My name is Jiseon Alice Im. I grew up in Portland, Oregon and, much like the stereotype, I am an avid hiker and coffee drinker. I recently graduated from Brown University in May with a degree in Science, Technology, and Society and a certificate in engaged scholarship. In addition to my concentration, my time at Brown has also been greatly influenced by my 4 year engagement in the Bonner Fellowship which focuses on community engagement and leadership in social justice issues. Through it, I was heavily involved in community engaged research in the greater Providence area on issues of educational inequities.
I applied to the mini grant because of my passions surrounding the inequities within and throughout the STEM field. From my first hand experience being a first gen student going through the pre-medical classes and by exploring this topic through some classes at Brown, it became 
quite apparent to me how the inequities in STEM education directly affected the inequities in STEM we were seeing at large. A group of three students and I developed a project to help support increasing diversity within Brown’s STEM ecosystem. After much research we learned that the surrounding environment of a classroom directly correlates with the feeling of belonging. Noting this, we decided to have students create art pieces that reflected the diverse individuals pursuing STEM at Brown to create a more welcoming space for POC and historically marginalized students.
This process was one that brought many challenges and learning curves. While the team worked tremendously hard on this project, we quickly realized there were so many loopholes and administrative rules to jump through in order to change the physical space of buildings. We learned an important lesson about the difficulty of bridging the planning and execution of plans in a large institution like a university. Unfortunately, being unsuccessful in this project, I have been in contact with Will to discuss an alternative project to carry out in the next year. This new project will be carried out by partnering with a local Providence nonprofit that focuses on improving college education accessibility. With them, we hope to curate and fund a university tour for the students of PVD Promise with a specific focus on STEM exposure.
Overall, I’ve learned immensely from this unique opportunity to plan and carry out a whole project by myself. This early exposure to challenges that occur during project implementation will most definitely be beneficial for any future endeavors. Thank you so much The Allstate Foundation for creating an opportunity to learn and fail without being scared to try again.