Alumni

Who is the one mentor that impacted you the most? and how so?

The one mentor that impacted me the most, while I was at Lake Forest college was my advisor, Dr. Don Evans. He was a strong presence in my academic life. I arrived at Lake Forest College and decided I didn't have a major. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. I just knew it was time to go to college, but didn't know what exactly to do. I would say I was utterly lost. Luckily, I ended up in his African-American philosophy class, not even being quite sure what philosophy was yet, and I started going to his office hours just for assignment help. It went from meeting to help me improve in the course, learn more about philosophy, and how to develop my own philosophical voice to becoming his peer teacher. He became invested in my entire collegiate trajectory as well as who I was as a person in the world. I really, really appreciated his ongoing commitment to my journey, not just to graduate school, but to my future beyond that. He was the first one who I sent an all-caps email to saying I got into Penn State. I still give him updates when I'm up to something cool that I think he would be interested to hear, which he's always interested to hear everything. It’s been truly an invaluable relationship, and I'll always say that's one of the best things Lake Forest gave me was an ability to really get to know my professors and feel like my professors were legitimately interested in me and what I wanted to do, who I was, and helping me realize what I was capable of. Though Dr. Evans was my number one go to, there was actually so many more professors and faculty who also really helped me.

What skills did you work on while at Lake Forest that have helped you be successful today?

The skills I worked on at Lake Forest largely come from my time as a peer teacher as well as my experiences in the classroom. As a graduate student, my experience as a peer teacher was pretty invaluable. It actually gave me kind of a test run of the work I was going to be doing my first and second year as a teaching assistant. Being a peer teacher means that I was in a course, but I wasn't a student, and I wasn't the instructor necessarily. I was just a peer in the course there to help other students. I had taken the class before and was there again to help new students to help them work on the material, hold office hours where students could come to me to either go over difficult material that they were having trouble understanding or with difficult ideas as well as help on their assignments. I would help them with their paper drafts and give them some guidance there. I was also required to teach one class the whole semester. It was really exciting because it was my first experience really prepping to give a lecture for a course. Being in the classroom was really helpful for cultivating skills for graduate school because it helped me cultivate my own voice as a scholar.

What was one of your most meaningful experiences at LFC? and why?

My most meaningful experience at Lake Forest College was having the opportunity to direct a play based on the experiences of black students at Lake Forest College, which is a predominantly white institution. I actually got to interview a lot of my peers, anonymized those interviews, and then I gave it to one of my peers who wrote plays, Annice McGee, and he actually wrote a play based on those interviews, and I proceeded to direct that play. It was titled “Life on My Hands” and that was an extremely memorable and powerful experience, just because though it critiqued a lot of the issues that black students were facing at Lake Forest College, it was actually really well received by the community. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni really appreciated me for doing the play and then opening a space after each show for dialogue and conversation on what black students were facing and what could be done. They wanted to know how the community could kind of hold themselves accountable for issues that essentially alienate the black students on campus, who also want to be there pursuing their undergraduate degree as well. It was painful and yet powerful and extremely moving.

What experiences at Lake Forest have you had that you think have been invaluable to your career?

The experiences at Lake Forest that were invaluable to my career were my experiences as a peer teacher and my experience with the Graduate School Exploration Fellowship program. My experience as a peer teacher confirmed that I did, in fact, want to teach at the college level.

My experience with the Graduate School Exploration Fellowship program helped reinforce my mentor relationship that I had with my advisor. The program set up regular meetings in which we would discuss different aspects of the graduate application as well as life as a graduate student. We even discussed what it is to be a professor and have a career in academia. It also gave me a research opportunity. In addition to having that Lake Forest advisor, they also set me up with a research position at a Research 1 institution for a summer. Additionally, they provided lots of resources from workshops to summits in Chicago, where they brought in other scholars to talk students who were considering going to graduate school to help us solidify our application and be realistic about what it means to be a person of color in academia. They discussed what troubles we might face, but also provided affirmation that we belong in academia as well, and we can do some great things when given the opportunity.

What college courses have helped you out the most during your career? Why?

The college courses that have helped me the most during my career are actually the cross listed courses, so courses that were situated in multiple departments, specifically philosophy and African-American studies. Those courses not only helped me confirm that I did indeed want to be a double major in both departments, but they also helped inform the interdisciplinary scholarship that I currently do today. Being a philosophy and African-American studies double major actually directly translated to what graduate schools I was interested in. I am a dual title doctoral student in both the philosophy and African-American and Diaspora Studies Department at Penn State. The courses in particular that helped me were African-American Philosophy, as well as Spike Lee in the Black Esthetic, both of which were taught by Dr. Don Evans, who was also my advisor. Another course that actually had a big impact was The History of Hip-Hop, which was taught by Dr. Courtney Joseph, and it actually inspired me to volunteer to teach some of the hip-hop courses here at Penn State. I now teach a Critical Approaches to Hip-Hop course, and I will be teaching History of Hip-Hop in the summer. There was real direct one-to-one, in which that class not only provided me with the foundations, but encouraged me to research them a bit further and even teach students the exact same subject.