Visions of Change

Visions of Change

TWO STORIES FROM VIRGINIA STATE UNIVERSITY FELLOWS

by Isaiah Freeman and LaQuawne DePriest University Innovation Fellows Virginia State University

INTRODUCTION

by Isaiah Freeman Making a change for your institution or community, at a basic level, starts with conversation. It starts with determining the needs that exist and ways to resolve them, while also inviting your target audience to assess its value and suggest changes. In more simple terms, change begins with the individual in mind. As fellows of the 2021 cohort, Computer Science students Isaiah Freeman, LaQuawne DePriest, and Christopher Parham have their own user-driven goals in mind. Thanks to the Silicon Valley Meetup and the University Innovation Fellows program, LaQuawne goals have focused on improving the Computer Science program by introducing a form of project-based learning that reflects the reality of that career path. Isaiah’s goals have shifted towards enhancing the voices of VSU students in a way that promotes productive interaction with faculty and administrators. Christopher has aimed towards finding concise methods of providing students agency over their preferred learning methods. Now equipped with inspirational experiences, two of the Virginia State University cohort, Isaiah and LaQuawne, share their stories to provide insight into their visions of change.

A WAY FOR EDUCATION TO MIRROR THE OUTSIDE WORLD

by LaQuawne DePriest

Throughout my first process for making a change on the campus of Virginia State University, I concentrated my efforts on developing a more effective education for VSU Computer Science students through project-based learning. During my investigation, I discovered that not many students have projects to present to companies after graduating from VSU. I also discovered that VSU had a coding club that many students were unaware of. I took it upon myself to inform others about the coding club, which increased the club’s attendance. Interestingly, me and Isaiah had a similar thought process when it came to a project based learning environment at VSU.

Shortly after mine and Isaiah’s Fall semester, we had a chance to travel to Stanford for the Silicon Valley Meetup. This is where my way of thinking about problem solving started to change. During the meet up I was approached by Ms. Rishelle Wimmer, a Faculty Champion and Senior Lecturer at Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.

During an intermission between sessions, we discussed for 30 minutes before attending our next session. However, I did not know we would actually be attending the same session. Designing for Belonging was where me and Ms. Wimmer got more acquainted with each other’s thought process. An assignment was given during the Designing for Belonging session where we had to come up with a design and solution to something we faced in our everyday lives. Myself, Ms. Wimmer, and the team were then given ample time to discuss. Each of us talked about a problem we encountered.

The subject I talked about was a time when a professor gave me a zero for an assignment that I completed early. It was unfortunately a common issue that did not come as a surprise, as I was known in that class for questioning the practicality of our learning when applied to real life during class discussions. In response, I sent the professor an email regarding the zero that I was given. He gave a much less than polite response. So, I ended up adding his superior to the email with both of us about the grade. When he noticed what I did, he changed my score for the assignment.

Ms. Wimmer then shared her personal subject. She talked about her experience as a professor in Germany. She stated that she wasn’t very fluent in German. Because of this, a lot of students looked down on her intelligence because of her grammatical errors in a new language. My solution to Ms. Wimmer was that she could write out a paragraph on the board or type in a Word document. She can then create an extra credit assignment where students can go in and fix the grammatical mistakes. This would allow her to learn more about how to improve her use of the language.

Ms. Wimmer took on my problem I had with the teacher. Boy, did she open my eyes to a different way of thinking. Ms. Wimmer created a system that would weed out professors who have a lot of student complaints. If the professor had enough complaints, the system would notify the board for the professor to be investigated. When I heard her system, a light bulb went on in my head. I started to think about how to apply such a process to my computer science project at VSU. I also started to think about how to bridge the gap between PWIs and HBCUs by allowing HBCU students to develop real-world skills during the course of one’s degree program.

What drives me to close the gap between HBCUs and PWIs is seeing the amount of resources the latter has when compared to an HBCU. Due to financial hardships, an HBCU professor tends to leave and go to other schools, taking programs that particular professor brought to the school with them and leaving students who were excited for new opportunities completely stranded. When I saw this with my own eyes, that’s when I made a decision to help bring attention to HBCUs. I want the rest of the world to know that great things do come out of overlooked and underfunded schools, with the hopes that the recognition of this can bring more resources to HBCUs like Virginia State University.

COMING TOGETHER AS A GROUP

by Isaiah Freeman

In my initial formation of how I might change my campus, I had focused my mindset towards a solution that could enhance the project-learning aspect of our university, similar to my teammate LaQuawne. However, in the process of learning and researching design thinking, getting feedback for our prototypes, hearing from staff members during interviews - I discovered a much greater need.

The first spark of this need began during the unconference portion of the 2022 Silicon Valley Meetup. Distinguished students, educators, and administrators from all over the globe discussed various chosen topics. From those topics, we had formed potential solutions and areas of improvement. There was a significant divide in views. Regardless of this, we were able to create a hierarchy of specific improvements or concerns that all members of the conversation could agree upon. There was no complicated thought — no deep analysis — just a medium of conversation.

Upon deep reflection days after, the Silicon Valley Meetup was the key event that helped me take note of this need. It prompted me to review everything from my six-week training: Our meeting notes, recordings of our conversations with staff members, and surveys we tabulated from our peers.

At our campus, there are so many singular voices. These voices are those of the student body. Each of them are calling for solutions to certain aspects of their campus experience. Although their voices are unique, what they say is quite common, enough that the magnitude of their voices could be shortened into only a few categories.

The students are being vocal. The staff can hear them. However, through no fault of their own, they do not have a method of turning such a long list of students’ concerns into a manageable list of actions. If someone were to turn on a television and find themselves blighted with the video and audio of five channels, not even one of those channels could get a translatable message across, even though the channels are transmitting and the viewer is seeing and listening. From there, the need becomes clear. Our campus needs a network that can take the needs of students and return to the staff a concisely defined list. An initiator for a conversation. And, similar to the unconference I was able to participate in, a medium through which students and staff can now properly converse and develop united solutions.

Finding this need brings to mind the iterative process that a change agent must have in order to define a significant positive impact in their communities. There was a dimension of need hidden within each moment of my first iteration of design thinking that I did not see until it was time for my second iteration. However, I do not see this as a setback. Much like how one can only reflect on the previous day after a rest period and waking up the next day, I could only see this particular need at Virginia State University by completing my training and observing what resulted from it. My next steps have now become to create a process for communicating needs of students to faculty and administrators.

CONCLUSION

The change agents at Virginia State University were able to spend their freshman year gaining a well-surveyed perspective of the needs within the student, faculty, and administrative body. Now, as rising sophomores, the University Innovation Fellows team at Virginia State University plan to utilize both the six-week training in addition to their continuing education as undergraduates to secure a lasting change for their remaining 3 years at their campus.