Reve Academy
The mission of Reve Academy is to empower students to dream with direction through pathways to digital careers. I had the opportunity to mentor several inner-city, high school students through an industry project as they developed user experience, design, and development skills. Through this experience, I learned an immense amount about students unique ability to think out of the box and I was truly inspired by their passion and excitement.
St. Luke's Lutheran Church
The mission of St. Luke's Lutheran church is to serve the Albuquerque area through ministry, service, and word. I had the wonderful opportunity to serve by serving on the church council. Through this service, I enjoyed planning and coordinating several events. I was also able to use my passions of baking and cooking to serve St. Luke's bread ministry and provide meals for homeless families in the Albuquerque area.
American Society of Mechanical Engineers: Broadening Participation Committee
The Broadening Participation Committee operates as a part of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The mission of the committee is 'to develop, implement and oversee new and existing activities aimed at broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in the activities'. Over the past two years I have worked with some amazing men and women to organize and put on two workshops at the International Design and Engineering Technical Conference. In 2013, Valerie Young presented some of her work on The Impostor Syndrome and how we can learn to overcome it. This past August, we hosted a workshop on mentoring and the different ways in which mentoring can manifest itself. An insightful lecture by Mary Dean Sorcinelli was presented followed by breakout discussion on the topic.
Society of Women Engineers Graduate Committee
I have had the opportunity to work closely with Bethany Juhnke and Elizabeth Gregory to lay the foundation for a new organization on campus to serve the unique needs of Women in Graduate Engineering Programs. The mission of GradSWE is to create an environment in which women can foster and grow their skill set through networking with fellow engineers and professional development seminars. We have also developed the first workshop aimed at bringing together graduate students and faculty to tackle common struggles with professional development.
Human-Computer Interaction Student Group
The HCI Student Group is led by students and involves bi-weekly or weekly student presentations, distinguished lecturers, tool development workshops, and conference reviews. The group was created to foster broad and robust graduate student training in Human-Computer Interaction. It is our goal to foster further intellectual exchange and research collaboration among Iowa State faculty, students and staff.
Virtual Reality Applications Center Summer REU Mentor
The summer REU, or research experience for undergraduates, is an NSF sponsored program that brings undergraduate students from all over the United States to Iowa State University. There are 12 students split up into 4 different groups, each with a research project for the summer. The purpose of the program is to give the students a sense of what it is like to be a graduate student. As a project mentor, I lead this students through the process of building a demonstration of some interesting low-cost virtual reality technologies and putting together a research paper and poster of their work.