Leadership Roles

I mentored an undergraduate student from Harvard as he designed and built a website that is a data portal for a proteomics dataset the Haigis Lab had generated. As the student was majoring in Computer Science, I spent a lot of time teaching him about the what the data represented, focussing on what this meant for how it should be presented and described on the website. Also, I assisted him in preparing for meetings with PIs, an intimidating event for a young student.

I TA’ed for the course Computing Skills for Biomedical Sciences where I taught graduate students how to use the R programming language to analyze data. This included the essentials of data preparation, augmentation, and visualization. My reposonsibilities were to assist with instruction during class, hold weekly office hours, help several students who requested additional help with one-on-one meetings, and create and grade weekly problem sets.

I was a general tutor for a high school student from his freshman through junior year. In any one night, we would range from history to physics to computer science. Mainly, I ensured that he understood the material and helped him grasp topics he found difficult. While I have a good handle on most of the information we would cover, sometimes his course material stretched well beyond my comfort level (for example, his Mandarin course). When faced with these challenges, I probed his understanding by asking questions and having him teach me the material.

I helped three UCI Barry Goldwater Scholarship applicants prepare their applications. Though the applicants had research experience and strong academic standing, they are inexperienced in drauing national scholarship applications. As I have won the Goldwater Scholarship and applied for the Churchill Scholarship and Fulbright Fellowship, my goal was to guide these students through the process and assist them in crauing a strong application.

I instructed LARC tutors in improving their tutorials and teaching methods. In addiXon, I spent a lot of Xme interacXng with the tutors to make sure they were managing their course load and job in an efficient and healthy manner. I had an administraXve role, as well. In parXcular, I orchestrated the scheduling and creaXon of LARC tutorials and handled day-to-day problems that inevitably arose.

My first year, I co-managed a Majors division (11 - 12 year olds) baseball team in the Irvine Ranch Little League and co-managed the 11 year-old’s All Star Team over the summer. My second season, I managed my own team in the AA division (8-10 year olds). I fulfilled several administrative roles including aIending league meetings, organizing parent volunteers, and scheduling practices and games. My goal as a manager of these young boys was to emulate maturity, determination, and level-headedness, especially when under pressure.

I assisted four incoming freshmen in acclimating to UC Irvine. I supported them by alerting them to useful resources, answering questions they have about classes, and helping them work through a stressful period in their academic career.

I led group tutoring sessions for undergraduate students as part of the Learning and Academic Resource Center (LARC) at UCI. I have tutored an Introductory Biology course, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Calculus.