/21/21

The IA Research Panel featuring Lizzie Bateman, Dani Wollerman, and Sandhya was very informative for me and helped me learn about the different types of research students are involved in on campus! I am also involved as a Research Assistant with the Ohio State Department of Economics and the Neuroeconomics Lab, but the research work I am doing is much different from the involvements of Lizzie, Dani and Sandhya. Lizzie has been researching on how food insecurity has been affected during the pandemic and how foodbanks and nonprofit organizations have had to shift their responses based on the pandemic with the OSU Society of Undergraduate Fellows. Dani has been researching the experience of Refugee women in central Ohio with the Undergraduate Research Library, which is a really interesting interesting and relevant issue to study for us in Columbus. Sandhya has been involved in research with the OSU Department of Sociology, where she studied the immigration backgrounds of Uber and Lyft drivers, along with studying single moms and children in Nicaragua. The experiences of Lizzie, Dani and Sandhya have taught me about opportunities I can utilize on campus to fund my research, especially a thesis, which is something I want to do in the future and shown me other avenues on campus I can get involved in research through. 

IA LinkedIn Workshop ft. Jillian Kemper – 3/23/21

Jillian Kemper is a 4th-year Business Scholar and President of the Undergraduate Business Women’s Association who shared her knowledge on how to use LinkedIn effectively. As a Business major, she has used LinkedIn to build connections with Ohio State alumni and find internships and job opportunities for the future and it was helpful to hear from her on how I can use LinkedIn effectively. I have had a LinkedIn account for a year now and while I have learned a lot about how to set up my account and have used LinkedIn to build meaningful connections with alumni from IA Scholars, OSU, and other organizational involvements, it was nice to hear about ways I can improve my account. One thing that Jillian mentioned which really stuck out to me was to not focus on getting to the 500+ connections mark on LinkedIn, which is something that I had become fixated on, and rather cultivating your connections carefully and meaningfully because that milestone would gradually come in the future anyway. Whenever I now send or receive LinkedIn connections, I am more cognizant of building a network for the future and ensuring that those I am connecting with are those with who I can actually connect with.

IA Alumni Spotlight featuring Greg Zane – 3/4/21

A Professional Development event I organized this semester was another alumni spotlight featuring Greg Zane, an IA alum who graduated from Ohio State in 2018 and now works as an epidemiologist for the Washington State Department of Health. I found out about Greg from another IA alum who came to a community meeting last semester and encouraged me and Steven to reach out to him. I did not have his contact information, but I sent him a cold LinkedIn message and he responded to me with great excitement about coming back to IA and sharing his experiences after graduation! I have had a lot of interaction with IA alumni this year and they have all been very eager to come back to the program and share their experiences, which really has helped me see how involved IA alumni have been with the program and how this program really builds lifelong connections!

Greg studied Public Health as an undergrad and after graduation, he obtained his MPH from the University of Washington in 2020, and now works as an epidemiologist, which is a career path that has become increasingly relevant, since we are living in a pandemic! Although Greg’s epidemiology interests revolve around female reproductive health and disparities in developing nations, he has currently been working as a Lead Outbreak Systems and Notify Epidemiologist where he has coordinated COVID-19 case investigations, contact tracing policies and is also working to develop an online database for tracking COVID cases in Washington and nationwide. Along with learning about a new career path that is very relevant to International Affairs, I was also able to learn more directly about the COVID pandemic from a public health expert! Greg offered his knowledge on vaccination and how the Washington State Department of Health has been working to increase public awareness in social distancing measures and now encourage vaccination among the public.

IA Interviewing Workshop with CCSS – 2/2/21

Another event I organized this semester was an Interviewing Workshop that was led by Ryan Wilhelm from the office of Career Counseling and Support Services(CCSS). Ryan also led a workshop on Networking for IA last semester, so it has been great to build a connection with him and the office of CCSS to host Professional Development events for IA that will help IA members learn Professional Development basics and also become aware of external resources on campus that can help them achieve their Professional Development goals. Ryan discussed all the aspects of how to best present yourself in an interview, which included dressing professionally, zoom interview etiquette(which is increasingly relevant), and what to expect in an interview. One of his points that really stuck out to me was the idea of a staircase approach, which is the idea that you start an interview describing how your specific life experiences and traits have led you to pursue the role you are interviewing for and how your current and future experiences will help you climb up each step on the staircase to reach your professional goals. This approach can be used as you further along each interview question to ensure that they all have a larger connection to your main message. This was a new approach to interviewing that I had not heard before, so I look forward to applying this idea the next time I have an interview for a position.

IA Alumni Spotlight featuring Elena Akers – 1/25/21

The very first event I organized for the Spring 2021 semester as the Professional Development Chair was an Alumni Spotlight featuring Elena Akers, who is an IA Alum that graduated in 2020, received the Fulbright to go to Germany and is working as an intern for START, which is the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland and is researching domestic radicalization in the United States through this internship. She shared her experiences about the work she is doing at her remote internship at START, her process of applying to competitive fellowships such as the Fulbright, and looking for internships, especially virtual internships, such as the one she has with START. Her work studying domestic radicalization was incredibly fascinating as she shared a database that START has created to track activities of the radical groups and the demographics and locations of radicals who are posing a danger to society today. Tracking this data is also incredibly relevant today with the rise of white supremacist activity and hate crimes that came with the storming of the US Capital and the hate crimes committed against the Asian-American community in Atlanta and nationwide, which are all rooted in notions of white supremacy and radical activity. Elena also shared the process of applying to remote internships and how to develop interpersonal connections from remote internships that an intern would normally develop during an in-person internship. It was great to hear her advice on being focused and taking time to connect with people through the opportunities you come across, whether it is going to online office hours for your classes or taking the initiative to schedule zoom meetings with people you may have met through internships or at Ohio State in any capacity that you are inspired by and want to learn more from.

Second Year G.O.A.L.S

Year 2 in Review

Global Awareness
Along with being a member of the Honors Program, I am also a part of the International Affairs Scholars Program, where I have gotten to learn about and engage with various different cultures and areas of global studies that given me a more global and open-minded perspective. I have been able to attend various discussions through my Scholars Program, such as leaning about the LGBTQ+ movement in Russia or global food insecurity. I am also a member of the Collegiate Council on World Affairs, where I am a member of the Model United Nations team and have travelled to conferences around the country to debate global issues and learn about diplomacy and politics through debate. Through these activities, I have been able to learn about various geopolitical issues and learn about other cultures from a non-American perspective that has helped me become more open-minded and open to seeking solutions to these issues that are often unable to be resolved due to narrow-minded perspectives from those living in western, developed nations.

Original Inquiry
I am involved in as a research assistant in the Department of Economics and the Neuroeconomics Lab at Ohio State, where I have helped collect and analyze data for research projects. With Professor Bruce Weinberg of the OSU Economics Department, I am working on a research project about Gender Income Disparities in Higher Education, and I have also worked on a project researching COVID reopening policies across different US states and counties. I am also involved in research with Professor Ian Krajbich at the OSU Neuroeconomics Lab, where I am working on a project studying dictator games, which are a subset of Game Theory. Through engaging in these research opportunities, I have been able to discover various fields within economics. I have found interests within Game Theory and Labor Economics that have allowed me to visualize a future career in academia and I have learned about the process of research and publication. After graduating from Ohio State, I would like to obtain a Ph.D. in Economics and become an Economics Professor someday.

Academic Enrichment
I am an Economics and Mathematics major with a minor in Russian language. I am studying Economics because I have always been interested in learning about how individuals and business make decisions and learning about how the economic policies of governments impact the everyday lives of people. I want to study these concepts more as a researcher and professor, so I also added a Math major to improve my understanding of the quantitative aspects of Economics that are heavily rooted in advanced mathematical concepts.
My Honors General Education courses have been incredibly interesting and provided me with a great deal of relevant and interesting knowledge I wouldn’t have gained otherwise. For my historical study requirement, I am taking History 3706: US Business & Environment, where I have learned a lot about the environmental impact of various large businesses. As an Economics major who wants to research businesses and the decisions of consumers in the future, learning about the environmental choices that businesses make and situations in which they leave their consumers, has been very relevant and interesting to me. Learning about economics from a historical perspective has also been fascinating because I can better understand the qualitative and social aspects of economic decisions, rather than the quantitative theory my Economics courses are based on.
My decision to add a Russian minor came from my enjoyment of my General Education courses through the Slavic department. I took a Russian literature course on the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who is a stellar author. I enjoyed reading The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, which are both dense novels I most likely would not have been able to understand and read on my own without the support of a class discussion and professor, who is an expert on the subject material and context. I look forward to taking more courses as an undergraduate to help me develop a well-rounded perspective on the world and help me learn about new areas of study that I may potentially develop a new interest in.

Leadership Development
I hold various leadership positions within student organizations on campus. I am the Deputy Director of Academic Affairs in the Undergraduate Student Government(USG), where I lead projects on issues to promote academic equity for Ohio State’s student body. One of my main projects this semester is establishing a Textbook Exchange Network at Ohio State, where we can create a space for OSU students to sell used textbooks to each other and make the textbook purchasing process for affordable for students. My engagement in this leadership roles has helped me get out of my comfort zone as I have often set up meetings with university administrators to discuss policy ideas and next steps, where I am held fully accountable for my thoughts and am expected to think on my feet. University administrators are not always entirely optimistic about USG policy ideas, but through clear communication and well-developed plans, I have worked to follow through on my ideas.
I am also the Professional Development Chair for the International Affairs Scholars Program, where I organize events for IA Scholars to attend that will introduce them to different careers and provide them with skills necessary to obtain internships and future job opportunities. An event I organized and moderated last semester was a virtual alumni panel featuring International Affairs Scholars alumni, who had all embarked on very diverse career paths ranging from being a Harvard Law School Student, a Columbia Medical School student or working for the federal government in Washington, DC. For this event, I had to personally find and reach out to alumni, since my Scholars program had no established alumni base and I had to effectively communicate and organize a time for the panel that would work for all the panelists, which taught me how to organize events and keep to a schedule.
Being involved in leadership roles has helped me become more assertive in achieving my goals as I have taken initiative in many of my roles to organize events or policy ideas.

Service Engagement
I have been involved in Service Engagement in the Columbus community through International Affairs Scholars and the Collegiate Council on World Affairs(CCWA). With Scholars, I have engaged in various service projects. One of them was during the Martin Luther Jr. Day of Service in 2020, where I volunteered All That, which is a Columbus-based organization that mentors at-risk teens to help them gain academic success in high school, and beyond. My responsibility involved cleaning up the center so that students would have a clean space to succeed in. I felt glad to be able to help a local organization that had benefitted that Columbus community so greatly.
Through the Collegiate Council on World Affairs, I have helped raise funds for BuckeyeThon and participated in the marathon as a team member to help kids survive pediatric cancer. I have also worked to raise funds for various international causes such as the Black Lives Matter movement though the Okra Foundation and to help Nigerians protesting SARS regulations in Nigeria by fundraising for organizations such as the Nigerian Diaspora Against SARS and Assata Collective. I hope to continue engaging in service opportunities in the future with CCWA as the Director of Fundraising next year, where it will be my responsibility to find causes to create fundraisers and generate donations for. I also hope to further engage in in-person service opportunities as the pandemic comes to an end, so that I can better impact the local Columbus community directly.

Live, Laugh, Languages – 11/9

IA Scholars Kerstin, Natalie, Kaleb, Mera, and Matt shared their experiences studying critical languages such as Russian, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic at Ohio State. I am minoring in Russian, so it was very interesting for me to hear the experiences of Mera and Matt, who both have studied Russian in different contexts. Mera initially learned Russian while living in Russia and Matt similarly learned Russian through meeting Russian people, while in China, because he is also learning Chinese. I learned about extra resources in Columbus and Ohio State that I could utilize to better my Russian language skills, such as participating in the Russian language tables, volunteering to speak with Russian seniors in Columbus, and obviously studying abroad, with scholarships such as the Fulbright, CLS or Gilman Scholarships that can entirely fund my trip.

I am minoring in Russian, which I have taken for 2 semesters now and through this event, I learned a lot about how to successfully study a critical language and how to best become immersed in speaking and studying the language. I am not entirely sure how my future career goals might incorporate Russian, because I initially just wanted to minor in Russian because I had space in my schedule and I took a Russian literature course during my first semester at OSU that piqued my interest in learning the language as well. However, after learning about the Russian language resources that can better my speaking skills, I am certain I will gain more academic success in my Russian language courses which are bound to get harder as I progress to higher levels, so enhancing my speaking and understanding of Russian outside the classroom will better my grades in higher-level courses.

IA Community Meeting – 10/28

This IA Community Meeting was a faculty spotlight where Dr. Ines Valde, an Associate Professor of the Political Science Department shared her research and the courses she is involved in teaching at Ohio State. As she described in her presentation, her research primarily focuses around the Politics of Immigration, Transnationalism and Cosmopolitanism, and the Imperial Origins of Western Democracies. What all of this has in common is the importance of race and the social construct of race in shaping our society today. Dr. Valdez started off her presentation by discussing a quote from WEB DuBois, who pointed out that  “territorial political and economic expansion of the West had made the contact and coexistence between Europeans and brown and black peoples inevitable.” Therefore, colonization became a large basis of the intermingling of different groups of people, who were then categorized into a hierarchy by their white colonizers on the basis of their skin.

The role of race in our society has become increasingly important to consider in our society today with the prominence Black Lives Matter movement and the development of the construct of race has irreversibly divided communities of color in America and around the world. People of color are discriminated against in nearly all aspects of society whether it is wealth, safety, or education and this is all a part of the legacy of colonization that thrived off of the exploitation of Black and Brown people in the Americas, Asia, and Africa to make white Europeans wealthy. It is certainly important to look at the issues of our society today and analyze the systemic institutions that have allowed these practices to come into place as we look to seek equality and empowerment for marginalized communities of color in the United States and around the world.

Dr. Valdez’s research seemed incredibly fascinating to me and I would certainly love to take one of her courses in the future if I have room in my schedule. Dr. Valdez’s teaches Introduction to Human Rights(IS 3450) and Racial Capitalism(PS 7410), which she discussed in her presentation. As an Economics major interested in studying socioeconomic disparities between different communities and ethnicities, the Racial Capitalism course seemed very interesting to me, but it is a graduate course, so I’ll hopefully be able to take similar courses for undergraduates in the future!

Conference for Conflict Resolution Education 10/30 – Academic

I was on the student planning committee for an international conference on Conflict Resolution Education. This conference was a two-week event that focused on youth engagement in conflict resolution for the first-weekend and then focused on both current professionals involved in diplomacy and peacebuilding along with students during the second week. As a member of the planning committee, I spent all summer working with students from different universities across Ohio and the United States to plan this online conference that people would be attending from around the world. Our planning included deciding on speakers who would present at the conference, deciding which type of events we would like to organize, and working on advertising the conference. As the Professional Development Chair in IA, I decided to also suggest including professional development events during the first weekend of the conference and we ended up including a resume workshop event during the first weekend!

One of the presentations for this conference that I attended and was a moderator for was called “Justice in Images: From the Amazon Rainforest to the United States of America.” The panelists for this event were Tyrone Turner, who is a photographer working for National Geographic and the Washington DC NPR Station along with Gabriele Sciortino, and Debora Komukai, who have both also worked with Tyrone and photographed people and events around the world. Tyrone shared his photography from New Orleans, LA where he got to capture the stories of Black communities in New Orleans through photojournalism. Gabriele is from Brazil and his photojournalism experience was centered around photography of the Brazilian rainforest and the indigenous communities there. Debora is also from Brazil and her photojournalism was focused on urban communities, particularly the lower-income marginalized communities, in the cities of Brazil. Through their photojournalism, I got to learn more about how photographers document the stories of various communities and how they aim to learn their stories without serving as a distraction. I thought it was fascinating to learn about the job and responsibilities of a photographer as an individual with the power to share stories from around the world and inspire peace and inclusivity, which is not something you always realize when you are quickly scrolling through the content of photographers on social media.