Linh Hoang

During the Spring of 2017, I had the opportunity to join Dr. Jeffrey Brown's research team. I am part of the Ready to Learn project, where we work with the YWCA in Mankato to help and improve their current program called Ready to Learn.  As a team, we served as analytical support for the program. Prior to some changes we suggested, they suffered from an inconsistency of scores and lack of validity. While the study is ongoing, within the two years of me being on the project, there have been a fe w things that we accomplished. For one, we created a policy procedure manual for the program, which was not in place previously. Currently, we are working on streamlining their data of the different children's scores to a digital format so it to be easier to collect and report data in the future.

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 This experience allowed me to complete level 3 for Values and levels 1,2,3, and 4 for Teams in my Leadership competency.

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Working on a research team has taught me a lot about what is like to work on a team and how different leadership styles can function. For one, the dynamic between how our team functioned my first year compared to my second year is vastly different. During my first year, it consisted of two graduate students, Cassandra and Julie, and two undergraduate research assistants, including myself (Teams 1). As the semester had continued, the second undergraduate assistant was no longer able to be on the project, so I ended up being the only undergraduate assistant on the project. With two graduate assistants, I felt like I was support for Cassandra and Julie. While the two of them would be the ones contacting the YWCA, writing the policy procedure manual, or looking for the data we would need for our statistical analysis, I would be looking for scholarly articles which would support our project. There was more on the shoulders of the two graduate assistants, and I was mostly the support to make the project run more smoothly (Teams 2).  With Julie pregnant during the Spring 2017 term, it felt like Cassandra took up a bit more of the leadership role in this project. She was the one who had ended up doing a poster presentation that year for our project and had worked closely the YWCA (Teams 3).

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Then, with the shift of Cassandra leaving and Quincey Krien, another undergraduate research assistant joining us, I felt like the dynamic within the group had changed once again (Teams 1). Without Cassandra there, Julie stepped forward in her leadership. Many of the tasks Julie would have previously shared with Cassandra, she would now do (Teams 2). There was also more delegated to the research assistants this year as well. Quincey and I were the ones applying for a research grant and were also the ones to submit our project for the two conferences as well. We also met with the YWCA this semester alongside Julie to see what future steps we would be taking to continue to help improve the Ready to Learn program. She also stepped up in more of a mentorship role for both of us as well. Julie would be the one to ask us how we were doing in other areas of our lives and willing to provide advice to us whenever Quincy and I discussed our future endeavors. For example, during this time, Quincey was also applying to different graduate schools and would turn to Julie for advice. For me, I was discussing with Julie different career paths I was thinking about pursuing, and she was the one to give me advice on steps I could take or resources I could turn to. While Cassandra was much more task-oriented, Julie liked to build more interpersonal relationships with the research assistants (Values 3).

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Specifically, for Spring of 2018, since Quincy and I had decided to present at NCUR, it taught me a lot about teamwork as well. The dynamic between Quincy and I was more like teammates, with Julie and Dr. Brown being more of our mentors. When working on a team, I like hearing from the perspectives of my teammates, so regular meetings were something Quincy and I had frequently. Since creating the poster and presenting the poster is a big task, Quincy and I delegated tasks between each other. Each of us oversaw a specific number of articles for our literature review and split up sections of the poster we would work on to make sure the poster was done in time (Teams 2). Communication was something extremely important between the two of us, and if it was not for the regular meetings that we had alongside with frequent emails, the presentation would not have gone as smoothly as it did (Teams 3).

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This experience taught me a lot about what it was like to work on a team in different contexts. The leadership within this research team has changed with the years, and each one has exposed me to different leadership styles alongside how my role as a group member changed with it. When I continue through life, I will be working for many different teams with different dynamics, so the adaptability and awareness I gained from being on Dr. Brown's research team will be important skills to have (Teams 4).

 

Attached below is a link to the poster which I had presented with Quincey at both conferences. 

 

If you would like to read more about how I grew in research while being on Dr. Brown's Team, click HERE