By: Mericel Mirabal & Lucy Zhou
Lehigh University held its annual Summer Expo from 4-6 in Building C to showcase the research that students have been working on. Mountaintop Summer Experience teams along with BDSI and RARE students all featured their work, which was shown to members of the Lehigh community with a great turnout and also judged by presentation efforts. It was imperative for us to get the word out about our project, and this expo was a great method of doing this and being able to network with people and other teams. We presented our blog/website, team poster and cookbook at the expo.
When we were speaking to people about our project, we talked to them about the reasons that this work was important to us. We both wanted to see and hopefully make change occur slowly especially as we both go out into the workforce and really start embracing and becoming a part of society. The ultimate goal is for there to be a day in which people don’t remember what a non-inclusive workplace or society looks like because being inclusive and open-minded is the normal. However, Lucy and I realized that throughout this summer, our more realistic/tangible goals would be to spread more awareness and to encourage having those uncomfortable conversations that help you learn and grow.
We discussed how we chose to do this through the mediums of our blog/website, which we hope to expand and to promote even more. We also hosted a workshop that we held at Mountaintop with four panelists who were entrepreneurs and educators, and they shared their experiences and stories and answered questions. Lastly, we presented our research through a “cookbook” that was inspired by a conversation that we had with Lehigh alumnus Norm Rumpf, ’59. The idea of a cookbook appealed to us because it can be used as something that’s passed down from generation to generation and is easily able to be adjusted to how you best see fit with tips, tricks, adding and taking away. We thought this was the best way to share and apply our findings to help create a more inclusive economy.
Talking to other people about our research helped to fortify the need for this ongoing project. Although people know that there won’t be one single solution for this by the end of the summer, they recognized that starting this would be important, and we are ecstatic to be the first team paving the way to educate, encourage and implement inclusivity.