Leadership Experience
Professional Development Chair of the Younger Chemists Committee at Auburn University
As one of the few active members that helped resurrect the Younger Chemists Committee at Auburn, I helped in the development of an initiative to give more attention to the well-being of young chemists within our department under the funding of an American Chemical Society Innovative Project Grant. As the Professional Development Chair, I focused my time on scheduling events that would address the needs and desires of the graduate student body.
We found through a survey that the one of the major stresses for our graduate students was uncertainty for finding a job or picking the right career once graduating. This clarified the role I was to take as a PD Chair - I began looking for opportunities to host events that helped people with their soft skills and that would allow them to get direct answers about the opportunities available to them.
While serving the younger chemists at Auburn in this role, I learned the importance of actively listening to the needs of your workplace and intentionally planning events to address those needs. I believe these skills will be invaluable for me throughout my career, whether as an active employee and coworker or as an intentional leader.
How to a Navigate the Real World After Graduate School: A Career Panel Discussion
One of the greatest accomplishments as Professional Development Chair for our department student group was hosting career panels for our graduate students. For these events, I coordinated professionals with chemistry degrees to come share with the Auburn chemistry graduate students. In addition to polling the graduate students for questions before the career panel, I co-hosted (2017) and hosted (2019) the panel discussions. The goal for these event was to expose fellow graduate students with the possibilities open to them as a graduate with a higher degree in chemistry by allowing them to ask questions to those in industry, government work, professors at state universities, and professors of primarily undergraduate institutions. Each career panel has received abundant positive feedback from the graduate student body.
Administrative Vice President of the Auburn Chemistry Graduate Student Association
My time serving as Administrative VP of the Auburn Chemistry Graduate Student Association involved mainly facilitating communication between the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry graduate student body and those in administration within our department. As such, I was honored to serve as a graduate student representative in a number of faculty meetings and in smaller meetings with our department chair and graduate program officer. In this role, I was able to learn directly from our department leaders how to formulate, create, and implement new operational procedures. I learned that workplaces are dynamic, requiring constant evaluation and clear communication to operate effectively. As I continue in my career, I will recall these lessons to facilitate communication and effect positive change in my workplace.
President's Ambassador at Wayland Baptist University
As a President's Ambassador for my university, I acted as a student body representative to the university president and board of trustees. As ambassadors, our leadership group would host tables at the board of trustee meetings and a number of philanthropy events throughout the school year. While serving my university in this role, I learned the valuable skills of networking and the great importance for scientific communication to the lay audience. It was in this role as an ambassador of my university, and more directly the school of math and science, that I realized the great benefit to clearly and effectively communicating scientific topics to groups who lead the university, not to mention those who could serve as potential donors. In this role my spark for scientific communication to the community grew to a constant flame.