Summary of Team Project

Throughout the course of my first year in the School of Public Affairs Leadership Program, I worked with a group of four other students in the Religion and Politics Issue Group. For our research, we decided to look deeper into the way that religion is used as a lens for conservative politics and their opinions and political stance on women’s reproductive healthcare rights. With this, we researched legislation that has hindered and helped women gain access to healthcare, looked at prominent Supreme Court cases such as Roe v. Wade, and have analyzed the ways in which different churches, such as the Southern Baptist Church, have expressed opinions that have altered the way in which conservative ideology is influenced regarding abortion and reproductive healthcare. From this research, we looked for ways in which we could assist women that have difficulty accessing menstrual products, and from here we found the organization Helping Women Period. Through the creation of an Instagram page, we were able to inform the public of our research on things such as the Pink Tax as well as raise money for our organization. Throughout the semester we recorded a video reflecting on the research that we conducted and raised over 300 dollars that was donated to Helping Women Period.

Growth as a Leader in Year One

Overall, I feel as if I have grown significantly as a leader over the course of my first year in the program. I think that I grew the most in my attempt to be a team player, as I have never had to work with a group of strong leaders the way that I did in this program. Being able to establish leadership amongst a group of other prominent and successful individuals helped me find the strengths and weaknesses in my leadership tactics, and allowed me to grow as a leader as the semester progressed. I think that some of the most important leadership traits that have grown during this year were my confidence and my ability to facilitate and delegate work to others. I was intimidated coming into this program, but I was able to establish myself and find my footing as the semesters progressed, and eventually I obtained enough confidence to become a First-Year Teaching Assistant for the program in the Fall of 2021. I also developed in delegation and facilitation within my team, as I have always been the type of person to take things into my own hands. Having the ability to work with other people that share these commonalities made it a very prosperous environment for me to grow as a leader, and I was able to develop traits that I have been able to carry into other groups and into the real world in my job. I think that my time in the leadership program has been one of extreme personal growth, and I am excited to see where the next few years in the program take me.

Team Dynamics

The cohesiveness of our team throughout the two semesters was extremely impressive considering the virtuality of the year. The pandemic brought about many challenges because we could not all meet each other in person, but it did not take long for the group to come together and work effectively and efficiently to get work done and develop ideas for our project. I think one of the most prominent things that our group took too quickly and made easier for the semester was our communication skills. We developed solid relationships extremely quickly and this closeness that we had as friends and a team allowed us to work better together and hold each other accountable for many different things throughout the year. This tight knit relationship was not one that I was expecting at the beginning of the year because of not being able to have in-person interactions, but being able to develop this in the virtual setting was essential to the growth of our project. Another thing that our group did extremely well was delegate different tasks so that everyone was playing a different role that was directed at the same goal. I thought that this would be difficult because we are all very strong leaders, but this was not the case. Our ability to distribute the work load and trade off taking charge for certain tasks was essential to the life of our project and the outcome that we reach, and this bond that developed over the course of a year was one that ensured that the ship was always staying afloat and that jobs were always being completed on time. Overall, the relationships that developed with the members of the team made the project a large success even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and aside from the incredible work that was done with this team during our first year in the SPA Leadership Program, the friends that I made in this team are some that will remain for a very long time, and I am extremely grateful that the pandemic and the program brought us closer together.

Growth as a Leader in Year Two

I had an entirely different perspective of the Leadership Program from the first year to the second. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working in a group on research and the social action project last year, but being able to choose the topic that I could study changed the entire course of the year for me. I was very happy to be able to pick a topic that I am passionate about, and being able to study the special education system and the interworking of the curriculum was an incredible experience. The special education community is something that has been part of my life since I was little. My mom had always had me engaged in the community and the students within these programs at my school, and being able to carry the passion that I developed for it into my collegiate career is something that I could not be more grateful for. Although COVID-19 disrupted the plans for my social action project, I believe that the strides that I took to make a different in this community was something that was worth being proud of, and I was able to create a proposal for schools to use on their own time and with their own resources to incorporate a program like this into their own school. Being able to interview people that I used to work with in my high school and expand on the work that I devoted to my community in my hometown on a greater scale within the DMV was something that meant a lot to me, and I am happy with the work that I put into this year. In terms of the class itself, I was pleasantly surprised at the way that my class came together to try to bring the benefits of the Leadership Program into our classroom despite a year of virtual school. There was a mutual understanding of the family that is supposed to be established within the program and we banded together as a group to ensure that we were learning and growing together through our projects and the course material. It has not been an easy two years for anyone at the school, but being able to share the times in person with this class and learn about all of the amazing projects that were being worked on throughout the year gave me an extreme sense of pride to be part of the program. I am extremely happy, proud, and amazed at what was accomplished this year by myself and my classmates, and I am excited for what is to come in the future for the program.