3 Semester Review:

You have now completed the PL Scholars colloquium series.  We now ask you to reflect on both your academic and co-curricular experience.  How have you changed during the Scholars experience?  What parts of the program influenced you most significantly and why? 

• Reflect on your understanding of leadership. How has it changed over your time in PL? What do you think of leadership now/What does leadership mean to you now? 

Over the course of the past four semesters, PL has had a major impact on my understanding of leadership. In our three courses, we learned a lot about leadership by looking at various leadership theories and characteristics, as well as learning about important issues that today's leaders face. Additionally, PL allowed me to surround myself with a group of young leaders like myself and I was able to learn about leadership through interacting with them all as well. Now, I think of leadership through a social lens. One thing that has really resonated with me over the past two years is that being charismatic and a generally well-liked person is something  that creates an effective leader. That is what I have strived to accomplish in my time here so far at UMD.

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• Describe your leadership style referencing Strengths, leadership theories/styles, etc from class 

As I briefly explained in my last answer, I think my leadership style can be best described through the lens of charismatic leadership and emotional intelligence. I think one of my strongest leadership qualities is my ability to make strong relationships with people that I work with. This makes collaborative experiences more enjoyable on both ends and helps me gain a broader network of people that I can work well with.

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• What facilitated the change in your understanding of leadership? Upload at least 1 additional artifact as evidence and discuss WHY you chose it/them. Describing WHY you uploaded something is more important than the item itself. ​

One aspect of the PL program that facilitated change in my understanding of leadership is the Myself as a Leader Today paper that we wrote at at the end of CPPL101. This paper was a culmination of all that I had learned about leadership in my first two semesters in PL, so it was very impactful for me. It allowed me to look at political polarization, a problem that is very important to me, and look at ways I have served as a leader to try and help solve that problem.

CPPL101 Final Paper 

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• How have you used an element of leadership learned through PL in your life? (either a formal leadership role or a personal interaction).

PL has helped me a lot with my communication skills. Skills that I learned over the course of the three semesters worth of classes have helped me succeed in other programs like QUEST. I have become a better leader and communicator, and I can attribute many of those skills to PL.

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Practicum Review:

• What did you do for your practicum?  Please include a detailed description.​

For my practicum, I participated in the BMGT 190H course as a part of the QUEST Honors Program. BMGT190H is the first of four major classes in the program and has a heavy emphasis on design thinking. The class was split up into two main projects: one product improvement and one process improvement. In the process improvement project, my team came up with a product called SleepyBaby, an ankle monitor for young children with sleeping disorders. The product was designed to monitor the baby's sleeping patterns and vitals to provide important information to parents. The second project I worked on with my team was a consulting project with the Stamp Student Union Human Resources Department. The team consulted Stamp HR over a two-month period on how to make uniform improvements to their onboarding process.

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• What did you learn from your practicum? 

The PL practicum was an invaluable learning experience for me. I am looking to go into the consulting field, so working on my first real-life consulting project was something I will never forget. I learned all about the ins and outs of working with a client on a long-term project and all the processes that go into a project like this. As I continue through the QUEST program, I will be learning skills that will be transferrable to my future career.

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• How have you grown as a leader, student, and professional? Upload at least 1 artifact as evidence of that growth and discuss WHY you chose it.

The document below is the final poster deliverable for my practicum assignment. The poster shows all of the details of the consulting project, including some of the main recommendations that the team gave to our client. I felt that this was a great indicator of how I have grown as a professional, because I have been able to work on projects that are similar to what I want to be doing as a career even in my second year of college. I look forward to continuing to seek out these opportunities as they are presented to me moving forward.

Final Poster Presentation

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• How can you apply your practicum experience to your life/career moving forward?

As I have explained, my practicum experience will be an extremely valuable experience to my life and career moving forward. It afforded me the opportunity to work on a team on a real-life consulting project, something I will be doing hundreds of times in my future career.

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• What are your plans for:

  1. The rest of your time at UMD?

In the rest of my time at UMD, I plan to stay heavily involved in the student organizations I am currently in. I also am very excited to continue my coursework in Accounting and Finance.

• 1. Post-graduation and your prospective career/field of interest? 

Post-graduation, I plan on briefly traveling to Europe. Then, I am looking to go into the consulting field. I have already accepted a Summer 2023 Enterprise Risk Consulting Internship offer, so I look forward to seeing where my career advances from there

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• How will you incorporate what you learned in PL (this could include your practicum) into your job search?

I think the most relevant aspect of PL to my future job search is that it made me more of a worldly and analytical thinker. I feel like I have gained a different view of the world and how power dynamics work in a variety of different situations. PL has helped me analyze situations in a different lens and I think I will be more successful in my career because of it.