they have since begun working towards a MERS in library science and work with the IU Cinema as house manager for events please feel free to reference the pamphlets on your tables to learn more about our wonderful panelists who have demonstrated that to be interdisciplinary is to honor each of our many facets we can't wait to hear from you all tonight before we move on I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who made this collaboration possible dos Mega anoir Natasha Duncan and Katherine Patron and a very special thank you to Mar Mendoza the program specialist for World Readiness her ceaseless work helped us bring back all of our one wonderful alumni to campus today thank you also to all the faculty and students who have made time to be here in the audience and for help helping promote the event and a big thank you to the panelists for taking the time to speak with us here tonight and with that I'll hand things over to our brilliant moderator for this evening Mesa ogus who will move us forward thank you [Applause] thank you so much vanelli for that wonderful introduction can we have another round of applause for vanelli yay um and thank you everyone for being here with us this afternoon I'm so excited to be here and I'm honored to be among these distinguished alumni I would also like to say a humongous thank you to Mariah for coordinating this event and being so welcoming and also mea for being the dear Mentor human wonderful being that she is can we give another round of applause for them please too thank you and finally thank you to the audience for coming here and joining us or joining in virtually um this afternoon to engage with this conversation about interdisciplinarity inclusivity and World Readiness I will be asking the panelists four questions this afternoon and then starting at 5:30 we will be open for a conversation with the audience um so please hold your questions until then and we also have a QR code up here um that you can scan at any time during this conversation how these individuals exemplify that and with that we can start so the first question for the panelists is can you help us visualize a snapshot of what keeps you busy these days and the kind of work you're doing are there any exciting projects you're working on well thank you all once again for having me here extremely honored to be invited back to the Honors College uh Rahman Ruth and uh to answer your question there uh there's a lot um and as you can imagine uh coming from an interdiciplinary background and learning space uh it's been extremely relevant to the work that I do today so a couple of the projects that I'm working on uh at Sergeant Lundy um they are an energy uh Power Nuclear uh engineering design consulting firm uh so we do substation design transmission line design and also we do in our nuclear power group we do a couple different nuclear projects um but my work doesn't fall in that area my work Falls in business intelligence uh I'm the business intelligence Le for the newer business intelligence unit that we're spurring off um in the firm and it's a very uh Dynamic role because of the uh nebulous nature of it in my firm uh coming from engineering design the science is very clear-cut uh we know how to design substations we know how to design transmission lines and we know how to uh execute and Implement uh but now there's a need for managing the soft aspects around the project uh mining the data around the project um and getting those insights to our cents our consulting firm so with that being said a lot of my work is relatively nebulous uh I'm having to jump into uh projects that don't really have a clearcut definition of what the instate should look like so that allows me to be very creative in the approach but also very collaborative with my project requestes um and these may be Engineers these may be cost professionals these may be uh administrative Services we're try to automative process so already right there you can see that I'm interacting with people from a lot of different backgrounds and understanding the value of that has been uh invaluable as I've as I've uh approached these projects and are able to uh connect with and Garner inside from my project request so two of the projects that I'll quickly tell you all about um one of them is focused on uh process automation uh we are working to automate our invoice processing process uh with uh robotic process automation so there we're using computer vision machine learning to uh recognize the fields of data on the invoices and uh extract that uh into a temporary location and then enact SQL scripts on a database to hold and log that data so uh that's a fun project we're able to use some AI in that and um it stands to have some pretty big impact across the firm uh and then outside of that some of my work is focused on appliation development um for our cost teams where I'm designing a platform to analyze actual cost data as you can imagine we buy materials for our clients um steel bars uh very heavy duty wires and cables uh and our product managers need to analyze this cost data also forecast so we can kind of try to have a vision of the future so working to develop a platform that will bring all those capabilities in together and kind of bring that uh that closer hi everyone uh my name is anthonia roach I am currently a third year sociology pH student at Washington University in St Louis um things that keep me busy these days I am currently in the process of working on my Master's thesis so my broader research is on race and social movements specifically I FOC on the black community and veganism um and so I'm in the middle of data collection for that project so my day might look like posting Flyers somewhere sending emails calling restaurants um or actually getting to sit down with interview participants and talking to them about their experience dining at these establishments um and I also work part-time at a vegan restaurant in St Louis called treeh house um that is one of the one of my favorite parts of my week um it's a really vibrant environment and it allows me to really plug into the spaces that I'm interested in studying hi uh my name is Michaela Meer and I currently work as a data scientist at the miter Corporation miter functions a lot like a contractor um working for the federal government however we are in this weird space where Congress effectively appropriates money to various federal agencies and then the agency spend them on these Fally funded research and development centers and merer operates six of these um So currently I'm working on a lot of projects with the Census Bureau that are related to data privacy so when we think about how government agencies collect and have an obligation to also then report data so policy makers can make effective decisions around the country um we want to also make sure that respondents to these surveys that their privacy is protected and so I'm currently working on developing basically mathematical methods to help protect respondents privacy while also making sure that the data that these government agencies are producing is still usable and effective for public policy so in terms of what my day-to-day looks like I get to do a lot of coding um but also all of the meetings that I have are with a wide variety of people there's a wide variety of stakeholders when you think about data privacy it's not just the people who come up with these methods or work with the data but it's also people who are thinking about the ethics behind this or the people who are thinking about the legal issues that could come about should you risk someone's privacy being revealed um so I get the chance just as like I did at the Honors College to work work with people from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds which is really exciting hi everyone my name is Angie I graduated from Purdue in 2021 um and maybe I can give you a bit of backstory on where I got to where I am now so um when I was in undergrad I was doing uh lung cancer research specifically and how cancer cells recruit and reprogram other cells in the tumor micro environment um and when I gradu to continue diversifying my research portfolio so I started working at the as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health um basically studying the same mechanism that I was studying in undergrad but now in age related Health disparities uh and while I was doing this I did a lot of biostatistical modeling and got very interested in computational biology so last year I started my PhD at Ohio State uh in biomedical informatics and biomedical Sciences so uh I am currently in a cancer epigenetics lab studying acute Milo leukemia and our learning models to analyze High throughput biological data to identify different novel biomarkers so we can better understand uh the tumor uh tumor immunology and uh overall responses so my PhD project uh in it I'm developing a new immunotherapy and identifying What patients May best respond to this therapy that we're developing um and I am in my second year now so candidacy exam will be coming up uh so right now writing my uh research proposal uh doing a lot of reading and writing um um and attending different seminars and classes so that kind of pulls up my my week pretty well hello hi everybody my name is Pablo Bazar I graduated with sociology and political science in 2020 uh So currently I'm a policy associate for the American Immigration Council um basically I support the policy team there uh with research and Outreach that we do for the Hill uh it's I'll defi what I usually do on two things small like everyday things and also long-term projects on the dayto day I'm helping with email blasts to members of Congress to inform them of our fact sheets and resources uh because in case you weren't aware immigration is pretty popular to talk about nowadays so folks should probably have some facts uh about that uh I also help out with facilitating meetings and helping uh organizers when it comes to state state and local organizations get more connected to their offices uh Congressional offices uh more of the long-term projects include the big one where I'm volunteering I mean I manage volunteers for a project uh that helps uh folks that are in CBP custody uh get some sort of help uh before they take on credible fear interviews if you're not aware when folks are coming in to uh apply for Asylum they go through fear interview often times they would be moved to ice custody and it take a few days and sometimes they would have access to some legal representation uh recently it's changed so that the process is very sped up so our organization in addition to just a handful of other organizations are the only the only access to some sort of guidance for these folks which is a very complicated uh process uh besides that just helping out with different local advocacy and uh research efforts when it comes to immigration yeah thank you so much for having me thank you all for those answers a wide variety of jobs and and life experiences um so now that you've talked about your careers we're going to go all the way back or maybe not that far back um to your education um and we're going to move towards World Readiness can you talk about how your education made you world ready and what that means in comparison to not just being care you're ready so it's not that far back but it it it actually kind of is uh I was a graduate in 21 uh I studied management and product design technology uh after that I went to Information Systems if we kind of trying to draw the parallel to my current work now but when I think back the the biggest difference that I see between Career ready and World Readiness is career Readiness is Arrow um that idea is uh focused towards a specific career um and it's framed in the idea that your work will not expand outside of that now when I think of world Readiness it's much more wide much more depth um and that's what the Honors College here is focused on not getting you prepared for one career because as you may know a lot of our uh most accomplished leaders do not have path so they may not have gone into one career they may have gone into a career and shifted and changed and moved and then refined their approach uh to the professional world uh so hence World Readiness is much more wide uh It prepares you for managing the complexities of work and life as opposed to only managing the complexities of the workplace or an individual career uh and when I think back to my education and my engagement with the Honors College some of the key standout areas uh that uh I I don't want you all to take for granted because it's a unique uh unique experience here um you get exposed to project management principles you get exposed to handling tough conversations critical discussion you get exposed to in uh the first year seminar specifically interdisciplinary collaboration we're working with students that are not of the same background from you and that that is the most real of the real world that you'll get you're going to go into a workplace you're not going to be in a room full of your Majors you're going to be in a room full of people from diverse backgrounds from International locations coming from different places with different perspectives and as a leader it's your job to find the value in that convey the value in that and uh integrate your team so I say all that to say the Honors College does an amazing job preparing you for the world further than just a career thank you ran I agree with everything you said um I have like a short answer to this question and then I have a longer more roundabout way of answering the question um but the short answer is I think world Readiness it it means that you're able to Pivot and you've really um gotten down this of being able to use your skills transferably and so when I think back I graduated in December of 2018 um so it has been a little bit for me but when I think back to things I was doing in the first year seminar and as an honors college mentor and I also was a student diversity officer now student belonging Advocate um but when I think back to those experiences there are so many things that I learned in those that I still use today um and I have not had like a straightforward path to where I'm at right now um my undergrad was in psychological sciences and then I got a masters in PR postsecondary education then I got interested in doing research so it's kind of been a a not straightforward path and the things that I've learned in the Honors College have helped me be able to transfer those skills um in the different areas that I've been working um and then the more roundabout answer I have is that in the Honors College you're in these spaces where you're able to grow and develop and the people that are teaching you are really committed to your growth in your development um both in the classroom and also in the other opportunities you have here in the Honors College and so it's a truly collaborative space and you're really able to influence the experience that you're having and that your peers are having um and I say that this makes you world ready because depending on engage in these relationships you're able to Foster relationships with people that can sustain you as you embark on your lives um outside of these walls and I think that um when I say people I say people meeting your peers so the people that are going through this experience with you but I also say that meaning the faculty and staff here um two people specifically Dr Anor and Dr Watkins um they have occupied such import in my life in both showing me how to na navigate Academia but also in just navigating the things that life throws at you um and so I think that really speaks to the world Readiness piece it's not just about your career it's about you being able to um find and craft and cultivate the spaces where you're able to truly pursue your passions and also show up as yourself authentically great responses um I'll just piggy back off of them and say that um some of the facets that I think about when I think about world Readiness are communication so you know you might be really deep and skilled in a very technical area um and of course your college degree is preparing you to start down the road of becoming an expert in your discipline but it's also important that you're able to adver yourself advertise your work and in order to do that you have to be able to communicate with others who might not have the same academic background as you and so that's I think one facet of the world Readiness component that the Honors College does a great job with um I had a number of opportunities to present my research while I was in the Honors College and I think that really helped me not only in my PhD but also in my career I also think critical thinking is another important component of world Readiness so even just outside of your career you're going to face a number of situations where having the critical thinking skills are going to help you hopefully make better well-informed decisions in your life um and so even in discussions with friends um thinking about just broader World issues and the context that we live in having those critical thinking skills are also important and I think again the Honors College with the various classes that they offer in the discussion-based format really allow you to deepen these critical thinking skills in a way that you might not be able to devel them in other parts of the university and the other thing I'll say is just better understanding in general the context of where your work fits in so for example when I was a PhD student I did a lot of work in the area of AI ethics basically um so it's important that just because we can develop some Technical Systems that we understand the context in which we are potentially deploying these systems and so that takes a perspective that is broader typically than what you learn in the classroom in your very technical classes and I think the Honors College because they offer a wide variety of courses that are meant to be interdisciplinary and show you how the greater context of the world intertwines I think that that also helps you become more World ready yeah uh piggy backing off of what's already been said um a lot of what made me world ready the CL and in a lot of the leadership opportunities that were strongly shaped by the um Honors College uh for example I was a mentor program president during a CO year and so a lot of that I see you laughing dral that was that was challenging uh but it really shaped my ability to adapt and be resilient and I think those are two really strong attributes that if you can bring into the workplace you will be able to go very far um I think opportun shaped my ability to identify the needs either my own needs or that of an organization and then learn how to address those so for example when I was working after graduating um at the NIH it was still they were still coming out of Co we were at um a location of where there were two different institutes mine and another and uh there were a lot of traines expressing that they didn't feel like a sense of community that there also were like spaces where they felt safe to cultivate presentation skills and geter uh feed and so uh a few of my friends and I decided to create like a journal Club seminar series um and because of my leadership experiences I knew how to kind of go about getting setting up a prop proposal from my leadership experiences I knew what it what it takes to what is a good mission statement what what are values and how do they shape an organization I was able to actually cure funding from both of the institutes and like a space uh so that was like a need that we were able to address and another one was that a lot of students wanted to discuss more about disparities either in medicine or healthare um and so that was actually the focus of our Journal club and we had student Le organiz student Le seminars student Le workshops um so that students had a safe space where they could also cultivate other technical skills and then also engage in discourse and dialogue that they might not necessarily feel comfortable to do so in more uh more of the workplace 8 to5 you know setting um so yeah I think that that I've identified that uniquely shaped that was uniquely shaped by my experience here that has very well benefited me in the workplace to be World ready uh just to put a bow on it because there's so many good answers uh I would say that uh being able to I think a lot of schools just focus on memorizing and getting what work you need to get done for your certain class and believe not you're not going to memorize your way into a promotion and it's not going to help you develop a lot of things so I would credit the Honors College for being really good at developing uh like kind of forcing you to work in a group work with people with different strengths uh and there's a lot of spaces that mirror that a lot of productive spaces that mirror that in the in out like out there folks who have different strength you got to learn how to communicate in different ways and a lot of places where you notice that there could be a lot of folks like they need more people with different strengths because it's a lot of people that just think the same and then the same things just keep repeating um and I credit the Honors College for being a part of helping me understand why it's so important to have people with varied perspectives varied skills and uh learning how to communicate across groups and work together thank you so much for that Pablo that was great um as you've heard we've talked a lot about the Honors College I have a question about the honors College um just to like make those connections more explicit can you tell us how the work you're doing and the life more broadly that you're leading now connects back to your time at the Honors College and then Purdue as well great yeah great answers this is Lively discussion so to illustrate the connection between some work that we've done in college and some my current life now I'll talk about uh my leading of the business intelligence unit um within the consulting firm that I work with um and I'll tie that directly back to hr1 1991 or the first year seminar I kind of hinted to it earlier but the extremely uh interdisciplinary uh approach that we take at the viu is uh it's core to it and um interestingly enough I just brought on a new team member uh last week and she is in the project controls and scheduling Department her name is ASN and she has great great Technical Solutions uh but what you may not know is that her background is not information systems like my own her background is chemistry so that is a great illustration of the fact that people coming from varied backgrounds and varied perspectives can shine a new light in a different uh discipline that you may not be able to have when you are head down in information systems or design software design uh you may be so close to it that you can't see the comprehensive picture but bringing in a team member that is coming from a completely different background uh she has a different way of thinking through things different way of uh interpreting challenges and problems it added to our unit uh a better uh complexion across it uh we have different viewp points from her now that we can kind of integrate and uh build into our Solutions and we roll them out so that they're better applicable across the board um so that's one huge way and I keep talking about the first year seminar because it's something that you're going to want to pour into because it is just like I said the closest representation of the real world that you're going to get here at Pur I and when I think about my time with the student belonging Advocates um it is just painted with so many Lessons Learned so many uh amazing initiatives that we were able to do I was able to to as I learned um and from that I'd say the confidence to approach something that you may not be completely burs in uh that's what that gave me um and also conveying and communicating uh actively with an audience that were those are some of the skills that the SBA is able to build in uh core to me that I still exercise to this day um you're always going to have tough conversations um whether that's your with your loved ones with your direct supervisor or with your team so having that confidence s understanding uh your own perspective understanding others perspectives and uh having the skills to integrate those and also move towards a common solution uh those are skills that as we've all been hinting to are transferable um and it is not career specific it's not Project Specific but it is World Readiness specific it goes across their whole being so those are two two key areas that I like to speak to yeah so my answer to this question also involves the skill of learning how to have difficult conversations um but firstly I'll say how the honors seminar starts off is really discussion based and that's been really integral to my daily life I didn't say this earlier but I'm also taking classes um and graduate classes are all discussion and so having that um background and experience being in that space and knowing how to show up in that space has been um invaluable in my graduate learning um and I would also say that another way that it shows up in what I'm doing now is being able or being comfortable being in interdisciplinary spaces um the department I'm in it's a sociology department at wasu it's been in existence for five years and so that me pretty small department and so naturally in order to get the type of training that I'm wanting to get out of my graduate program I have to reach out to other departments and take classes outside of the sociology department and so in doing that process um having the background that I have from being in the Honors College makes being an inter interdisciplinary spaces very natural and it doesn't feel um really drawing to be in a feminist and queer methodologies course um that's the class I'm taking the semester um and it really helps you see the value of being in that space because in that class specifically there's also students that are outside of women gender and sexuality studies or students that are coming from education um political science and so you're getting to see the things that we're talking about in that class different research methodologies from all these different angles um and so that's been really helpful um just to get the wigs um perspective but also the education perspective um and then and in terms of learning how to have difficult conversations I would say my involvement with the honors Mentor program and the SBA program um it's really helped me learn how to have difficult conversations and also teach people through those difficult conversations and so when you're thinking about graduate school um as a graduate student you'll likely have to be a ta a teaching assistant and so for me specifically um this spring I was a teaching assistant for a large introductory Sociology class and so you can assume that all these students that I had they were from all different um disciplines across the university and so I lectured on um social inequality in America and in education specifically and so being able to teach that content and have those difficult conversations with students from different backgrounds that was because I had the experience of having difficult conversations with students from different backgrounds um and that has been super helpful just in approaching those conversations both in the classroom and also in office hours so we've already touched a little bit on some of the maybe leadership skills that you can develop in the Honors College um for me by being an honors college Mentor I learned how to be an adaptable leader I was lucky enough to be an honors college Mentor for I believe three years in undergrad and every year when there was a new group I really had to adjust my approach to how I was going to guide that group through the approaches not only because it was a different class but just because it was a different group of students who maybe wanted to get something different out of the course um or for whatever reason I just needed to adapt my leadership style to that and that's certainly something that happens in the real world but I also want to talk a little bit about some of the research experiences I was lucky to have as a result of the Honors College as well as exposure to basically how policy making works at some level um so I was lucky enough to be able to do a lot of research in undergrad some of it was through the data mind but some of it was also with some great faculty in the Honors College such such as Dr jangle and Dr Duncan um and I was given opportunities to really understand how my statistics background and interest in policy could be combined and that's really the work that I do today I get to do really cool statistics research for public policy um also when I went to grad school I did a program that was an intersection between St statistics and public policy that is exactly what my PhD title is in it was a joint program between both of these departments um so I really discovered that love for that intersection through the research that I did in the Honors College as well as the courses that I took I feel like everyone approaches their way of checking off sa boxes in the Honors College differently in some ways um so some people of course Do Contracting and things like this I ended up taking a lot of courses directly through the Honors College a lot of HR courses um and in particular I took a policy lab course I remember with Dr jangle and Dr Welden when I was a junior and they really introduced us to the complex issues of when you're thinking about say writing a policy brief or making some kind of recommendation that it's not as straightforward as maybe we all think it is at times um and so it was really helpful now going into this area having that introduction at an early age that it's not as simple as we might think that it's a lot more complex it was really helpful to have that introduction early on in undergrad because I think that informed my graduate school experiences as well as my career now yeah um for me one of the main leadership opportunities that I was involved in was the mentor program um and in being in different leadership capacities we worked with the student belonging advocates with inclusion and allyship training and that really inspired me to be an advocate and an ally and think about how I could integrate those ideas also into my career um and so I was fortunate enough to uh be able to design independent studies um first with Dr Weinberg in ethical leadership where we discussed a lot of different critical pedagogies that I wanted to uh include and explore to establish my leadership philosophy and how I aim to implement those ideas my future career as a biomedical researcher and then I also continued that exploration um with Dr ktie Gerald uh looking at Global approaches to leadership uh specifically looking at how culture um and different histories of different countries and how those have shaped the leadership styles that could have come from these different areas um and in doing so a lot of this shaped my ethical leadership philosophy and how I wanted to go about my research process and specifically this inspired my interest in investigating social determinance of Health um and investigating Health disparities which is the work that I did after graduating and what I'm currently trying to do uh with my PhD uh PhD project as well um and then in terms of Purdue in the Honors College at large um a lot of the interdisciplinary academics really influenced uh the work that I'm doing now the work that I'm doing now is very interdisciplinary I think almost all of us here on this panel would say that we do very interdisciplinary work um and I think we feel more comfortable to kind of undertake those projects because we were exposed to it from the GetGo of being in the Honors College um you know like was saying in your first year classes you're working with people from very different backgrounds from different parts you know of the world but also who are coming in with a specific lens based on the major and the way that they apprach their problem um and I my current PhD program I'm doing computer science I'm doing medicine and also basic biology those are kind of field that were that I feel comfortable pulling in because it was something that it wasn't difficult to kind of start doing something new because I had already been doing it um so yeah those are some of the ways that my time here is directly impacted the work that I'm doing now and have so my link is pretty specific so my uh my first course here at the Honors College was on borders and I'm like the child of immigrants I was like there's no way I'm to work on immigration I've been translating my my parents' documents and stuff for like years like I don't want to work on it anymore and taking that class and then afterwards taking a class that took me to the US Mexico border um which ended up leading to me to help find like an an immigration advocacy organization and now leading up to now I work for a national nonprofit that does immigrant advocacy it's kind of like such a direct link that I don't even know if I need to describe it anymore but something that I learned through the Honors College and through Purdue in general is that like I can do something that's very specific to something that's personal to me but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm stuck just do just learning about one subject because I need to work with people who do research all the time I worked with Michaela I never want to look at stata or R again in my life uh but I get to work with people that are super intelligent with that that do that kind of stuff I get to work with lawyers that are arguing like with the suprem and we all have very different strengths and working with different peop with different strengths is something that I got to learn here thank you so much for tying so beautifully well into my next question um so all of y'all have talked so much about interdisciplinarity and working with so many different people um can you tell me more about how you make sense of the relationship between interdisciplinarity collaboration and inclusion absolutely when I think of these three areas I find an intrinsic connection between interdisciplinarity implies collaboration at a sense at a level and collaboration implies inclusion at a level uh these concepts are very very closely connected um to work on interdisiplinary team and implies that you're collaborating to collaborate implies that you're including the the perspectives of others so they're they're so closely related and they go so well together and they are ever present when you are going to enter the world hence World Readiness um specifically in my grad program uh where I studied Information Systems uh they took these Concepts and expected all the students to know how to work with them my grad program had IND from all sorts of backgrounds um we had biology biologists I should say we had computer science Majors we had individuals like myself coming from business backgrounds and we were put on teams for the entire semester and you could imagine uh the grad program was relatively challenging so they're putting us in this environment where we have to work together there is no changing teams and you have to work long hours and you have is do every day as you all are going through now and you have to find a way out you have to get through it and the skills that I learned at the Honors College primed me prep me very well to take on a leadership role for my team uh through my grand program um it would come tonights where we're up at the lab it's it's 3 in the morning we're trying to configure an sap system and we're just going through the motions and different IV and lack of sleep can introduce challenges into a team but it's important to be able to find the common goal collaborate conduci include the perspectives of others and we were able to make it out um and a lot of the teachings that I was able to bring up from the Hors College made my team were definitely a poor aspect of why we were able to to do well form so uh to close it out I think that there is an inin connection yes I agree um I think it's a very natural relationship um I have a less specific answer to this because I want to pull in two other Concepts and those are the concepts of intentionality and accountability um specifically with inclusion because I think when we are collaborating we're working in interdisiplinary spaces um I think inclusion really requires that we are intentional with the people that we are including and intentional about how we are presenting the project that we're working on as being inclusive so I think it comes at different levels within the project um and I also think accountability matters in this conversation because when we are thinking about being inclusive we're also accountable accountable to the people that we are working with and so um I think there's a very natural relationship between inclusion inter interdisciplinarity and collaboration but I also intentionality and um accountability deserve the SE out the table it's uh difficult to follow these responses um I'll add to it that I think another important connection between these three ideas is knowing your own limits knowing your own intellectual limits to some degree and I don't mean that in the case of like you can't learn Beyond this point I mean this in the sense of you're not going to be an expert on everything um even when you're working in these interdisciplinary spaces you're still going to be bringing in your specific areas of expertise and your specific knowledge that you've gained along the way and it's important to know when you've maybe reached the point where you need to bring in other help you need to collaborate with others and bring in their expertise as well to come to the best solution so including a variety of perspectives and making sure that you are humble enough to recognize when you have reached your limit terms of your expertise yeah uh building off of this originally I felt like they were somewhat of a Triad but I do think that they're they kind of build on each other so I think a lot of the modern problems that we have now they can't be addressed by one field alone and that we need some sort of a new lens from other fields in order to actually answer some of these questions that we're faced with um and I think that's where inter disciplinarity lens its hand U but obviously that doesn't make any sense without having collaboration being able to communicate with each other being able to understand each other and I think it's not enough that you know people from different backgrounds are in one room at one table I think inclusion is that final component where you know even if we all have a different approach to a problem not everyone is going to want to voice or feel comfortable to voice their their approach and so if we can you know leverage allyship and advocate for each other so that everyone feels comfortable to actually share their ideas I think we'll start making more progress towards some of the problems that we're being faced with so that's I all related as has been said but I do think there's somewhat of a linear flow as they build on each other not going to lie she directly took my answer I was exactly going to say that but what I'll I'll just kind of go on on the same point of like uh knowing your limits is incredibly important that's something that I got taught here uh and knowing what your expertise is uh like I had mentioned like a lot of times uh I was tasked with doing something like writing and research projects and writing has never been a strong suit of M but Lear that uh working with people talking with people collaborating with people has been something that I really enjoy doing talking to strangers getting them on board with ideas and knowing that that's your strong shoot and really leaning into it not being disappointed in what you can't do but really feeling empowered about what you can do and finding the community that you need to take up those other strengths it's something that we're doing at the Honors College we're doing like I'm still here uh like that y'all are doing at the honors college and that more people should be doing because you're going to go out there and see that so many people feel super comfortable just working with people that think like them and you'd be surprised that that does not work and just leads to more chaos so I hope that you take what you're learning here and try to mimic it in other places because it's really special thank you so much for that everyone um so with that we're going to move on to audience questions so again if you want to scan the QR code you can put it on so how did you make the most of the Honors College while balancing work related to your major and anyone can start I can go first um I'll actually say that at least uh when I was here I feel like the Honors College was very um understanding in uh in like connecting research and work that you doing in your major and actually just including them together so I felt very overwhelmed in undergrad but it wasn't the honors College's fault because I think they were really uh good at like helping connect uh folks and letting you be really creative with what you were doing um so I would say that you were running into trouble maybe putting like seeing there's like too much work uh going on too much work for you to do uh just be very honest with your professors and um from across departments whether it's here and other schools and just try to see how you can connect everything together because if we're if we're harping on collaboration I I imagine the Honors College is really be understanding of that in my experience they really work I have a question that kind of Falls with that um but specifically with the honors classes you've taken and the honors experiences you've taken what do you recommend to current students specifically like HR courses but also just like honors experiences I hope I'm not like outdated with this but the nature course uh with Dr Adam Watkins is amazing um I hope I hope it's still going so I'm not sending you all off but it's a great great course um and it may challenge you to think okay what are we looking at if I'm not a bio major what are we looking at what am I doing and just join you will see it's it's gonna really show you that working with nebulousness is the real world so that course I felt really uh kind of encapsulated what it is like when you're thrown on a team you're working with your team you have an outcome that you're trying to get to but the route to get there may not be linear um so working with complexity working with nebulousness uh is an invaluable skill that I think uh Dr Watkins did a great way of uh working us through and conveying that through the uh through the course so that was one of my favorite classes that I've taken uh ever I've taken quite quite a few so yes great class I feel like you honestly can't go wrong with any of the higher level honors classes um they're all like really well thought out and they kind of they they allow you to have a dialogue about something that you don't necessarily get to have conversations about in all of your other forew work um took anthene with Dr brigh and that was really fun um and like our final projects were something that I actually haven't done in the past so I got to learn like a totally new platform to work with so that was a ton of fun and I think sometimes I have to think about questions so going back to the first question there's a lot of double dipping that you can do with the Honors College you can honors credit a ton of classes so I would never say that the Honors College stressed me out in terms of like meeting requirements and if anything it boosted my resum terms get involved in research early on um and I do think that the faculty in the Honors College specifically are more willing to form connections with you and be more lenient with you in terms of coursework if you're overwhelmed and things like that compared to your actual like other Majors um so yeah I would strongly recommend like communication and dialogue if you are actually getting overwhelmed which I'm sure all of us were at many different points in our undergrad and it's not an uncommon experience but be sure to you know talk to talk to your professors and talk to them terms honors classes you can't go all pretty great I second what Angelia said um I also was a mentor for the nature course so seconding what Rockman has said um and I also want to add that um really getting involved with any of the courses I really urge you to engage with the faculty we have great faculty in the Honors College um these are relationships that are going to sustain you through your careers through your lives um depending on the level in which you engage with those faculty um so I cannot recommend that enough and I would also say um experience wise spas and the mentoring program um I might be biased but I think those programs both provide they're different so they provide different types of leadership training um but I think they really help you understand the world that you're going into and um I think it was MB that you were saying that um each time that you're a mentor you kind of have to change the way that you're approaching that course um that's really true so even if you do it once or twice it's going to be a different experience and there's going to be different things that you can learn from that experience um I'll add that I ended up at some point in undergrad um fortunately by coming in with some credits I was in a position where I probably could have picked up another major and and instead of picking up another major For Better or For Worse I ended up just taking a lot of HR classes um so I've taken a lot of them I've also wondered sometimes when like a recruiter or someone looks at my uh course descriptions from undergrad when they see Isis and terrorism what they think um but they were all really wonderful classes I think I'm I graduated in May of 2018 I'm sure the courses are very different now and they seem to change quite often so I guess my general advice would be along the lines of what others have said to um take courses with different faculty members so it's really great to build relationships with a lot of different faculty in the Honors College they're all incredibly friendly they do a great job of demonstrating work life balance in my opinion which I think can be rare among academics sometimes um and they're all just really wonderful people to work with so I think um not just say taking classes off on and on again with the same Professor I think expanding your relationship and meeting new people is also a great approach for the courses sorry can I add something to that I I do just want to highlight how unique the Honors College is like if you don't take these classes now it's very rare that you'll have an opportunity to take them after you graduate or once you move on from Purdue so I strongly encourage you to just try something new um I think the other thing that I that kind of transitions into this as well is that the opportunities at the Honors College are vast diverse and kind of like a once in atime Opportunity sometimes these sorts of like this panel here Was Made For You by people that care about you and know that this would be beneficial for you you didn't really have to ask for this um and maybe you did but I will say that once you leave this space you are now in charge of figuring out okayy I don't know anything about this I need to get in touch with someone I don't know if they're going to give me their time all of this was kind of done for you so appreciate these opportunities and you know it's a Friday you guys are here great job these of events because they really so unique and it's so hard to find people that are willing to make the time to talk to you about something like this absolutely and really put you all second that the experiment experience you're having here is extremely unique um and I don't want to sound preachy but I don't want you all to take it for granted because you may be coming out of this like some of us did we were talking about it at lunch earlier you're in your mind somewhere in your mental schema you're thinking that everybody is getting this um experience and you enter the workplace or you into your nonprofit and you're interacting with other professionals that are smart and well apt but they don't have the same skills because they were not exposed to this type of these type of engagements so just know that uh I want to take this in uh leverage this because when you leave here you're going to be the one who is building this inside your own spes so it's it is amazing we can talk forever about how college is I want to add you can also just like make up your own course if you want to so you can really genuinely I did that twice I did it I think like every year I was just like megaa let's do this and we did so highly recommend we're going to Pivot to something different um I was wondering this person was wondering and I thought it was a brilliant question uh what has been the favorite thing you've learned about yourself as professionals slpr students in your field on so one of the favorite things that I've learned about myself is that and it may have come across in some of the answers I'm okay with complexity um I'm okay with Challenge and I'm okay with strain and that was uh that seed was sewn here at Purdue and fostered through my graduate program um things are complex the world is complex there's a lot of moving pieces a lot of moving parts and the rich tapestry people that you interact with from these different backgrounds different places different frames of mind is just an example of the complexity of life so uh being exposed to nebulous projects where you're kind of come into a place you're like what are we learning what are we doing here nature for example or photography how are we going to tie this back into critical thinking team building uh collaboration and Leadership and the faculty here does a great job of showing you that something that you understand at first can become something that's very core to yourself as you go through it and really core yourself into it can you say the question one more time H what has been the favorite thing you've learned about yourself as professionals slpr students in your field okay I think there things um the first thing that's coming to mind is that um one of the favorite things I've learned about myself is that I'm good at responding to things under pressure um and I think that is really a beneficial quality to have in graduate school just because you're you're in this very competitive environment where it's very um crafted around go go go produce produce um and being able to still produce in that environment and manage that stress has been something I've I've really appreciated about myself and the second thing I would say is um being able to recognize how people see you showing up in a space um so I think when you are first going out into the world after you finish undergrad um there can be circumstances you might find yourself in where you don't feel as confident in your skills and you have this background of Purdue and you have this background of the Honors College and people really respect that um and you've earned that and so I think being able to recognize that others see that in you really helps with how you show up in that space and feel confident in yourself um I think something that I'm proud about for myself that I've learned I've ENT that I actually know how to take care of myself um and that might kind of sound funny but especially when you're in grad school you kind of set your own schedule so you really need to know your own limits um and so every week I've kind of figured out okay this is how much time or this is how intensive this task is going to be and actually like making sure that I give myself a work life balance because it's really easy to run yourself into the ground and that's something I'm sure all of us have experienced burnout and undergrad at one point in time um and that doesn't just go away stays with you you can kind of fall into when you enter the workforce or when you pursue higher education so knowing your limits and boundaries is really important and that's something that still still discovering but yeah it's it's going well to my career but I think oh whoa uh I think also something that I've learned about myself is my ability and strength to say keep in contact with people but also be able to engage in the space that I'm now in so having to move from West Lafayette to Pittsburgh for grad school where I didn't know anyone and then move from Pittsburgh to DC where I also didn't really know anyone um being able to forge new relationships um pretty comfortably has been I think one of my strengths that I've really enjoyed learning about myself and I think also still being able to keep in touch with the people who were important in my life in when I was at Pur when I was at Carnegie melon um I think being able to still have these networks that are still part of my life um and still keep in touch with the people who shaped me into the person I am today um I think I also really value that part of my personality uh I'd like to Echo what Michaela said it was a lot of what I wanted to say so thank you Michaela for copying my answer uh but I would say I'm really uh I've realized how adaptable I am uh I went from working on chy aids to like um Native American issues and and Technology issues to now immigration like in the different uh spaces that I've been in and learning how to be adaptable and learning that soft skills of connecting with people from various backgrounds is not just something that can and connecting people in general it's not just something you use for like organizing Hangouts it's it's something you can use professionally it's something that's really productive just to give an example um I was able to use connections that I uh started and produced but got uh got to Foster as I moved to Indianapolis and then eventually went to DC to facilitate some conversations uh with members of Congress that a lot of advocates in the National immigration space had had a really hard uh time doing so I think if you really lean into your soft skills like I was learning before and not see your weaknesses as weaknesses because it for you like like for example I I mentioned I used to think that I was like not great at writing and then I saw some people's writing I was like okay I'm not that bad at writing actually it's just like it's kind of you're there's a a higher standard here and that's something that you need to be aware of as well um so yeah definitely don't count out your strengths thank you for that anyone else cool uh thank you for talking about things youve learned about yourself um along that line what Drew you to what you're doing now like what Drew you to this specific career path I mean it kind of goes back to one of my answers but uh I was the child of immigrants I took a border class here I went to the US Mexico border uh it was kind of you could see it from a mile away but the way it played out it really played out in a really special and unique way uh and I would say going back to what I was just talking about um I was kind of on the I was on the path of doing law school and I'm really grateful to the professors at puru that wrote me letters of Rex that I never ended up using I appreciated it uh but uh I uh I'm really happy that I was able to stay flexible with the things that I learned here and have the confidence to stay in a field that I wasn't I didn't know I was going to go into policy but because I had a really varied experience here and I was able to use my story not to go into a a path that I thought I was going to go to but like a path that really opened up after undergrad when I started at Purdue I was a pure math major and I quickly realized even though I wasn't even really taking a theoretical class my first semester that this probably wasn't what I wanted to do with my life um and so I decided then to tack on the statistics major as well um but also along the way like I was saying I was taking Honors College courses um specifically in my first semester I took a course with Dr jangle called Sports and politics um um and so when I started realizing that maybe I would also want to take more political science courses I talked to him and he directed me to Dr Duncan's course on international relations and I ended up getting a political science minor at Purdue because of those interactions and then once I realized that I was really enjoying those classes as well um I ended up getting into what is now the data mind but back then it was much more research focused it was still a learning community but it was a very research focused learning community so had a list of options for professors basically that you could work with and I found a professor who was in the statistics department at Purdue at the time and was doing really cool policy research um the idea was to basically study the hydrology of Lake Chad in Africa which doesn't necessarily sound very political but basically leaders there around the lake Chad Basin were making decisions assuming that global warming was what was the main driver for Lake Chad's hydrology but it turns out that the local communities were viewing the lake as basically this plentiful resource which it wasn't actually and so it turns out that while certainly global warming was a factor there were also some policy decisions at play that could have also impacted the Lakes hydrology and so being on a project like that where I realized that I could incorporate my statistics skills as I was saying earlier with the other research projects I did um I would say that between the coursework the research I did at Purdue that all really introduced me to to the idea that I could combine both of these interests that I had in statistics and public policy um the other Factor actually was Dr Ward who is in charge of the data mine at Purdue um he gave me a book when I was a junior in college called leadership and women in statistics and the first chapter of that book was written by who was then the chief statistician of the United States at the time I had no idea that this position existed um and so of course I dug into it a little bit more because it sounds really cool and I figured out that it's basically the person who oversees all of the federal statistics agencies in the United States um and even though that's not necessarily my exact career goal now at the time that was what really also then drove me to decide to go to grad school and decide to pursue this path because I thought that that could be a really interesting career so also even just reading that book honestly kind of put me on the path that I'm on today so a whole collection of experiences at Purdue um that I was lucky to have had the opportunity to have really set me on the path that I'm on today um since this conversation is about career path I do think it's important to also note um as honor students I think we stick to this career path that maybe we came in to Purdue with and that everyone in our lives knows that we want to be X and then we keep going at it and don't really question like is this the right path for me are there other things that I'm interested in have other things you know made me want to pursue something else um and I remember when I graduated and the idea of taking a gap year was like the scariest thing for me and I think a lot of honor students struggle with the fact that like the people that you probably respect the most had a very nonlinear career path or education path and that's just kind of how it is it's okay to do something different um I remember like in undergrad I did a lot of research and um I was really interested in biology and I thought I wanted to be a doctor then I don't know there was just something about research that it's so interesting to me that you're the one that's finding out things that you don't know um but it wasn't until I had a different research opportunity after leaving Purdue that I realized how much I love data science I love data it's so cool to me I love finding associations and I love discovering new new things that people never even thought to look at or didn't have the opportunity to look at so that's why I'm doing um biome medical informatics is data and biology data we've talked a lot about all the wonderful things that the honor scholar has to offer um but someone had a specific question about your scholarly projects um and I thought that was fun and so um this person was wondering what were your scholarly projects and how do you still use that knowledge you gain from them today um so I was in biology honors and if you're a bio student uh you do like a research thesis um where you basically do a written report that's almost the style of a paper of the work that you've done you know with background and methods and all the data that you've collected and so I was able to just use that as my honors um scholarly project and that was super beneficial when applying to other research positions because I was able to just send them that document they were able to see like the quality of work my ability inform and analyze data um and then also applying to grad school so it was very relevant I used it a bunch to get to where I'm at now so yeah that was my scholar project uh my scholarly project was the work that I did with Pablo a couple of other students and Dr jangal and Dr Hoffman um and we were looking at collecting survey responses to journalists about how they would report on say terrorism events or other extreme events um in the language that they would use and I would say that one of the coolest parts of this particular research experience was that we got to go to a journalism conference in Anaheim California and we were actually then using tablets to collect the survey responses and this was probably the only experience I've ever had and potentially will ever have to actually collect the data that I was then using myself um it was also just I don't know it was we were talking about this the other day it was really interesting to test your skills I'm not the kind of person even though I consider myself an extrovert to really like put myself out there and ask someone to do something I guess in that way for me and so it was kind of fun to challenge that skill of asking someone to take this survey um and be persistent about that one of the other cool things was that Jake Tapper uh one of the CNN anchors was at this conference um and we really tried hard to get him to take our survey in particular unfortunately he didn't respond but then we also got a cool picture with him at the conference um so yeah it was it was a really great experience um and so I think that that was one of the cool things to take from that particular research project uh yeah so I worked on that project too and I love the survey part I was in that conference just handing out surveys to everyone I can find and funny enough it's very relevant to the work I'm doing now because uh the intake form that we use for volunteers to give information to folks that are in CBP custody uh is a little bit modeled after this survey that we worked on because I have to do a very like it needs to be quick enough where they can answer it uh in the time that they are given uh but also get the information that we need so while I was writing it I was like this kind of looks familiar like I need to like like put the consent questions in certain places make sure certain uh uh questions get answered first because that's the information that we need but also give them the information that they need because in addition to giving them information we are also one of the only organizations that has inside access to what's going on so uh if anything's going to be run up the chain to CBP and USCIS it's going to be from us so it's really important for those surveys to be very thorough uh and we've had to update it so many times because it's an everchanging process but yeah that's a direct uh connection to the work that we did also that was my first time going to Disney World which was super cool and I really appreciated that um for my scholarly project this was while ago so I'm trying to remember specifics but I kind of combined the scholarly project with the creative writing Capstone and I did a creative writing piece on um interrogating interracial relationships and how that impacts family Dynamics and I would say the main way that that I still use that project today is my creative writing skills so um for my research I'm really interested in issues of access and food apartheid um and so when I'm up my research results I want to ensure that they are accessible to the communities that I'm engaging with and so I also want it to be interesting for people to read and so I think bringing that creative writing piece when I'm writing and submitting things to academic journals is something that's going to be um very front of my mind very amazing projects well um I'm not sure if this counted for my scholarly project but I did have the opportunity to work with with Dr Watkins of the uh leadership toolbox um and as the name implies we looked at the different facets of leadership and communication um and how uh how that plays out and we also put together video materials uh for developing some of those skills and have more awareness uh of your leadership stance approach and also your uh communication uh stance and approach uh so we looked at body language body cues the soft aspects of communication eye contact and things of that nature uh which I still leverage to this day as I'm leveraging now um or in a business meeting with a director or uh with my team that I'm engaging with so um very relevant skills um as my colleagues here uh had very technically specific skill sets that they uh cultivated uh and still leverage to this day um some of the more soft aspects learn with Hest college or uh that you'll learn in your uh teamwork uh you'll find a little nuggets that you'll still bring with you uh into the future thank you and again to tag on to what I was saying about earlier where I studied whatever I wanted um my honor schol project was about queer Coming of Age Cinema uh directed by women uh so you can really do anything very cool very fun my major was food science so the the world is your oyster and the h college is the Pearl or something I don't know we are going to ask one final question uh and it's beautiful and ties everything together so someone asked what advice would you have for fir a firste student um who is beginning their education and their professional Journey okay um there's so many pieces I if if I could I I'd want to sit down with them and and have a longer conversation maybe set up uh weekly check-ins where we can talk together and enact the mentor program but if I had just one nugget to give them I'd say engage engage engage like we all explained here you're exposed to a very unique experience don't take it for granted try to go to as many events as you can um understand yourself don't burn yourself out but also understand that this is a unique time in your life and uh you'll be able to sleep a little bit later uh if you're losing sleep uh but no genuinely if you're losing sleep reach out to the resources here there are people to help you but engage engage engage mine is very similar and I feel like I've said it a couple times with other aners but um build relationships with faculty um I think especially if you're thinking about graduate school um they've all gone through it and so I think building those relationships with them um will really help you end up where you want to end up um and they'll help you navigate that process and I also think in line with building relationships in the way that you're thinking about building relationships there's a lot of different opportunities in the Honors College so it doesn't necessarily have to be through taking a class with that faculty member that can be a great introduction um but all the faculty are doing a lot of interesting research and posting really interesting programs and so I think the taking a course with them is a great introduction but I think also following up with getting involved in other things that they're doing would be a great way to Foster those relationships yeah one of the great Parts about the Honors College I feel is that it's really a choose your own journey and make the most of it as you will um so you know taking courses that you're interested in but also you know taking advantage maybe of honors Contracting opportunities assuming I'm not so old that that's not an option anymore uh taking advantage of the mentor program taking advantage of other leadership programs all of these kinds of things um and I'll also Echo what others have said in terms of making these connections with faculty members that's inside and outside of the Honors College I feel like almost every cool opportunity I had when I was in undergrad was because I went to someone's office hours and it wasn't necessarily because I had a homework question it was because I thought they were really interesting I thought the course material was maybe interesting and I just wanted to have a conversation with them about it and then also once I was done with that course I tried to keep in touch with them as well you know you don't need to stop by their office every day but even if you're keeping in touch with them once a semester that's a good way to you know if you're applying to grad school um be ready to ask for letters of recommendation but also just to keep hearing about cool opportunities um I mean I could go on and on about the various cool kind of random things that I got to do because of different connections um one of them that's coming to mind is I got to go to Bogata Colombia for a model un conference and it was because Dr Duncan asked me to go along with the team um and it was a group of political science students that were going along for this um so there's just a lot of cool opportunities that you can have access to but it's much more difficult to have access to some of those opportunities if you are not engaging in the proper ways yeah advice uh to a first year student um I think this has kind of already been said but I feel like our generation and younger we don't go to things unless we know like somebody else who's going to go and we're going to meet up before and we're going to walk in together a lot of World Readiness is being able to do things on your own so just go to call outs go try new things out even if it's by yourself um I think especially you know like at the start of each new semester there's so many call outs it's never too late to go to something new that you're interested in um it's not something that you had to start as a first year you can do a totally new club your senior year if you're interested and you want to um but with that being said college is a time where you learn your limits so I think sometimes the best way of going about this is adding slow when you know that you can take on more um I think like we mentioned all of us will experience burnout at some point in time um and as honor students we really struggle to ask for help whether that's in cour work or with mental health so if you are struggling there are people here that you can reach out to and a lot of resources that are posted all around I know I had to reach out as well and learn to ask for help um and I'm sure all of us will experience that at different points whether it be here or later on in our career and learning to do it now will benefit you in the long run um that was a that was an excellent answer I really want to Echo the uh there it's never too late to join an organization or start an organization if it doesn't exist and this is such a unique time in your life to do those kind of things because like if you think like it's hard to get students to go to meetings like get adults to get to go to meetings that is so hard to get them interested in anything so get started here um I can do I could have talked this entire time just about my connections with professors and how helpful it's been in my my personal life and my academic life uh I can there's probably a million stories I could do about that uh so if you're not going to office hours if you're not engaging with these people that are so invested in you then like what are we paying all this money for like you couldn't you could have gone to an institution with professors that don't care as much to be frank um Purdue has its problems of course every institution does but I'm like continually Blown Away uh by the professors and the work they're doing and like the heart tohe hearts that I've had uh so really wanted to emphasize that as well um and just really lean into your individuality cuz when you just try to follow a path that you feel compelled to follow because you always told people you're going to do that or it's just a path that you see um like often and you think that you should imitate it like you can just make your own thing the Honors College is really good at doing that per is really good at encouraging that but at the end of the day you also have to be the person that speak up for yourself uh and know what you like and what you don't like trust your gut in terms of like what feels right um and you can always readjust there's a bunch of folks here that changed Majors I added I add I added political science and now I work in policy I did not expect that at all um and I'm really grateful that I did so yeah I just want to add one thing um I also happy to answer anyone's questions outside of the panel but I also wanted to do a Shameless plug for the world World Readiness mentoring Network um it's an initiative with the I don't know what the unit's called now I'm sorry um but it is an opportunity for you to connect with alumni of the Honors College and get um one-on-one mentoring in your pursuit of your passions and so um it's a great way to hear from people that have gone through the Honors College people like us and um really have them give you advice oneon-one so thank you all so much for coming again it's a Friday evening afternoon evening uh so thank you so much for taking some time out of your day and can I have a round of applause for our wonderful [Applause] panelist um but thank you all so much for coming it is 601 um and so yeah have a great rest of your day e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e