My experiences abroad shaped me into the global learner I am today. Now that I am back, I have now become a global advocate. I have the most power as a global advocate with being a resident mentor at the International House at Maxcy College. The house is a living-learning community which gives students the opportunity to broaden their global perspectives.

As a resident mentor at Maxcy, I work collaboratively with faculty and staff to create a positive living environment that brings over 150 international and domestic students together in the residence hall. In this community I establish an inclusive living space for residents to learn about different cultures and to promote cross-cultural communication skills and awareness. I also develop and implement programs to expose residents to new cultural experiences while sometimes collaborating with International Student Services and the Study Abroad Office.

I lived in the residence hall my freshman year and was opened up to different cultures and learned so much from students around the world. My global learning was sparked by living in Maxcy freshman year. That year was spent learning about different cultures and exploring different international themes and concepts. This was the first time I was really exposed to so many different cultures and I learned so much from that experience. Having this amazing experience is why I decided to become a resident mentor so that I could increase mine but also other student’s global competencies.

Now as a global advocate I seek ways to educate students about other cultures through my daily interactions but especially through the events at Maxcy. By being a living-learning community, I take advantage of that to educate students through experiences because that’s one of the best ways to learn – especially when it comes to expanding global perspectives. I educate but also serve as a resource for domestic and international students.

With international students, I seek to share the culture of the United States with them and help them with their transition while expanding into greater dialogues of differences and commonalities between the U.S. and their home countries. With the domestic students I encourage and promote ways for them to start thinking globally and point them to resources like the Study Abroad Office to take the step of not just learning about the world, but experiencing it.

Now as a senior and my third year as an RM, what I am currently focused on is with improving the living-learning aspect of the community. One thing that’s helping me achieve this is my Public Relations Campaigns class (JOUR 531). This class applies public relations principles and theories to develop skills in research, planning, execution and evaluation for a public relations campaign. I’ve chosen Maxcy as my client and with this campaign I am able to strive towards my goal of improving the living-learning component of the building while aligning my execution with the mission and vision of the House. I’ve used theories like Grunig and Hunt’s model for public information to guide my efforts when it comes to combining one-way and two-way communication tactics in the campaign.

With this class I encompass my public relations skills with my leadership and global learning initiatives into one project. To work on my global advocacy, this class teaches ways to articulate the principles and theories of basic communications so that I can incorporate it to understanding Maxcy’s strategic communications efforts. To be an advocate for anything, communication is essential and this class expands and demonstrates the ways that I can bring this into fruition. One of the most important components of the class that is helping me through my  advocacy work is integrating strategy and theory into a communications program to target appropriate audiences.