Looking back at my time at the University of Oregon, I am amazed to see how much personal, professional, and academic growth I can observe in myself and how much I owe it to those around me. Perhaps no experience better captures this moment of reflection than my time at the Holden Center, which has been an incredibly powerful and transformative experience – as well as a weird one, how this spring term has been held remotely due to COVID-19.
I joined the Holden Center for Leadership and Community Engagement as a Program Assistant coordinating Leadership Workshops this past September – and to be honest, I didn’t know much about what the Holden Center did! Really quickly, however, I not only began to learn about the amazing work being done at the Holden Center, from Days of Service to Leadership Lounges and more, but I also found an incredible community of co-workers and supervisors.
Never before have I been surrounded by such a kind, supportive, caring, and passionate group of people in a work environment and I am truly amazed in looking back at all the work we were able to accomplish within the Leadership Workshop team and between all of our various programs. Perhaps most notably, we designed, planned, and hosted the 2020 Leadership Summit, which featured more than 15 workshops from two dozen student, staff, and faculty experts – with over 100 attendees!
Moreover, one project I’m particularly proud of was crafting a workshop that seeks to educate people on tenets of environmental justice through hands-on experience. Rather than starting from scratch, I reached out to other knowledgeable people both on campus and in the Eugene/Springfield community and found two fantastic partners in Pablo Alvarez from the NAACP/Beyond Toxics and Zaida Melosa from UO’s Student Sustainability Center. Pablo had already worked to create a workshop for a conference the previous year and Zaida brought a deep passion and base of knowledge to the project. Together, we pulled together a challenging but motivating workshop that will hopefully be able to launch in the fall!
In closing, I am incredibly grateful for the experiences I have had throughout my time at the University of Oregon and especially in the past year at the Holden Center. Working as a team, we were able to accomplish so many tasks that I’m proud of – and I think we can learn a lot of lessons about this work in confronting COVID-19. The best way to tackle problems on such a level is by building and sustaining our communities, supporting one another as we navigate the challenges of this new and weird world.
