{"id":9169,"date":"2024-02-23T11:40:03","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T19:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/?p=9169"},"modified":"2024-02-23T11:40:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T19:40:03","slug":"hc-student-renata-hemstreet-creates-community-in-honors-courses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/2024\/02\/23\/hc-student-renata-hemstreet-creates-community-in-honors-courses\/","title":{"rendered":"HC Student Renata Hemstreet Creates Community in Honors Courses\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Honors College believes that individual and collective achievement go hand in hand. So too does Renata Hemstreet, a second-year honors bioengineering student whose exemplary teamwork and initiative in group learning has garnered recognition from peers and professors alike. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking for a smaller community within OSU, \u201cespecially one focused on academic excellence,\u201d Renata joined the Honors College. \u201cI am an introvert,\u201d she says. \u201cConnecting with new people hasn\u2019t been my strongest trait in the past. I knew, going into OSU, that if I was going to find community it would be through the Honors College.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renata reports that living in West Hall<\/a>, one of the Honors College Living-Learning Communities<\/a>, helped her form new connections. However, she ultimately credits the honors vector calculus class she took as a first-year with providing the foundation for the network of friendships she has developed over her subsequent year and a half at OSU. \u201cThere were only twenty of us, so we were forced to interact,\u201d she jokes. \u201cThe first three friends I made freshman year came from that honors class.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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In addition to the small class size, the course, like other honors courses, was structured differently than regular sections of the same subject. \u201cThere was basically no lecture,\u201d Renata explains. Instead, \u201cclass time was focused on group work and collective problem solving.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within this collaborative academic environment, Renata developed lasting friendships and worked to support the learning and success of her peers. A number of Renata\u2019s friends and classmates estimate that their performance in vector calculus, as well as in subsequent classes taken alongside her, was greater than it would have otherwise been, crediting her guidance and encouragement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, Renata returned to vector calculus as an Undergraduate Learning Assistant, where she continues to support fellow students by \u201cguiding them through problems\u201d and facilitating the kind of synergistic problem-solving that she has found instrumental to educational success. \u201cI find teamwork and group learning to be important in most OSU courses – especially STEM subjects,\u201d she emphasizes. \u201cWorking with others encourages more ideas and problem-solving methods to be brought to the table, enabling us to tackle complex questions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Classmate Ella Dreke commends Renata for committing time to \u201ctutoring her peers and spreading her wealth of knowledge.\u201d Renata describes her engagement in collaborative learning less as a service to others and more as an opportunity to promote knowledge and understanding for every learner involved, including herself. \u201cWorking with other people is helpful!\u201d she says. \u201cIf I were to just work on my own all the time, I would get stuck on problems and have no way of figuring out how to move forward. When working with peers, everyone contributes a different understanding, which together allows us to conquer more.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renata has further found community in OSU student organizations, particularly the Society of Women Engineers<\/a> (SWE). Involvement in SWE has helped Renata build on connections that originated in the classroom. An additional advantage of SWE is the ability to walk into a new engineering class and see familiar faces. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to see the few women in my engineering classes and talk to them on a more personal level,\u201d she says. \u201cThe club provides a nice way of bringing everyone together and facilitating friendships.\u201d As a current SWE chair, Renata is shadowing the club\u2019s officers in hope of running for an officer position this spring. She looks forward to the opportunity to advance her involvement and give back to this supportive community.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Renata is also involved in on-campus research in Dr. Tyler Radniecki\u2019s environmental engineering lab, where she contributes to a project involving anaerobic digestion during the wastewater treatment process. \u201cAll the sludge that gets separated out from wastewater is put in large scale anaerobic digesters,\u201d Renata explains. \u201cIt produces biogas which can either be used to heat the treatment plant facility or be converted to electricity.\u201d The purpose of Radniecki\u2019s research is \u201cto see how best to maximize biogas production and the energy obtained from this process.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Renata moves toward her post-graduation goal of conducting research in the bioengineering field, she says her favorite part of her current research experience is \u201cseeing how the stuff I\u2019m learning in class applies to real world scenarios.\u201d Renata finds these connections motivating as she continues to tackle challenging coursework. \u201cIt makes it feel like what I\u2019m learning will be used in my future career, rather than just information being fed to me to memorize in class.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Renata embodies the second of the HC\u2019s five core values<\/a>, to work and grow together, she recognizes that forming connections, sharing ideas and asking for help all require a level of vulnerability. \u201cI understand feeling scared to ask questions in class,\u201d she says, encouraging students to take advantage of instructor office hours, where they can get help without speaking out publicly. \u201cIn terms of working with other students,\u201d Renata adds, \u201call it takes is to ask one question to the person sitting next to you, like, \u2018How did you do this problem?\u2019 I think the reality is most people would like others to work with, and initiating this kind of dialogue can create wonderful relationships.\u201d Renata describes community as a vital ingredient in her own success and encourages other students to seek supportive connections in the Honors College and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Ana Tracy, Honors College student writer<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Honors College believes that individual and collective achievement go hand in hand. So too does Renata Hemstreet, a second-year honors bioengineering student whose exemplary teamwork and initiative in group learning has garnered recognition from peers and professors alike.  Looking for a smaller community within OSU, \u201cespecially one focused on academic excellence,\u201d Renata joined the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14004,"featured_media":9172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1395124,1048851,1306],"tags":[1782,911],"class_list":["post-9169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hc-student-spotlights","category-homestories","category-student","tag-honors-college","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9173,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions\/9173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}