Welcome to Gustavus Adolphus College’s Student Stories Series!
American Sociological Association Presenter
Major: GWSS, LALACS, Spanish
Minor: English
What was/is your career opportunity/experience (i.e. internship, shadowing experience, research)?
ASA is an organization that focuses on advancing sociology, and one of the ways it does this is by hosting an annual conference where people can share knowledge, research, and practice. This year, I will have the opportunity to attend and present work that Dr. Tso and I will be investigating over the summer. Presenting will allow me to showcase what I have learned and contributed to the project so far.
How did you get the opportunity/experience? What steps did you take to achieve this?
Before I got the opportunity to do this summer research project, I was working as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for Dr. Tso and she offered me the opportunity to do the summer research project. For this we had to submit a grant proposal for the presidential grant in order to receive funding. Before my research started, I had to complete a certification from the CITI program for Social and Behavioral Responsible Conduct of Research and Social and Behavioral Research as I was going to be working with private confidential information from our TAs and students.
Tell us more about your accomplishment (include title, role, location, program, etc.)
My role was a research assistant in the Undergraduate Pedagogy Project. I worked both from home and in my TA office. I also had the opportunity to learn the basics of coding the language R during this time and this was done at Gustavus. I received a certification completion from SICSS Minnesota. One of our end goals was to be able to present our research at the 2025 ASA conference in Chicago. So for a week, I was there attending the conference and I presented at a roundtable session as well as a regular session.
Who were some of the people who helped you most at Gustavus to get this opportunity? What did you learn from them?
The people who helped me the most were of course Dr. Tso for giving me this amazing opportunity to learn more about academic, ethnography and what it takes to research. I also received a help from Tom Flunker and The Center for Career Development with the Engaged Learning Funds. Without this funding it, I would not have been able to experience and learn as much as I was able too.
How did the Engaged Learning Funds help you be able to complete this experience?
These funds helped me actually get to the ASA 2025 conference in Chicago. It allowed me to experience this conference to it’s fullest potential without the worry of cost looming over my head.
Anything else you want to share about your experience working with Career Development?
I’m just really happy I got to present at a national conference as an undergraduate student. Not many people get this opportunity, but thankfully I had people around me that believed in my potential and made this possible. I would to again thank the Presidential Grant, the Engaged Learning Fund, as well as Dr. Tso and Tom Flunker.
How have you applied things you’ve learned here at Gustavus to this opportunity? (i.e., Career & Self Development, Communication, Critical Thinking, Equity & Inclusion, Leadership, Professionalism, Teamwork, Technology)
I definitely applied many aspects I learned from Gustavus to this research. I feel that this research was centered with equity & inclusion in mind, the point was to better student learning through the use of UTAs.
