| PRIOR EXPERIENCE
Prior to entering her position as College Nine Global and International
Perspectives Intern, Alexa was well qualified for the internship
due to her past experiences in leadership positions and her strong
interest in international relations. During her first year at UC
Santa Cruz, Alexa took CLNI 85, the Model United Nations workshop
class that she would later be facilitating as part of her CUIP project.
Later, in her second and third years, Alexa helped found UCSC’s
first Model United Nations team and held the position of Secretary-General.
During the time in which she led the team for two years, UCSC Model
United Nations attended its first conferences hosted by UC Berkeley,
Far West, and UCLA. Alexa also organized and lead the team to put
on the first Model United Nations high school conference ever held
at UC Santa Cruz. Her participation in Model United Nations for
the first three years of her college career contributed to her leadership
experience, her managing and organizational skills and her knowledge
of the United Nations, international affairs issues, and Model United
Nations procedures. She later used these skills and knowledge in
her CUIP internship to facilitate the courses, CLNI 85 “Global
Leadership” and CLNI 191 “Teaching International Issues.”
Furthermore, Alexa had more experience learning about international
relations and gaining useful research skills when she worked at
the Capitol as and intern for then Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
during the Fall of 2005.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND GROWTH
Alexa participated in many tasks at the College Nine and Ten Cocurricular
Office every quarter, but this summary of her accomplishments will
focus on the major projects she worked on each quarter. In the Fall
of 2006, Alexa facilitated College Nine’s Fall Leadership
(FLI) group, a leadership organization for students who are passionate
about international affairs and global issues and who are interested
in thinking about their roles as global citizens in substantial
ways. The group’s major success this year was the installation
a memorial project for the War in Iraq during the week of Veteren's
Day. Alexa and her mentor, Erin Ramsden, brought up the idea of
the project to the group early in the quarter, and all the members
were eager to participate. Alexa planned and delegated all the tasks
for the installation. For the installation, a stake was installed
at College Nine and Merrill College for every one of the 2,801 U.S.
Soldier who had died in the war. Each stake displayed a photo of
and information about one of the soldiers. FLI also left a comment
book by the memorial so that students and staff could express their
opinions about the memorial. The feedback was mostly positive, demonstrating
an appreciation that College Nine was spreading an awareness of
the impact of the war.
During Winter of 2007, Alexa facilitated two related courses at
College Nine, CLNI 85, a lower division two-credit Model United
Nations Workshop, and CLNI 191, an upper division five-credit course
for the student teachers of the MUN workshop. Alexa’s tasks
in planning and leading these courses included the selection and
preparation of student teachers, student recruitment, preparation
of weekly curriculum, facilitating classes twice a week, and the
organization and implementation of the final conference. The final
conference, the topic of which was global warming, was a success,
and almost all the students showed an acute knowledge of their country’s
interest, an enthusiasm for representing their country, and a genuine
understanding of diplomacy. Therefore, the course met its goals,
which were to allow students to engage in the College Nine theme,
to build leadership and research skills, and to explore a diverse
array of perspectives that they are unlikely to encounter in any
other forum. This thereby allowed them to widen their understanding
of the world and the global community. The students instructed the
course, most of whom already took the CLNI 85, also gained new understandings
of leadership, diplomacy, negotiation, and tolerance.
Alexa feels that her experience in facilitating these classes led
her to grow more in terms of leadership skills than any other experience
as an intern. The personal interactions with her students taught
her how to respond to their needs and change plans accordingly,
thus teaching her how to be more flexible. She learned that leadership
and teaching is not just about laying out lesson plans, objectives,
and goals, but also taking into account what direction the students
and student teachers want the class to take. She now thinks of leadership
much more as a give and take.
In the Spring of 2007, Alexa’s main accomplishment has been
her participation in the planning of CLNI 85 in 2008, which will
be an entirely different class than past years. Now called Global
Action, the class will no longer focus on Model United Nations,
but will focus rather on students completing an activism project
relating to global or international issues.
INFLUENCE OF COWELL 184C
Cowell 184C allowed Alexa to look at her internship from a broader
perspective, in light of what she learned about the projects being
completed by her fellow interns. It was especially useful for her
to know that other interns were encountering the same kind of struggles,
such as trying to figure out how to best communicate with students,
and being able to discuss what they have all been able to learn
about these issues together.
FUTURE PLANS
Alexa’s internship helped to further foster her skills in
and understandings of leadership, diplomacy, tolerance, and research,
all of which she will need as she pursues a career in either environmental
or international law. Alexa’s internship allowed her to explore
international issues in a greater depth and think about ways to
best educate students on these issues, which served to greater foster
her interest in a career path that relates to international relations.
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