Majors: Communication Studies and Journalism
Hometown: Severna Park, MD

What accomplishments and/or activities are you most proud of while at URI?From December 2018-December 2019, I served as the Editor-in-Chief of The Good Five Cent Cigar, our weekly student-run newspaper here on campus. As Editor-in-Chief, I was responsible for a group of about 50 writers, editors, photographers, and production managers. Each week, after the paper had been delivered around campus, I would watch students pick them up out of the rack and immediately feel a sense of joy, knowing that our team’s hard work was being recognized by the student body. In addition, being in charge of The Cigar helped me form some of the greatest friendships I have, because more than half of my friends are part of the paper, and all of my roommates are. It also helped me truly understand what responsible and ethical journalism is, because it was my job to make sure that the atmosphere and standards of The Cigar modeled those of the journalism department.

What research projects, internships, and/or study abroad programs did you participate in at URI? How did they enhance your education? 
Since my first-year on campus, I have been a part of our tour guide team. To me, being a tour guide is a pretty big responsibility because you are one of the first students visitors have the chance to interact with, and you are a powerful force in recruiting prospective students to URI.

This past summer, I interned at Public Citizen, a nonprofit think tank and advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Public Citizen was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971, and has more than a dozen policy groups that work to protect the interests of consumers. I was an intern in the communications office, and assisted the digital media strategist with social media content creation, wrote and proofread press releases and statements, attended hearings on Capitol Hill, assisted the communications staff with formally training policy experts on how to appear on TV, and much more. The full-time members of the communications staff treated us interns like we were full-time employees, trusted us with many of the same daily tasks they also complete, and were also open to many of the ideas we had. It was a wonderful experience being able to intern in the city.

This semester, I am interning with Dave Lavallee in the Office of Communications and External Relations. I am constantly working on stories and releases showcasing our students our students, and various programs and departments across the University so they can be posted to the website and sent out to various members of the media across the state. I also work with Shaun Holt, the social media coordinator, to highlight events going on across campus.

What do you value about your liberal arts education? 
What I value most about my liberal arts education is our ability to go beyond the classroom and out into the world. Every semester, I have had a class that takes me beyond our Kingston campus and out into the real world. Last spring, I took a documentary filmmaking class with Kendall Moore, and we had an entire semester to put together as much of a full-length documentary as possible. Three other students and I decided to work on a documentary about the Autism spectrum, and over the course of the semester we interviewed countless subjects- some of them had Autism themselves, and others were family members. Each story was a touching as the next, and we really got an inside look into how difficult the world can be for these families, and just how much they have to deal with. Some of them even invited us into their homes and we got a chance to experience their daily lives. At the end of the semester we had not finished the documentary, but it was a truly eye-opening experience- not just because I was able to experience someone else’s life, but because I saw just how much work goes into a full-length documentary.