During my graduate school career at Loyola University Chicago (LUC), I have had multiple opportunities to serve as a student leader. I first joined the Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC), a recognized graduate student government body, as the Department of Sociology's representative in Spring 2018. I was later voted as the vice president for Spring 2020 and president for the 2020-21 academic year. During my time as a council member, I have regularly attended monthly meetings with fellow council members and selected administrative staff. Through these meetings, we succeeded in advocating for issues surrounding stipends, transportation, insurance benefits, student representations, etc. As the vice president, I chaired the advocacy committee, a position that I retained as I transitioned to my next role on GSAC. As the president of GSAC, I assumed more responsibilities by attending regular meetings with the Graduate Dean and the Assistant Dean. I was invited to attend orientations, meetings, and panels as a student representative, including the COVID-19 emergency response team. In addition, we have invited the then-director of the Anti-racism Initiative to present at one of our regular meetings and to answer questions and concerns that we have collected from graduate students. Also, we were tasked to evaluate LUC and peer universities' grievance process and webpage design. Our findings were well-received during our report. Lastly, we were able to help encourage the administration to address the lack of representation of international graduate students and made preparation work for an International Graduate Student Association. 

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Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) is a graduate student collective that strives to promote equity and foster community among graduate students across all intersecting identities. I first joined as an assistant co-chair in Spring 2020, and I continued my service to this graduate student collective as a co-chair in the next academic year. Through EDGE, we were able to connect with different student organizations and collectives to press for responses to the racism displayed in the US and on campus. We were given the LUC Excellence Award in 2020, to recognize our "commitment to providing a student organization involving engagement, leadership, and social justice." Apart from regular meetings, workshops, and mini-conference/roundtable, we were able to participate in the Annual Graduate School Interdisciplinary Research Symposium and award students with diversity-related research. I was one of the judges for the 2020 research symposium. I was part of the team that created and maintained our WIX website to increase our online presence. We have also created a graduate student manual that helps incoming and returning graduate students with different statuses, on different topics.

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Part of my duties as a member of the COVID-19 emergency response team is to monitor our communication platform - Graduate, Professional, and Adult Student Team (GPAST). This team consists of several representatives from staff, faculties, and graduate students, and we are responsible for maintaining the platform where we can answer (or provide direction to the answer) students' questions and concerns, form a sense of community, and provide overall assistance. 

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I was also a two-term member of the departmental Graduate Student Association, where I helped organize events like a workshop on finding funding and scholarships. We also partnered with the undergraduate Sociology Club on a fundraising event, an organization which I later became the advisor of. Within the Sociology department, I have also co-organized a graduate student-led group, Sociologists of Religion at Loyola (SRL), where students can present and discuss the various topics of Sociology of Religion. 

 

I also served as the editorial assistant for Contemporary Justice Review (current), Brothers for Excellence Mentor, and a member on the 2023 Chicago Ethnography Conference Planning Committee.