CINQ 387: Inquiry to Impact Workshops
Lessons Learned – blog entry
Due Mon 11/21 (CSIF) or Tues 11/22 (G-LVSIF)
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.
Prompts: When elaborating on each thing you’ve learned, ask yourself four questions:
What did I learn?
How did I learn it?
Why does it matter?
What will I do in light of it?
For example, if you modified your understanding of a course concept through the IF, here are the questions you may ask to elaborate on what you’ve learned:
What is the concept? What specific occurrence relates to the concept?
How did the experience help you to better understand the course concept?
How did the concept help you to deal with any challenges or issues?
What complexities do you see now that you had not been aware of before?
Based on your analysis, what might you do differently in future academic activities?
The top three things I learned during my Impact Fellowship were the importance of building relationships with potential stakeholders both in and outside of Lehigh as well as how to incorporate ethics into a business and the different types of organizations that exist. I learned these through the classes taught by Khanjan where he would use slides, videos, TED talks, real-life scenarios, and research papers. Learning about the importance of building relationships with stakeholders was essential because I never realized how important it is for scaling a project. Without the stakeholders, there is no one to support the project with either funds or connections to make it bigger. Ethics was also extremely important to learn because it further reinforced that the best idea might not be the most ethical and that is important to consider the consequences and benefits. Also, learning about the different types of organizations that exist is important in order to understand what type of stakeholders we wanted to interact with for our project. In light of this knowledge, I will incorporate it once I decide to work on my own project of building my plant business/store. I believe that these three takeaways will help me in making choices and connections that will help me grow my dream.
- How did the Impact Fellowship facilitate your professional development? Please provide three examples.
Prompts: When elaborating on each experience that may facilitate your professional development, ask yourself four questions:
What did I learn or what did I learn about myself related to professional development?
How did I learn it?
Why does it matter?
How will I make use of this experience?
For example, if you realized that you learned some skills (which can be general skills such as critical thinking, systems thinking, cross-cultural communication, ethical decision making, leadership, or discipline-specific skills) that relates to your professional development, you may ask these questions as a reflection:
What is the skill? How does it relate to your professional development?
How did the experience help you to strengthen the skill? What did you do to build this skill? How did the skill help you to deal with some challenges?
What do you see now that relates to your career plan that you had not been aware of before?
Based on your analysis, what might you do differently regarding your professional development in the future?
The Impact Fellowship facilitated my professional development by helping me develop/improve some skills such as how to work on a cross-functional team, read research papers, and build relationships with professionals. In the industry, I am interested in which is biomedical, working on a cross-functional team is vital because there will not only be one type of engineer. There will be biomedical engineers, and process control engineers but even aside from the varying disciplines people will be coming from different background. By being on a six-person team with a mechanical engineer, energy engineer, and chemical engineer, I was able to learn how they think and how to navigate a project even despite our differences in thinking. There were definitely some bumps in the road but I think that really helped our team grow and helped me learn even more ways how to deal with challenges in such a large team setting. Improving my skill of reading and understanding research papers is another vital skill because that is something I will definitely be doing all of my life if I plan to enter the biomedical field. There are always innovations occurring on medical devices and it’s important to stay up to date by reading research papers. It’s not only the fact that I can read them but also know how to decipher information from them that will further my knowledge of the topic. I improved this skill by reading many research papers on what is currently being a phase change material and other efforts that are being made to improve the efficiency of solar panels. Also, learning how to build relationships with professionals is very important because as an engineer I will always be collaborating with other engineers. It is important to know how to make a relationship beneficial for me but also for the other party so it is not just one-sided.
- How did the Impact Fellowship help you grow personally? Please provide three examples.
Prompts: When elaborating on each thing that has helped you grow personally, ask yourself:
What was the personal growth?
How did I achieve it?
Why does it matter?
What will I do in light of it?
For example, if you became aware of some personal strength, weakness, assumption, or belief, you may elaborate on it by answering the questions:
What is the personal strength, weakness, assumption, or belief you became aware of as a result of reflection on your experience?
How did the experience help you to better understand or develop this personal characteristic? How did this personal characteristic influence your interactions with others?
What are the potential personal benefits or challenges related to this personal characteristic in other aspects of your life?
In what specific way(s) will you use this strength, improve upon this weakness, etc., in your life in the future?
The Impact Fellowship has helped me realize that I enjoy working on a cross-functional team, sometimes have difficulty voicing my opinion, and should continue working on my presentation skills. As mentioned previously, my team was very diverse and it really helped me realize that I want that to occur even as a professional. I enjoy that everyone has a different way of thinking due to either their upbringing, engineering discipline, or any other factor that makes them unique. There are some big benefits to this since most jobs I am applying for are looking for candidates that interested in working on a cross-functional team and that is something I can strongly say I would love to do/be a part of. I also realized that I sometimes have difficulty voicing my opinion but I think that is because our team was so big so there would always be ideas jumping around so sometimes it would be difficult to just focus on one. I did realize though that I rather talk one on one with individuals. It allows me to listen better to what the other person is saying and I know that the individual will only be listening to what I have to say. I also realized that I should continue immersing myself in activities that challenge my presentation skills. I tend to get very nervous and it can sometimes show. I want to be more confident in this area so I will most likely take a class that helps me improve this skill. This skill is very important since it is very likely that I will presenting a lot in my job to higher-level engineers about the work I am doing.