For the UW Honors Program, we must complete two experiential learning opportunities: quarter-long activities that fall under one of the categories of leadership, community service, research, or international engagement. The purpose of these are to get students involved and thinking about the work they do, and I am grateful to be pushed in this direction. My first activity, being Rush Chair of my fraternity, was completed in spring 2017, and my second activity, doing undergraduate research, was completed in spring 2018.
Spring Rush Chair of Theta Xi Fraternity
Proposal
Experiential Learning Category Leadership
Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or organization/partners. As the Rush Chair of Theta Xi for the spring quarter, I will be responsible for promoting our house, reaching out to and interacting with potential new members, and leading the house in deciding who would be a productive member and good fit in our community. My goals include having at least two new potential new members come to the house each week, and by the end of the quarter I hope to have added three members to our chapter. Additionally, I plan on helping with preparations for the summer recruitment process by working with other members to put in place the institutions necessary to have a successful recruitment season.
Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition. I will be leading my entire fraternity in finding new members to join our community. While we all have the same vision of growing and bettering our house with the addition of quality members, I must translate that into specific actions to bring potential new members to the house and motivate existing members to be involved in the rush process. Thus, I must collaborate with the drives and views of every other person in my house to attract members who we desire to live with us.
How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it? I ran for this position and wish to use it as an experiential learning opportunity because I enjoy interacting with other people, and I wish to grow my sociability and leadership potential. Additionally, this position requires me to synthesize the views of roughly seventy other people to grow our chapter, and thus while it will present something of a challenge, I expect to be able to use it to expand my abilities to consider many individual outlooks and goals, turning them into one group goal to be achieved. Not only will this experience be fun and interesting as I meet new people, but I will use my fraternity as a vector for practicing leadership when there is a large and varied group to lead.
How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences? Multiple honors classes I have taken have discussed what motivates people, including Honors 205 (What We Know and How We Know It) and Honors 232A (Animal-Human Relations over Time). The motivations of individuals is important to the position of Rush Chair as I must motivate both new people to come visit the house and current members to get involved. My career goal of wanting to do biological research also relies heavily of sociability, considering how much science relies on networks of people conveying information to each other.
How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners? The goal of Theta Xi Fraternity is to maintain a living space for men at the UW while also building a sense of community in its members, both within and outside the house. Thus, as the individual in charge of recruitment, I am responsible for finding members whose presence will sustain and improve our proximity to achieving this goal. The fraternity can only thrive by resupplying and growing its current number of members, so my actions will be vital towards the continued success of Theta Xi.
Approx. hours per week: 10 Start date: 03/28/2017 End date: 06/09/2017
Supervisor: Quinn Gardner, President of Theta Xi Fraternity
Post-Project Reflection After a quarter of serving as the Rush Chair of Theta Xi, I feel that I have attained the skills I desired to glean from this post. In attempting to grow my leadership experience, I took on this position knowing it required synthesizing the views of everyone else in my fraternity in order to find potential new members who would be well-liked and held promise in their ability to improve the community of Theta Xi. During the spring quarter, I brought many individuals out to our house and ended up bidding and signing three: Deven, Steve, and BJ. This matched my goal and fulfilled my hope in finding quality members and not focusing as much on quantity. I am hopeful that I improved the house with the addition of these members.
I learned a lot from my experiences in a leadership role in my fraternity, but I was certainly not free of blunders. Initially, I found myself hard-pressed to balance my display of interest in new rushees and my selling of our house and the values and experiences associated with it. Early rush tours I gave featured me boasting about all the perks of being a Theta Xi and not learning about the potential new members as completely as I should have. After the first couple of weeks, however, I realized I did not know a lot of information about some of the rushees after they left, and so I toned down how much time with them was spent on our house and focused more on them as a person. My other mistake was not always taking in the perspective of the other members of the house. With one rushee in particular, I was on the verge of giving him an invitation to join our house before other Theta Xi’s voiced their doubts to me. I learned to be patient and seek out more viewpoints before making an essentially unilateral decision, and I will also do well in the future to be cognizant of how I am balancing selling myself or something else with learning about the person to whom I am talking.
Possibly the hardest aspect of rush was addressing the fact that our chapter of Theta Xi is a dry house, meaning no alcohol or other illicit substances are allowed on the premises. Considering college men interested in fraternities are usually also interested in the recreational activities which typically accompany the “frat” life, I had to promote our house as a good alternative to a house that drinks. For the men who were clearly looking at fraternities for at least some amount of partying, I would make sure to discuss how Theta Xi allows access to the social life of the Greek system while also benefiting from being a dry house by being a safer and more supportive environment to grow as individuals and a community. The other side of this issue, though, was to find young men who wouldn’t normally be interested in a fraternity prior to being introduced to the prospect of a dry house. This was somewhat difficult because there is not an easy way to attract those who normally avoid fraternities. I enlisted other members of the house, though, and generated a list of contacts that people met in their classes or knew from high school. These were typically the most promising rushees, and I have already discussed with the next rush chair on how to expand Theta Xi advertising in order to find more men seeking strong community without as much substance use as other fraternities.
The most important thing I learned as rush chair, in my opinion, was how to motivate others. It has been a known problem that it can be hard to convince members of our house to contribute to the rush process and interact with potential new members. This was not much different at the beginning of my term. Even with me sending messages to the house whenever a rushee was coming over, few would go out of their way to meet someone who could potentially join the house within the month. This was frustrating, and I developed some strategies to counter lacking motivation. I began advertising small events or fun activities I was planning on doing with rushees, and when that didn’t work, I discovered how face-to-face interactions would cause people to come out of their rooms. Sometimes individuals needed to be confronted with the task of meeting rushees personally, and so I would go door to door in the house right before a potential new member came over, telling people what was happening and that they should come talk to the rushee to see if he would be a good fit for the house. This had a significant effect on convincing current members to express interest in the future of our Theta Xi chapter, and by the end of the quarter, I was getting much better turnout at rush events.
I will continue to stay very involved with the rush process during my entire time as an active member of Theta Xi, and my new position as Treasurer will see me continue on the executive board following my time as Spring Rush Chair. Holding a leadership role is important to guiding and ensuring increased prosperity of the house in the future, Rush Chair being particularly important in doing so. My hope is to be able to follow the progress of Theta Xi during my time at the University of Washington, and hopefully I will see the affects I have had on it result in positive changes for the house. Just during my first year at the UW, Theta Xi has given me a lot for which to be thankful, so this was my way to give back to the house and learn important skills for myself while doing it. I believe I accomplished just that, and I don’t see myself ceasing to do those activities anytime soon.
Supervisor's Review Brendon exceeded all of my expectations for Rush Chair this Spring. Not only did he sign new members for our Fraternity, but he was an active member of the house who always sought to put the needs of others before his own. His selflessness and empathy not only for the active brothers in the house, but for the potential new members, was astounding. These attributes demonstrated his maturity and are the core tenants of any great leader. His dedication to every person in the house and to his position were exemplary in all regards. He never slacked off, never asked for a break, and was always ahead of schedule. In my time at Theta Xi, I have never seen such a successful Spring Rush, as the one that Brendon has just conducted. Typically, the majority of the rush process is conducted throughout the Summer. However, Brendon's efforts have drastically lessened the amount of work that the Summer Rush Chairs have to do, as a large part of the new rush class has already been filled by Brendon. To whomever is in charge of this program, I cannot explain how amazing Brendon has been at his job this past year. He is an admirable young man with a bright future ahead of him. His work ethic and dedication are second to none and I have nothing but the highest praise for him. If you look through our house's rush records and history, never before have we had a rush chair, aside from the summer, that was ever as successful as Brendon. He signed three new members and was instrumental in signing the first two new members of the Summer Quarter. In short, I hope that Brendon gets the highest marks possible for this project as he went above and beyond my wildest expectations. To me, he is a perfect example of what a Theta Xi is, what a UW Honors Student is, and what a genuine friend is.
Undergraduate Research at the Kaeberlein Lab
Proposal
Experiential Learning Category Research
Summarize your proposed experiential learning activity, including the primary focus of your activity, your intended actions, and the expectations of your supervisor and/or organization/partners. I plan to assist in conducting research on cellular aging in C. elegans as part of the worm lifespan team in the Kaeberlein Lab. This will involve performing a multitude of scientific methods including PCR, DNA analysis, and lifespan assays. I will be expected to go into lab regularly and complete the work assigned to me, following correct laboratory procedures at all times. Additionally, I will keep a record of my lab work and develop research questions which build off my current research, as is called for in a scientific setting.
Explain how your activity demonstrates the values of the Honors Program Experiential Learning area you selected. Rather than reiterating our definition, outline how your activity embodies this definition. Obviously, conducting scientific research is a fairly direct embodiment of the Honors Program's research category. More specifically, though, I want to spend this quarter emphasizing my own ability to develop research ideas and analysis based off the work I am doing in lab. Research is not just about setting up experiments; it also includes developing hypotheses and then figuring out how to test these ideas. Thus, this is an important learning opportunity for me because I will be conducting research while also improving my own scientific skills.
How and why did you select this engagement? What skills or experiences do you hope to gain from it? I found this lab work through the UW Undergraduate Research Database after searching for engaging research opportunities which would give me experience for the work I wish to do in the future as a scientist investigating human diseases. Cellular aging involves a variety of biological mechanisms, and therefore working on research pertaining to this provides good lab engagement as well as the experience of investigating a plethora of cellular processes, setting me up for success in my future research endeavors.
How does this activity connect to your concurrent or past coursework? How does it speak to your broader education goals and experiences? This research draws from many of my biology and chemistry courses. Specifically, BIOL 200 (Introductory Biology II), BIOL 355 (Foundations in Cellular Biology), and BIOL 401 (Advanced Cell Biology) all deal with cellular mechanisms and research methods. Additionally, considering my aspirations to attend grad school for a degree in biology and to become a scientist researching human diseases, this experiential learning opportunity shares a direct link with my education goals. This is simply a smaller version of what I wish to do as a career.
How will your activity contribute to the larger goals of the organization/your partners? I will be working with a research team as a smaller part of the entire Kaeberlein Lab. The lab's purpose is to use animal models to experiment on cell and organism longevity, and my team is focused on using nematodes with genetic alterations as a model system to test for lifespans. My work will contribute to the many projects given to the team, either developed by my Principal Investigator or provided by outside laboratories seeking the Kaeberlein Lab's assistance.
Approx. hours per week: 12 Start date: 03/26/2018 End date: 06/08/2018
Supervisor: Dr. Jason Pitt, Principal Investigator
Post-Project
Reflection Upon completion of my spring quarter research in the Kaeberlein Lab, I have grown much more familiar in a lab setting and with the research process as a whole. My focus was to increase my own knowledge of scientific practices while also investigating research as a possible career path, and I feel I accomplished just that. I am confident in my continued determination to enter disease research after graduate school, and my appreciation for the possibilities that can come from working in a lab make me excited for the future.
As I planned, I kept a log of my activities throughout the quarter, and there is a decent amount of variety in what I accomplished. From building robots to assembling plasmids to setting up bacterial cultures, I have become well-versed in both the engineering and procedural sides of lab work. Often unsure of what I would be doing on a given day, I learned to be flexible and well-versed in what I needed to know for any given activity so that I could be accurate and efficient in my work. As time went on, I grew comfortable moving from one procedure to the next and rolling with whatever needed to be done on a given day.
One of the more unique things I did during the first half of the quarter was build a "robot" as part of an ongoing project to establish a new way of collecting lifespan data on the worms known as C. elegans. This was intriguing because instead of focusing on just finding a piece of information, I was working on how to find that data. The how is important because it expands lab work from just basic procedures; the development of those procedures paves the way for future research across the entire scientific community. It has been eye-opening to see my supervisor, Dr. Jason Pitt, continue to pioneer this robot project.
Of all the procedures I performed in lab, the one I am proudest of mastering is worm picking. Moving nearly microscopic worms is difficult at best, but it is important for setting up lifespan assays. Using a small, flattened platinum wire called a pick, we use bacteria as "glue" to stick worms and take them from one petri dish to another. This proved extremely frustrating at first, as I struggled to even get a few worms on the pick at a time when I started at the lab. I kept track of my average numbers throughout the quarter, and saw rapid improvement as I practiced, ending up being able to pick 15 worms at a time on average and set up one full lifespan assay (around 400 worms) in about 45 minutes. My numbers began increasing the most when I started questioning my technique and changing it just to see how it would affect the efficacy of my work. This is an important general lesson for me to keep in mind: never sit in a lull when you can try something new. Even if a change doesn't have any improvement, I can narrow down what I need to do to get to the level I desire.
Of course, not everything went perfectly to plan all the time. Sometimes a method wouldn't work or a plate would get contaminated, and we would have to redo large chunks of work. Multiple times I had to go through the long process of cloning DNA for the same hybrid strand, and we are continuing to fill gaps in our research where lifespan assays failed. The occasional adversity was never very deterring for me, however. Oftentimes the failures would remind me of the complexity of the work we are trying to accomplish and that not everything is perfectly manipulable, especially when it's too small to see. The best part is that the successes have far outweighed any setbacks, and I am aware of where any difficulties may lie in the future.
I am excited to continue working in the Kaeberlein Lab, gaining valuable experience in my field of choice and assisting in ongoing research with many beneficial implications. Going forward, I believe the most valuable thing for me is to keep my mind open so I may learn as much as I can. The learning process is never over, especially in the sciences, and even though I am happy with the information I have gained so far, I know I can always continue climbing. I will keep questioning and keep finding answers, preparing myself for a career of research.
Supervisor's Review Brendon has proven himself very independent in the lab. He is flexible and highly skilled and becomes more so with each passing week. His commitment to the research projects he has been involved with are exceptional. He is always eager to help out and asks excellent questions. I look forward to his continued research in the lab.