“What does research mean to you?” To the co-founders of Wesleyan’s newest student organization, WesSir, research is aplatform for cultivating a community. Founded this summer by Shekinah Mba (’26), Ethan Chu (’26), Diana Tran (’26), LaurenEldarazi (’26), and Abigail Oduro (’27), WesSir hopes to increase students’ comfort withfinding research opportunities and contacting faculty members. In … Read more
Pictured: Sofia Rinaldi ’25 presenting at the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium (KNAC) symposium. I had the pleasure of interviewing Sofia Rinaldi for Wesleyan’s Inclusion in STEM Initiative. She speaks about her experiences in various STEM classes at Wesleyan, astronomy research, and Wesleyan’s Doula Project. Through all of her experiences, she shares what it is like … Read more
I feel like my main advice would just be to be a person and talk to your professors, because they’re also people, and they have also been through the struggles of being a student. Going to your professors and talking to them, and just being honest from a place of I’m struggling with this, or … Read more
“I want to be a leader and represent my specific community,” Baez said. “I want to take part in the movement to diverge [medicine] from Western ideologies, and set up an Indigenous way of running research.”
Usually when it comes to science and doing research, I will only bring the scientific aspect of myself, but at the conference, I was able to bring my whole self.
“I say to the student, ‘Explain to me what the barriers are for you? Where do you run into the challenges because of your disability?’ This is where we put in accommodations to ameliorate the barriers to access.”
I’m the first Mexican—not even Mexican, the first Spanish speaker—in the MB&B grad school. So I didn’t have anyone with a similar experience as me. SACNAS for me is really a place where I can talk with people.
“It is important, especially in academia, that we work to make sure that we bring as many perspectives as possible to address the world’s problems.”
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The manuscript developed by three undergraduate SACNAS chapter members has been published in the Journal Frontiers in Education.
