May 2020-Present<\/span><\/p>\n For around a year now, I\u2019ve worked for one of American University\u2019s undergraduate research journals, Clocks and Clouds. In addition to providing feedback to the submitted work, I\u2019ve also had the opportunity to help direct the focus of the publication through recommendations and discussion of the merits of submissions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Coursework<\/b><\/p>\n SPA Leadership Program, <\/b>American University<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n August 2018-Present<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to several courses discussing theoretical and academic understandings of leadership. This program also allowed me to work on two research-based social justice-related projects. The first of which was a group project focused on campus fossil fuel investment. This culminated in an event partnering with Fossil Free AU in a discussion of the impacts of fossil fuel investments and ways that American University could consider divesting. The second project I worked on individually and focused on the benefits of equitable access to after-school programs for working parents and children. I partnered with Jubilee Housing\u2019s Teen Center and started a fundraising campaign with local restaurants to support college visits and programs for students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Campus Involvement<\/b><\/p>\n Director of Professional Development, <\/span><\/i>Leading Women of Tomorrow, <\/b>American University <\/span><\/p>\n July 2020-April 2021<\/span><\/p>\n When I applied for the role of Director of Professional Development, Leading Women of Tomorrow (LWT) hadn\u2019t existed at American University for years and as one of the members of the first e-board, I had the opportunity to help build this organization from the initial nine e-board members to the over fifty members we have currently. We were also recently recognized by the Center for Student Involvement as one of the clubs that had the greatest engagement since American University went online. My role in this organization was to plan, develop and host virtual events like schedule planning, resume workshops, speaker events, and graduate\/ law school informational sessions. To do this I reached out to connections I and other e-board members had with individuals and organizations to bring expertise to these areas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Professional Development<\/b><\/p>\n Field Organizing Intern, <\/span><\/i>Eugene DePasquale for Congress, <\/b>Cumberland County, PA-10<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n August 2020-November 2020<\/span><\/p>\n In the Fall of 2020, I worked on a congressional campaign for the seat of my home district in Pennsylvania. Through this experience, I had the opportunity to work on a project for voter registration with businesses in the district. We developed a QR code linked to PA voter registration and flyers about voter registration. I worked with businesses in areas with historically low voter registration to get this information to them. I also had the opportunity to help plan voter outreach events including a policy discussion with students and other more fun events like \u201cJeopardy with DePasquale.\u201d In addition to making constituent calls, I also led phone banks and trainings for volunteers helping with constituent calls.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Professional Development<\/b><\/p>\n Intern<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Judge Thomas Placey<\/b>, Cumberland County Courthouse, PA<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0May 2020-August 2020<\/span><\/p>\n As a courthouse intern, I did research for memos and cases, helped to draft opinions, and answered calls. I also learned about the leadership of a courtroom, Judge Placey and I talked about the power of a judge to set the environment of their courtroom. As I had the opportunity to watch cases with other judges I began to notice how body language and tone of voice could shift the behavior of everyone in the room. The thing that left the greatest impression on me was how Judge Placey intentionally made juvenile court or any cases with kids actively involved less intimidating, talking to them, engaging them in their cases, and helping them to understand the process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Professional Development<\/b><\/p>\n Legislative Intern, <\/span><\/i>Representative Chrissy Houlahan, <\/b>PA<\/span> District 06 Office, Washington, DC<\/span><\/p>\n January 2020-March 2020<\/span><\/p>\n As an intern, I did basic office management work of answering calls, sorting mail, and visiting other offices for signatures. But I also had the opportunity to lead and work on projects with the other interns including working on a policy history of several issues related to issues with upcoming bills. I also started preparing to lead tours until the COVID-19 pandemic halted this.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Campus Involvement<\/b><\/p>\n Program Leader, <\/span><\/i>First-Year Complex Problems, <\/b>American University<\/span><\/p>\n March 2019-December 2019<\/span><\/p>\n As a Program Leader for Complex Problems, I acted as a resource for students for class-related material and other forms of professional development. I held office hours on an individual basis and with groups to help students with class material\/ projects, scheduling, campus involvement opportunities, and advice in looking for internships. Additionally, I led the class in two activities outside of class. The first was an event on campus of watching a documentary related to class and the second was a museum trip where I facilitated discussion about the pieces related to class.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Campus Involvement<\/b><\/p>\n Member, <\/span><\/i>AU Ambassadors, <\/b>American University<\/span><\/p>\n February 2019-March 2020<\/span><\/p>\n As an AU Ambassador, I learned leadership skills by working with many different groups. For overnight and day visits I had the opportunity to introduce AU to one or two students, answering their questions and helping them to get a sense of the school. I also helped with accepted student days where I answered questions and shuttled large groups to different locations around campus. A majority of the work I did in the program was leading tours of 20-25 parents and students around campus discussing the schools, involvement opportunities, resources, and programs. I gained confidence in my public speaking ability while also learning to think on my feet and adapt. I learned to manage tours around poor weather and campus construction. I became more aware of addressing the needs of the group, with an accessible route and\/or information more related to the interests of the specific group. I also had the opportunity to train and mentor new AU Ambassadors through their tour training process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Community Service<\/b><\/p>\n Group Leader, <\/span><\/i>Explore D.C.<\/b>, American University<\/span><\/p>\n August 2019<\/span><\/p>\n As a Group Leader, I helped with welcome week for freshmen by volunteering with Explore D.C. It was two days of service with the non-profit Urban Teacher where my group and I helped to prepare classrooms and materials for classes. I led the group around DC, for many of them it was the first time traveling by metro. I also facilitated a positive group dynamic and created a community among these students who didn\u2019t know each other at the start of the program.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Community Service<\/b><\/p>\n Volunteer Tutor, <\/span><\/i>D.C. Reads, <\/b>American University, Columbia Heights Village, D.C.<\/span><\/p>\n January 2019-May 2019<\/span><\/p>\n As a D.C. Reads tutor, I traveled biweekly to an afterschool program in Columbia Heights where I helped students individually with their homework, read and talked with them, and facilitated group activities. Usually, after homework time, I would lead a group of three to four students through STEM-related activities about magnets, space, or solar ovens to make s\u2019mores.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Campus Involvement Reviewer, Clocks and Clouds, American University \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 May 2020-Present For around a year now, I\u2019ve worked for one of American University\u2019s undergraduate research journals, Clocks and Clouds. In addition to providing feedback to the submitted work, I\u2019ve also had the opportunity to help direct the focus of the publication through recommendations and discussion of the merits of submissions.\u00a0 Coursework SPA Leadership Program, American University \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2651,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-123","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":121,"date":"2021-04-26T20:47:49","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T20:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/?page_id=121"},"modified":"2021-04-26T20:47:49","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T20:47:49","slug":"leadership-growth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/leadership-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Growth"},"content":{"rendered":" My definition of leadership before college was skewed in a way where I excluded myself from personally identifying with leadership. Being raised in a small semi-rural conservative town, I think the culture and the way history was framed supported the idea of the Great Man Theory\/ Trait Approach, without naming them. Somewhere from middle to high school, I started to develop a social and political consciousness and adopt more progressive ideas fostered through my friends and some teachers. But I didn\u2019t think about how my broader environment also impacted me. So ultimately when I started at AU my association of leadership was similar to the Great Man Theory\/ the Trait Approach or at least that leadership was synonymous with aggressiveness and masculinity. So I think one of my expectations of this program was that I would learn to adopt an assertive extroverted personality. Since we started discussing theories of leadership and leaders throughout history, I started to recognize this thinking and expand my understanding of leadership beyond specific traits. I\u2019ve learned that leadership is better defined in terms of learning, situational adaptation, and service to others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I think now I have a more complete picture of the different ways leadership scholarship has evolved over time to modern understandings of adaptive and transformational leadership. Another thing I learned was the importance of a relationship between leaders and followers. I don\u2019t think previously I understood the importance of the contributions of followers. I now understand leadership as a collaborative effort. Additionally, I now recognize that leadership isn\u2019t just who a person is or a position of authority, it’s about what a person does. As adaptive leadership suggests it\u2019s about learning, making difficult decisions looking towards the future and continuously looking for ways to be inclusive and lift other people up.<\/span><\/p>\n As far as the leadership of others, I don\u2019t think I judge the approach of others as harshly as I judge myself. But greater awareness of how leadership often fits with a person\u2019s personality has helped me to gain a better understanding of why people make some of the choices they do in leadership. Previously I didn\u2019t identify myself with the ability to be a leader. I thought leadership would be a tradeoff with my personality and that I had to adopt an aggressive and assertive persona that\u2019s not natural to me. By gaining a broader understanding of leadership I learned that I could find a means of leading through my strengths. I think I also gained a greater self-awareness through trying to figure out my strengths because I was also more able to see my patterns and weaknesses. Through greater self-awareness, I also gained confidence and started to trust myself more. Ironically, as much as I am an introverted person, self-awareness also afforded me the confidence to be assertive and outgoing at times. I identified that one of my strengths in leadership is interpersonal relationships and directing collaboration to goals. But I think one of the most important things I took away from greater self-awareness was my weaknesses and an appreciation of learning and adaptability, which is helping me to balance out some of my perfectionist tendencies. I\u2019m not there yet, but I can say that I recognize when it\u2019s happening and react accordingly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of my biggest challenges with working collaboratively was learning to relinquish control and trust people. My K-12 education conditioned me to expect that group members in projects would always let me down. This expectation, combined with my achievement-oriented perfectionist tendencies is not a good combination. But it took me a while to see this as a problem since previously I did very well handling things on my own. I recognize now that this approach isn\u2019t sustainable for me, and it\u2019s not good for a group either. It makes people feel undervalued which perpetuates my perception that people in the group don\u2019t care. There were definitely times in my history of group projects where nothing would have gotten engagement from group members, but I also think there were also times when a greater effort to understand the working style of people would have changed the outcome. But since coming to college I haven\u2019t often defaulted to the controlling do-the-whole-project-mode. With maturity and meeting a lot of people I respect with different working styles, I\u2019ve come to understand different approaches and have become more open to this as much as procrastination stresses me out. Ultimately, I\u2019ve learned to manage my biases and expectations when working with others.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the opportunities I\u2019ve sought started with the leadership projects. From reaching out to DC nonprofits for project research, I learned how to engage in a professional setting. This led me to reach out to organizations where my interests were, and helped me to get several of my past internships. The adaptive leadership mentality I took into these internships helped me to gain projects where I could exercise leadership. By demonstrating interest and a desire to learn I got to lead phonebanks and trainings for a campaign, and I was given the opportunity to take on projects at Cumberland County Courthouse and in the legislative office of Representative Houlahan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I also sought leadership experiences on campus, one of the first organizations I joined was AU Ambassadors. I learned how to give tours and help run events, but my favorite part always was talking to prospective students and engaging with their interests. It was always a great feeling when students would come up to me on campus and tell me I gave their campus tour. There were others I got to know because they would email me with follow up questions or just wanted to tell me that they decided to attend AU. One of the most moving things was a student who wrote and mailed me a handwritten thank you note saying that he was going to accept his AU admission and how much it meant to him that we talked after the tour about the symphonic band and opportunities to do music as a non-music major. I also got to mentor younger tour guides which was also rewarding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Also early on in my time at AU, I was involved with DC Reads. I volunteered at an afterschool program. This was one of the more meaningful things I did during my time at AU. I led STEM activities with groups of students and did homework help with individual students. I remember that the student I worked with was so quiet when we met but eventually would run up to me so excited to tell me about his day. I was also an Explore DC group leader, which is actually how I first met some of the younger SPA Leadership class. I was proud of the volunteer work we did on those days at Urban Teachers, but I was also glad that by the end of the program my co-leader and I created an environment where they were comfortable with us and made friendships in the group.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the more recent leadership experiences that I\u2019m proud of is the revival of the Leading Women of Tomorrow club at AU. Last summer I applied to be on the e-board when the national chapter reached out about restarting the club. I got the Director of Professional Development position. With eight other E-board members, we got to work to bring the club back over Zoom. I was tasked specifically with planning and hosting events like resume workshops, scheduling events, and information sessions about careers and graduate\/ school, but we all worked together to promote the club and develop a plan for what we wanted it to be. I\u2019m proud of what we did. In December we were recognized by AU for being one of the clubs on campus that held the most events and had the highest attendance and engagement. From the initial e-board, the club now has well over 50 members and we recently held our first election. I decided not to run again since I won\u2019t be around, with going abroad and then graduating early, but this gave me the opportunity to talk to the people running for my former position. It was thrilling to hear their ideas, impart things I learned, and to understand through them how much the club meant to them and gave them a sense of connection to AU even with everything online. I knew how much this club meant to me as a nonpartisan supportive community where I\u2019d made close friendships and started an LSAT study group, in addition to running the club. But it was so moving to see that the culture we tried to build came through even with the physical distance. I was happy to step down, it feels like the best form of transformational leadership, we\u2019d inspired our members which was the goal in the first place. Personally, it\u2019s nice to think that something good like this that I helped to build will live on past my time at AU. In some ways, the collaboration to create this club felt like the culmination of all of the things I\u2019ve learned about leadership over the years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My definition of leadership before college was skewed in a way where I excluded myself from personally identifying with leadership. Being raised in a small semi-rural conservative town, I think the culture and the way history was framed supported the idea of the Great Man Theory\/ Trait Approach, without naming them. Somewhere from middle to high school, I started to develop a social and political consciousness and adopt more progressive ideas fostered through my friends and some teachers. But I didn\u2019t think about how my broader environment also impacted me. So ultimately when I started at AU my association of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2651,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-121","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":19,"date":"2018-06-26T15:58:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/spatemplate\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2021-04-26T21:14:44","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T21:14:44","slug":"work-sample","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/work-sample\/","title":{"rendered":"Work Samples"},"content":{"rendered":" Class Research<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a research paper I wrote based on statistical analysis of punishment in public schools in the United States: click to view a PDF version.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Published Research<\/strong><\/p>\n Here is a research paper I wrote which is published in American University’s Global Majority E-Journal: click to view a PDF version.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Class Research This is a research paper I wrote based on statistical analysis of punishment in public schools in the United States: click to view a PDF version. Published Research Here is a research paper I wrote which is published in American University’s Global Majority E-Journal: click to view a PDF version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2651,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":16,"date":"2018-06-26T15:58:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/spatemplate\/?page_id=16"},"modified":"2021-04-26T21:07:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T21:07:33","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":" Hello! My name is Abigail Hoover and I’m passionate about criminal justice reform and education inequity. I am currently studying Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government at American University. Additionally, I am pursuing a Data Science minor and a Certificate in Advanced Leadership Studies. I have previously interned on a congressional campaign, with the Cumberland County Courthouse, the House of Representatives, and the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.<\/span><\/p>\n I am currently involved with the SPA Leadership Program, and my current project aims to focus on educational inequality across the D.C. area and the ways in which this has been addressed. I previously worked with a team on developing a project focusing on environmental and sustainability issues, specifically campus divestment at American University. I have also gained invaluable research experience through the AU Scholars program where I developed projects on topics including systemic corruption and refugee and immigration policy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On-campus, I’m a member and former e-board member of American University’s chapter of Leading Women of Tomorrow. I also work on the staff of one of American University’s undergraduate research journals, Clocks and Clouds. Additionally, I host prospective students during visits, help with events and give tours with the American University Ambassadors Program. I’ve also formerly worked as a Program Leader for the Complex Problems program and a D.C. Reads tutor for elementary-age students in the D.C. area, most recently at an after-school program in Columbia Heights Village.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/ah4367a\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1260\/2019\/10\/0D2A9198-3.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n