Graduation with Leadership Distinction in Research
About Me
Hello, and welcome to my E-Portfolio! This E-Portfolio was made with the intention of providing visual evidence of the first portion of my undergraduate experience at the University of South Carolina within the Graduation with Leadership Distinction in Research program at the Associates level. This website is divided into three sections providing specific information: About Me, Key Insights, and Leadership. The About Me section below will give you a synopsis of who I am, what led me to where I am now, and where I plan to go in the future. Within the Key Insights section, I provide three specific aspects of my college and research experience which I found to have transformed my methods and thinking the greatest. Additionally, in each Key Insight you will find at least two Artifacts which give tangible evidence of how I was able to employ each Key Insight in performing tasks in the traditional classroom setting as well as in alternate environments such as conferences, tutoring, mentoring, and within the community. Finally, my Leadership section provides information on the ways in which I plan to utilize what I have learned during my time at USC in future ventures and achieving my ultimate career goal. By blending my personal experience with classroom and research endeavors, I hope you will be able to gain an understanding of the valuable ways in which participating in this program helped me develop as a student, future professional, mentor and researcher.
My name is Kelsey Granger. When I first completed the GLD program, I was a 19 year old currently residing in Union, South Carolina. I am from Baltimore, Maryland, but currently attend the University of South Carolina Union, where I graduated with an Associate of Science degree in May 2016, as well as my Associate of Arts degree in July 2016. Currently, I am enrolled in Palmetto College in the Bachelor of Liberal Studies program, with majors in Biology and Health Promotion and a cognate in Psychology.
Growing up in a culturally diverse area in close proximity to several other metropolitan areas like Washington DC and Philadelphia with their own unique subcultures, I was exposed to many faces of cultural individuality: music, religion, art and food to name a few. I frequented festivals such as Artscape and SoWeBo Festival, which celebrated the varying cultural enclaves throughout the neighborhoods of Baltimore. This inclination toward diversity would later greatly influence my interests in the academic world.
Around the same time that I began exploring my surrounding area, I was simultaneously discovering my love for science, particularly anatomy. In my early adolescent years I spent many hours attempting to draw anatomical diagrams from my pocket-sized Grey's Anatomy and planned to become a medical examiner. Although my interests did not ultimately lead to medical school (yet), in high school I became a Certified Nursing Assistant and Geriatric Nursing Assistant, which allowed for my beginning explorations in the medical field. Upon graduating high school in 2014, I moved to Union, South Carolina to live with my mother who had moved back to her hometown in 2010. I enrolled at the University of South Carolina Union and quickly immersed myself in courses pertaining to biology, psychology and sociology. I also excelled in English, religion and philosophy. I did not initially plan to obtain a degree from USC Union but I quickly grew to love the campus and it's faculty. Upon finishing one of my first courses, Psychology 101, my professor Dr. Randy Lowell approached me and asked if I was interested in working on research with him or completing my own. This lead to assisting in the research process of three separate studies through USC Union's Perception, Attention, Language and Memory (PALM) Lab, and pursuing my Graduation with Leadership Distinction in Research.
My experience in gaining my Graduation with Leadership Distinction in Research has been challenging and exciting. Spending three semesters in the PALM Lab allowed me to harness skills that were previously unknown to me and I was able to thrive in an environment where my input was valued and desired. While harnessing those skills, I was able to explore several topics, including implicit bias, religion, and the psychology behind language. Each topic was uniquely interesting and gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in a variety of tasks spanning data entry, experiment execution, applying theory and professional writing. I learned to work cohesively with others in the academic world while producing a completed project. Importantly, I was able to enjoy the work that I was doing while intellectually developing skills and growing as a person and student. Alongside Dr. Randy Lowell and Dr. Majdouline Aziz , I co-authored a literature review titled Muslim Religious Identity Research: Future Directions in the Field while residing in the PALM Lab. This research will be presented at the Southern Sociological Society's Annual Meeting in Atlanta on April 15th, 2016, and at USC's Discovery Day 2016 on April 22.
While being raised in an urban area did provide me with a multifarious environment and unique experience, I was not sheltered from seeing the struggles of those around me. In addition to Domino Sugar, National Bohemian Beer and blue crabs, Baltimore is also home to alarming rates of drug overdose, sexually transmitted disease contraction, incarceration, homelessness, poor living standards and a history of racially-charged tension. I found that while I value the individuality of each culture around me, many ethnic and racial groups are not recieving equal treatment in the realms of health and living.
Having first-hand exposure to these issues combined with a propensity for a variety of academic disciplines, I ultimately chose to pursue a career in public health, specializing in reproductive health and epidemiology. In this discipline I am able to fuse my interests in sociology and psychology with my love for biological sciences, all while working to improve the life of those around me . While I am graduating with both my Associate of Science this May and my Associate of Arts in August, I do not plan to end my education anytime soon. I intend to continue my education by pursuing a Bachelor of Health Promotion. Following the completion of my Bachelor's degree, I hope to finish my college experience after completing a Master of Health Sciences, becoming a Physician Assistant. My ultimate goal is to be able to work in the fields of epidemiology and medicine at both the clinical, academic and research levels.