Instructions: In preparation for the final workshop on “Living an Impact-Focused Life,” consider the three main questions below as a reflection on your Impact Fellowship. Regard this reflection as a learning process to explore and express what you learned, as well as an opportunity to learn more about yourself. Focus on the three main questions. You may use the prompts to help you organize your thoughts, but these prompts are not aimed to limit your thinking. You are strongly encouraged to freely express your ideas and feelings.
What are the top three things you learned during your Impact Fellowship? Please elaborate.
The top three things I learned during this course are: how to appeal to different stakeholders, how to manage ethical dilemmas, and how to work with people across different majors.
I learned how to appeal to different stakeholders throughout the project. We had many stakeholders — our sponsor, the Lehigh Office of Sustainaibility, end users — dorm residents at Lehigh, our capstone advisors, the presentation panels, and more. We held focus groups to accept feedback from our potential end users and took our presentation panels’ feedback seriously so we could better the website and all around user experience. Further, each week, we spoke to our capstone advisors and sponsor to routinely collect feedback from them. We used everyone’s feedbacks to inspire changes in our dashboard, and because of that, received more positive feedback by the end of this semester and gathered over 200 users. Sometimes, we received various suggestions at once from different stakeholders that we could not implement all at once. My team then discussed amongst each other what we should prioritize and what should be taken seriously. Overall, I learned that pleasing stakeholders can be a balancing act, but it is worth the careful thought, feedback collection, etc.
Next, I learned about ethical dilemmas, both in class and in the project. In class, I learned that every decision involving another person can be considered an ethical dilemma, even if it isn’t always clear how it affects others. I learned how to carefully analyze how a decision can affect all parties, and will apply this to my life as I make decisions involving others. In the project, the ethical dilemma was sometimes, as mentioned before, whose feedback you should prioritize.
Lastly, I learned about working with people in other majors to achieve a common purpose. It is easy to focus on individual tasks, even when working in a group, but I realized when I paid more attention to my teammates’ work outside of coding such as diagrams, data verifications, etc. we made the most progress. I learned to value different academic backgrounds in teams and see how it benefits the entire team.
How did the Impact Fellowship facilitate your professional development? Please provide three examples.
The Impact Fellowship facilitated my professional development through enriching me with knowledge of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, giving me experience in a long-term computer science project, and how to think about the big picture while working on assignments. One way the Impact Fellowship did this was by informing me about how entrepreneurs can pitch their ideas and research to investors to seek financing for their projects. Further, researchers/entrepreneurs can apply to conferences to present their research, projects, etc. which is great to know about. I now know how to seek momentum for projects I may take on in the future. Next, it was so beneficial to work on a long-term computer science project such as the Energy Dashboard. I learned a lot about software engineering and programming frameworks/languages/technologies, as well as Sprints, teamwork, and more. I feel like a much more confident coder and someone who is prepared to take on new, professional software engineering projects. It was also very beneficial to learn about “zooming out” on a project, as Khanjan says. It allowed me to keep the bigger mission of the project in mind, rather than getting caught up in technicalities and hindering progress. For instance, sometimes I would fixate on an issue in code and only spend time on that or feel bad about the project. I realized making progress in other areas in the project and reminding myself of the bigger picture definitely helps with motivation and progress, so I will carry that lesson into the workforce with me.
How did the Impact Fellowship help you grow personally? Please provide three examples.
The Impact Fellowship helped me grow personally by inspiring me to believe in my goals, grow as a team player, and to take interest in other people’s projects. I think that the fellowship helped me become more confident in my goals by showing me how I can achieve them. Being able to see so much progress in the Energy Dashboard and achieving milestones such as implementing the Kill-a-Watt competition, fixing data issues, adding frontend changes, etc. within this project was very satisfying to accomplish as last semester, a lot of elements of this project seemed impossible. I am very proud of the accomplishments of our project this semester and it definitely showed me that I should be more confident in my skills from hereon out.
This fellowship also helped me learn a lot about other people. I loved getting to know the people in class and asking about the interesting projects they are working on and why. This led me to grow because oftentimes, I get so caught up in my own projects that I forget other people are working on really cool things. This experience definitely led to growth within my academic curiosity.
I grew as a team player, as well. I realized that I could learn so much from the people I work with and my team and I leaned into teaching other new technologies and information. I definitely appreciate working in groups more so than I did before, which is definitely personal growth because effective group work can amount to much more than an individual can do, and this applies in many areas of life.