11 Skills and Attributes: Communication Skills
Leadership Objective: Work with distant colleagues on project
Activity: Rivers of the World Foundation Environmental Research Workshops (2007, 2010)
Evidence: News Articles on Workshops in Highly-Circulated Indian Media
Winter break was typically a time for rest and relaxation, but the winter of my third year was rather eventful as an opportunity to visit India struck. The trip opened the doors not just to visiting my relatives but also to interacting with motivated youth needing guidance on running environmental organizations. Subijoy Dutta, my father, arranged several meetings and school workshops with the help of his partners in the Indian cities of Hyderabad—a cosmopolitan city at the crossroads of India, Panipat—site of an ancient holy war, and Agra—the famed city with the Taj Mahal. The goals of the trip were to instill inspiration and hope in the younger generation of students and provide advice to administrators and directors of various institutions to expedite the process of river watershed remediation. Detailed plans and results for the trip are on the Rivers of the World Foundation website.
A number of unforeseen circumstances arose yet our Rivers of the World team still could successfully get the message across because our partners set up alternative appointments. At Hyderabad, the student workshop I had prepared for the Sree Nidhi Institute of Science and Technology (SNIST) was replaced with a thorough presentation to two of their respected administrators due to unrelated university protests at the time. In Agra, the cold wave hitting the city led to school closures, though our local partner in Agra set up an indoor workshop with ninth grade students of the renowned St. Peter's College in lieu of the planned outdoor workshop. Consequently, a fair deal of impromptu speaking skills were practiced throughout the trip.
The workshop experiences were quite satisfying as I built my skill to reflect on a variety of past experiences and vindicate the need for schools to mobilize students to be river and community stewards. The experiences I drew on were: (1) my high school land use v. water quality research with the Smithsonian Institution, conducted in my local South River and Rhode River watersheds, (2) my variety of focus as an engineering student at Illinois, and (3) my involvement in Engineers without Borders while being a student.
A key difference I realized is that in the US there is sufficient resource allocation for maintaining clean ecosystems through the government without too many trickle-down losses, but in India all such funding gets lost through corruption and thus the most feasible means of ecological restoration is a decentralized approach through smaller institutions. To address this in my presentation I did some research and spoke with my team members so I could provide the most germane advice to my audience. We achieved our goal even better because my audience admired the fact that I was a young student who could maintain an interest in the environment. In the end the professors and students gave their ovations and seemed quite inspired to be better river stewards while maintaining a solid career.
Additionally, the national newspapers also covered our activities in Agra.
Activity: State Farm Insurance Systems Research Intern (2009)
Evidence: Comment from Final Performance Review
My research lead for my main project at State Farm Research Center was in the city of Bloomington, Illinois, while I worked in Champaign, Illinois, and thus a communication standard had to be established. We established the standard of meeting weekly by using an internal messaging system or by teleconferencing. In addition to that, my research lead came every two to three weeks when a more complete discussion was necessary.
Fortunately these plans were in fact followed, and the end result was that my research and prototype products were quite in line with what State Farm needed and could use most resourcefully. While my research lead was on vacation, I faced some minor software procurement issues which I worked through by developing my prototype concept with easily procured PHP software. My research lead provided positive feedback about my communication skills. More details about my experience are on my Team Activities page.