Overview
First-year Interest Group (FIG) is a program under the First Year Programs (FYP) at UW, a cluster of classes that small groups of first-year students take together in the first quarter. First-year Interest Group leaders is a group of experienced student leaders, who teach a one-quarter course to help ease their transition to UW, advance their study strategies, and cultivate a sense of inclusive community. As a Transfer FIG leader, I am a special type of FIG leaders who serves incoming transfer students. I aim to foster my students’ undergraduate experience and enlarge my capacity of being a leader, to lead from within.
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I enjoy teaching the weekly courses, interacting with my students, communicating with different departments in UW, and sharing and reflecting on my own experience. I have learned various skills: organizational skills, caring and compassion, decision-making, problem-solving, and have a different perspective as a peer instructor.
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Attached pdf file in the later part of this page is my final course plan for my FIG class.
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Personal Importance of Task or Work
I wanted to be a T-FIG leader since I suffered the transfer shock myself during the Fall of 2016. Lack of work experience, I decided to start from volunteering with the First Year Program, to be a panelist at information sessions, where I shared my own experience of rebuilding social connections and adopting new academic strategies. I was concerned about the development of transfer students, as one of them, I knew that it would take more time and effort for us to get involved in this big family. So I encouraged my students, as well as myself, to step out from our comfort zone, dare to meet new people from campus involvement events and classes, and eventually build our own community. I care about my fellow transfer students, and I would like them to feel welcomed here. That is why I am advocating the awareness for them. Transfers need to speed up their four-year university experience within two years, and they deserve more guidance, academically and socially, to overcome transfer shock.
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Tasks Accomplished
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Completed thirteen course plans during spring quarter and finished their revision during summer quarter.
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Taught eleven lectures with diverse topics, including registration, campus resources, campus involvements, scholarship and financial aid, research opportunities, mentorship program, time management skills, mental health, diversity.
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Be friends with my students, completed a thirty minutes one-to-one conversations with each one of them. Learned to lead with compassion and passion.
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Connected with several departments at UW and expanded my connections.
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Attended weekly FIG leaders seminar and frequently reported my teaching progress.
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Managed my course email list by sending daily updates on campus events to my students in time.
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Create my first canvas course page and set my deadlines and policy for assignments.
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Lessons learned
Future Oriented Statement
What I gain from this experience can be summarized into another “FIG”: Friends, Initiative, and Gratitude. Most of my FIG students are now friends that I would have lunch with. I take the initiative to make changes, dare to question the authority, and address my suggestions. I really appreciate this unique experience for what I have learnt, and I am more committed to creating an inclusive community for transfer students, and continue advocate awareness for transfers.
This FIG experience has influenced on many other aspects of my life. It enhances my public speaking skills and project management techniques, which will contribute to my soft-skill preparation of my future career, as a financial analyst. It has also deepened my understanding and definition of leadership competencies. I envision that I will apply my leadership competencies into my transfer associate on-campus job, serving a larger population of commuters and transfer students. I will adopt what I have learnt from my T-FIG leader experience, and perfect my service for transfer students engagement programming.
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Leadership Competencies Gained
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Mentoring
Essentially, I think that being a T-FIG leader is a peer mentorship. I use my own experience to teach and share what I know to my students. From my view, leadership is the spirit of making a world of good, to take the initiative to make impacts for my students, so that they can reach their potential in UW. I also believe that mentoring is a two-way street, as sometimes my students give me more ideas of how to find scholarship resources.
Decision making
There are plenty of decision-making moment for being a T-FIG leader, especially when it comes to grading. Even though I was friends with my students, if they failed to submit their assignment online by the due day, I need to be fair to everyone else in the class and deduct their points accordingly. There is no extra mercy with respect to late work. This teaching experience has sharpened my definition of decision making, being balanced and transparent, appropriate to specific situations.
Reflection and Application
I reflected frequently in the fall quarter. I talked to a few students after class to hear about their thoughts on how to improve the FIG courses structure, which can benefit future transfers. One of my student talked about changing the curriculum of a class project, which originally required students to explore a certain topic in a neighborhood of Seattle, like International District. Topics can be public art, transportation, business, and more. But this project was not so helpful for transfer students as most of them have been here in Seattle for at least two years and they did not need to explore Seattle again. It will be more beneficial if they can develop their professionalism by doing this project, such as visiting the Microsoft campus for a company tour, or practicing going to a career fair. I have passed this valuable suggestion to the First Year Program.
Inclusion
I cultivated a welcoming environment for my students, advocated open discussion, respect and care for each other, such that they can start developing a sense of community here at UW. I am still in touch with a fews students now when working at the Commuter and Transfer Commons (CTC), as a transfer associate. We catch up and check in with each other, to see how we are doing in this quarter. It is very nice to see some of the familiar faces on the my shift. They take my suggestions in FIG class seriously since I have been telling them: “CTC is the home away from home for transfers.”
Facilitation
I was the group facilitator during my FIG class, initiated conversations for my students. I greeted them with open-ended questions, such as “how is everyone doing today?”, or “What do you guys think about your first midterm?” Besides, I randomized the people in a certain group and encouraged them to talk to people that they did not know before. Because in general, people tend to sit at the same spot for the whole quarter in a class, but it is not easy to mobilize my students to different seats until they were assigned to another team.
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