I served as a M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence service fellow from Fall of 2009 until my graduation from the U of Rochester in the spring of 2012. In retrospect, two key experiences related to my service fellowship proved pivotal to my development. First, I participated in Margaret Ball's Fellowship of Reconciliation's spring break workshop that inspired my commitment to my present path in life. There, I experienced my first coherent integration of my passions, values, interests in psychology and social structural knowledge, and desire for change that leads to community psycho-social wellness. Second, I worked on a project with staff person George Payne, UR student Lorenzo Mendez, and several others to teach social and emotional development skills to youth adolescents in in-school suspension room for three years. Often I was a co-learner in this process. Through the experience I developed a framework for how to approach youth development. That is, I approach youth development and violence prevention from a community and contextual perspective because many issues the adolescents face are community based or influenced.

Contending with these issues is not simply rooted in the community or individual and to that end, I'm pursuing a graduate degree in the Community Research and Action Ph.D. program at Vanderbilt University. Here, I am working towards developing skills as a community psychologist and action researcher where I can teach research tools to community members and work with them to use research to build healthy communities based on thorough comprehension of their environment.

Since graduation, the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence and its members continue to mentor my personal and professional development. Particularly, I've had difficulty integrating values of nonviolence and other values I cherish within the culture and structure of academics. I've been using nonviolent communication --and the mindfulness it trains -- to slowly and steadily develop clarity and choose actions to develop the mindset and career that I would like to live. My training during two weeks I worked with the Gandhi Institute last summer have been instrumental for me to begin to understand how to integrate nonviolence philosophy into the work that I do. Gandhi once wrote something like, "happiness is when the heart, mind, deed, and word are aligned."  

I'd like to thank members of the Gandhi Institute for continuing to support this personal happiness in me and others. I intend to continue to develop the skills so that I can inspire this happiness in others as professor and action researcher following my graduation from my present program.