Academic Leadership

Emergent Studies
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In 2019/2020, I led an interdisciplinary initiative at the University of New Haven to form a new self-designed major. The program, Emergent Studies, will form an interdisciplinary community of students and faculty. The program focuses on student-led projects that don’t fit easily into single majors. Students work with peers, senior students, and multiple faculty advisers to develop their own major courses of study. A distinguishing feature of this program is a focus on guiding students who enter the university as "undeclared." Emergent Studies acknowledges this undecided moment in a student's college trajectory as a space of personal discovery and opportunity. In my role as head of this initiative, I recruited faculty affiliates from across all colleges at the University of New Haven, led brainstorming meetings, designed the first three years of the program, wrote grants, and met with administration. This program has since been implemented at the University of Have as the Interdisciplinary Studies major.

Academic Research and Project Management

I served the Assistant Director of Academic Research & Project Management, a required first-year course in project-based learning and critical thinking. I developed curriculum, lead instructor training sessions, and ran the new Peer Leader program that I founded. In the Peer Leader program, I designed opportunities for students to build upon their success in the ARPM course by engaging in an advanced team project. The Peer Leaders modeled creativity, teamwork, persistence, and academic excellence for the students in the course. 

Library Collaboration

At the University of New Haven, I initiated a faculty/librarian collaboration. In working with librarians and faculty throughout the year, I generated new resources for one of the core first-year courses that expanded the role of information literacy specialists in the classroom. Most recently, we developed engaging scenarios to teach students why and how to use academic research skills. ​