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DURA symposium

Since the fall, I've been involved with the Dartmouth Undergraduate Research Association as an executive chair. The goal of the club is to raise awareness about research opportunities for undergraduates on campus; there are certainly many of them! Specifically, because of my first-gen low-income identity, a priority for me is reaching out to low-income students and sharing resources and pathways to success in research and the broader academic field. In this post, I want to share a bit about what DURA has done this term in order to make research on campus more accessible to undergraduates, specifically those from underrepresented backgrounds in academia and research. 

We kicked off this term with a research mixer open to campus. Using Dartmouth's club-allocated funding, we were able to cater Thai food, rent out a hall on campus for the night, and spread awareness about the event around campus. The turnout was great; many students were interested in learning more about how to get involved in research. Since the event was laid out in a mixer format, students could approach me and other executive chairs to ask questions about how we got involved in research and the pathways that we took. By sharing strategies to get involved with research, we were able to help many first-years and underclassmen create plans of action so that they could start reaching out to professors and departments where they would like to do research. My first-year, I had no idea about how to do research on campus, and relied heavily on the internet to answer my questions; being able to make the process easier for new students is very rewarding because it shows the skills I was able to acquire over the course of my Dartmouth experience.

Our second event was an application-writing workshop. Since many fellowship and research applications were due on the 15th, we had an open event where anybody who was applying for those fellowships could speak with students who had gone through the process and were accepted. This was another event where students were able to come to us with specific questions and requests for feedback on research proposals: it was interesting to hear about the wide variety of subjects students were applying to research. The intellectual diversity of Dartmouth is one of my favorite parts about going here, as everyone you talk to has a different set of interests and questions that they are looking for answers to!

We are planning our final event to be a symposium for first-generation/low-income students. By reaching out to them specifically with a presentation and Q&A, we are hoping to create a more accessible environment for learning, research, and curiosity on campus. Dartmouth is hard to navigate for students as is; compound the intersectional realities that first-generation low-income students face, and it becomes nearly impossible to use Dartmouth's resources to their full potential. Therefore, our goal with the symposium is to bring awareness to these resources and provide guidance to how students can take advantage of them.

Overall, helping organize events for DURA has been incredibly rewarding. By using the campus' resources, we've been able to reach out to wide groups of students; for any prospective students reading, make sure to get involved with DURA events on campus!

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