Program Reflection LEADERS EXPERIENCES HELEN SMITH Leadership IndustrialOrganizational

Program Reflection LEADERS EXPERIENCES HELEN SMITH

Leadership: Industrial/Organizational Psychology In this course, I learned what makes an effective leader and how to motivate those around you. As a graduate student, I will conduct my own research studies where I will need to lead undergraduate researchers in carrying out the study protocol effectively The Leader Membership Exchange Theory and theories of motivation can help guide me through this in the future. I may also serve as a teaching assistant, where I will need to instruct a course and motivate students to do well. I will need to communicate my point across effectively. My interview project exposed me to communication that I would not have otherwise been able to experience.

Difficulties At first, I was nervous to reach out to others and network with those around me in order to get an interviewee scheduled. Once an interview was scheduled, I was nervous about conducting an interview as I had never done this before. I was able to reach out to others using social media at first, and slowly gain more confidence before approaching people in person I found it helpful to practice asking interview questions to friends/family before actually conducting the interview to build up confidence. I was later able to use these interview skills in other areas, such as running lab meetings with other research assistants and using my communication skills to help my project partners effectively edit our poster.

Diversity: Cross Cultural Psychology This course showed me how little psychological research exists that studies cultures outside of North America. Even less studies exist that compare these cultures. As a graduate student, and future researcher in the field of psychology, I can use this information to create studies that investigate different cultures. When engaging in future educational settings, I will take into account these cultural differences and learn to take many psychological theories and concepts with a grain of salt due to this.

Difficulties I initially had trouble understanding that psychological concepts, that were initially taught to me as universal, do not apply to people of all cultures. I had to step out of my comfort zone a bit, and do research of my own to realize that many theories and concepts to not apply to all demographics. This caused me to challenge my preconceptions about other cultures and change my worldview quite a bit. I can apply my new found understanding to my academic field, as I will routinely interact with others from different cultures as me. I understand now that it is my responsibility to look into someone else's culture to understand them completely.

Entrepreneurship: Human Factors Psychology In this course, I learned the limits of the human ability, and how to create innovations on these limitations and strengths. My research project on comparing note taking by hand vs. on a laptop gave me first hand experience with designing and running a research study. This gave me necessary skills on research that I will need in future endeavors in both graduate school during my thesis and dissertation, and in the future working in a research oriented field.

Difficulties Running data analysis on this research project was difficult, and I had to do some research on excel to figure out exactly how to run that statistical tests I wanted to. In the future, I will try to collect ratio data instead of interval data whenever possible, as running statistical tests is much easier with ratio than interval data. Using online questionnaires is much easier than paper and pencil, as that way I wont have to manually input the data next time. Some questions on the survey were not worded very well, which causes some discrepancies in the data. In the future, I will be sure to make all survey questions clear when conducting research.

Research: Emotion Research and Psychophysiology Lab Research in this lab gave me much needed first hand experience with running participants through studies. I got experience in communicating with participants in a professional manner. This will be highly applicable to my work as a graduate student, as I will later design my own study and help undergraduates run participants through the study. I have hands on experience with where and why errors in data collection occur.

Difficulties At first, the protocol for the studies being run seemed extremely confusing. The protocols for studies ranged from 30 -50 pages in length. I was very hesitant to run participants through the studies initially, and opted out to let other research assistants take over. I studied the protocol at home and one day decided to run participants for myself. Once I got into the groove and got some practice, running participants became easy and I volunteered to run people through the studies more often than not. From this, I learned its sometimes better to just jump into a challenge in order to learn.

Service Learning: Environmental Science This course gave me the opportunity to identify a major problem in my community, and work with others to implement and carry out a solution. Global warming is an issue that impacts everyone on the planet, so education about this topic is important. This course taught me various strategies to help improve the environment for myself, and everyone else. Our service learning project of cleaning up litter in waterways can be applicable in my future career as I will be required to work with others on projects, such as research studies. In addition, much of the research I will do will be problems applicable to those in my community (e. g. mental health and addiction), and being able to plan and carry out solutions for these problems is imperative.

Difficulties The idea of picking up trash was not glamorous. But once we got started, it was difficult to stop. From this, I learned that you cant be afraid to be the on the ground doing the “grunt work”. Sometimes that is the work that is the most rewarding. It was difficult at first to round everyone up and get everyone on the same page; from getting everyone involved to getting people to stay in the same place. I found that making conversation with others involved, and making everyone feel included and important, made people want to participate and cooperate more.