During my time at Longwood, I had many opportunities to perform competently in a professional setting. The first time I was allowed to do this was when I was a sophomore. I was able to complete an internship in Memphis at Smith and Nephew Global Products. During this internship, I was tasked to assist in the Manager of Occupational Health with the creation of the annual sustainability report, as well as create informational ads about workplace health and safety. This internship was key to my professional development and allowed me to gain experience that I have used in following professional settings.

The second time that I was allowed to perform competently in a professional setting was during my junior year, when my Developmental Biology class each split up into lab groups and conducted experiments based on different units that we were studying. My group chose to conduct an experiment on the regeneration patterns of brown flatworms based on the injuries they received. After deciding on our methods and hypothesis and conducting the experiment, we constructed a poster presentation to communicate these results with the rest of the class. The class held a poster session in order for each student to be able to present their research while observing their peers’ research. The link to this poster is below.

The third time that I was allowed to perform competently in a professional setting was during my senior year, when my lab group in my Evolution class was allowed to create an experiment that investigated individual zoos and their inclusion of evolution into their curriculum/exhibits/tours. We looked at whether geography and political demographic played a role in a zoo’s communication about evolution. Our group was able to present this research at the Fall Student Research Day as well as a class-wide poster session. Because of my experiences acting and speaking professionally in the above two examples, I think I performed very well in these activities. I was able to speak clearly, thoroughly, and knowledgeably about the subject at hand. The link to this poster is listed below.

Flatworm Poster

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nfyKSJK3ZHuqCwkKNeZiuyDgEz_wPMCM/view?usp=sharing

Evolution Poster

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Md_hG7X3JGHfz3i22Ub4eQPeANZSstmo/view?usp=sharing