This week, after meeting with my mentor, Victor Villegas, I was able to expand my network and connections. When discussing with my mentor, we were able to find potential resources/ interviewees that could be useful to my project. Some of the connections come from OSU’s business department, which we thought would be really useful since my main focus is to teach budgeting to students. In addition, I am still contacting Mr. Buchko to figure out a potential meeting time, and he mentioned to take a look at CFPB’s website which talks about teaching financial literacy. I did some research on the side, and summarized the main key points of the website. I have also been continuing to connect and find new connections on LinkedIn.

This week during my URSA program, after meeting with my mentor, we discussed and helped to narrow down my research question to make it more specific. I originally wanted to do mini lessons on financial literacy, but since it is such a broad topic, we discussed and narrowed it down to budgeting. I continued to update my LinkedIn profile, got in contact with Jerry Buchko to set up a potential meeting time to talk about his work and my project, and I also researched another potential connection, Barbara O”Neill, who is the CEO and owner of Money Talk. She specializes in personal finance education, which I think she will be perfect for the research project I am doing.

This week through the URSA program, I was able to meet with my mentor and discuss edits I needed to make for my social outreach profiles. I worked on refining my LinkedIn profile by adding experiences, skills, and visuals, and created my first blog post! I also refined my blog #1 for edits that needed to be made and created connections with Jerry Buchko who works with financial literacy. Meeting up with him will help me learn more about the idea of financial literacy and how I can create a lesson plan to teach students. In the next coming week of URSA week #3, I hope to have a meeting with Mr. Muchko, and keep refining my LinkedIn profile.

Hi my name is Meigan Li, and I am currently studying Computer Science and Business at Oregon state University. My professional career goals are still a bit unclear, but I do have an interest in marketing, and I would like to do something that has both computer science and business. I applied to participate in this URSA program because I really liked the project that my mentor, Victor Villegas, had to offer. One of my projects that I wanted to continue from high-school is to be able to teach financial literacy to students which I am able to do that through my mentor’s project. I hope to accomplish this first week is to add my experiences to my LinkedIn profile and get familiar with WordPress.

Meet my Mentor, Victor Villegas!

Professor Villegas is my mentor for this URSA period! He is a Broadband & Digital Technologies Adoption Coordinator at Oregon State University, and his job is to create a stronger connection between the current digital divide. He is also bilingual! Villegas’s goal is to address the importance of technology implementation and training, STEAM education, and workforce, economic, and community development in Oregon. Villegas has had an impressive 4 plus decades with technology experience, allowing him to engage with communities, organizations, the local government and more!. He believes that inclusive education and problem solving can influence community development, and his mission is to make technology accessible for all.