** Prompt: A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you. **
I began working on the Community College of Denver’s (CCD) balloon satellite project in the Fall of 2011. It was the first time that a student team from CCD would participate in one of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium’s (COSGC) main events: launching experiments on a high-altitude balloon satellite. Each participating school was given a budget of money and mass to build payloads that would be carried up to 100,000 feet into the atmosphere by a helium-latex balloon. Our first attempt was rushed, but we learned what to focus on in future experiments. Our next payload in the Spring of 2012 was a success; we collected viable scientific data, all of which would be useful in the next semester’s payload. After my experience working as the electrical engineer in the Spring, I decided to take on a greater leadership role for the 2012-13 school year, becoming the student leader of the project. With this position, I was invited to present at the annual meeting of the Consortium.
My presentation to the directors of the COSGC included a discussion of what set my team apart from every other team in the state: the diversity of its members. Every other college had a selective application process for its team, and the teams ranged from two to four members in size. My team was and remains open to any student of any discipline to join, and is currently nine members strong. Backgrounds varied greatly, but collaboration made us all stronger. An experienced chemistry lab technician and an aspiring biologist worked together to design and implement an experiment involving zebrafish embryos and gamma radiation. The container was designed by engineering majors, who later informed me that this task was the best practical work experience they had ever had. Much of the detailed construction work for the experiment container was done by the team’s botanist, who surprised us all with his fine motor skills. He was able to teach me quite a few lessons in building custom containers, while I was able to teach him the basics of electronics. This kind of collaboration is only possible when you create and foster a diverse community of people, all working together toward a common goal.
It was this strong team that was able to successfully create the most experiment-rich payload ever seen by the COSGC. By combining the strengths of everyone on the team, we made a payload as diverse as the group itself. With computer systems designed and built by me, a structure designed and built by our mechanical engineers, and a biological experiment designed by two chemists, two biologists, and a botanist, our payload was a model for interdisciplinary science. As the team’s student leader, I quickly learned about the importance of planning, and of delegating work to other team members. I now understand that, while scientific prowess is important, leadership skills will be just as crucial in my future endeavors.