Greetings from your OCS Fellows! This is an update from Nat ’20 and Ruthie ’20, the OCS Student Fellows for the 2019-2020 academic year. We’ve had a very busy winter term thus far. At the beginning of January, we helped run the OCS World’s Fair, which was a huge success! Hundreds of students packed into the Great Hall to learn about various OCS programs, ask questions, and eat the delicious soup, bread, and brownies we were serving. We were lucky to have numerous enthusiastic Carleton students represent their programs. All volunteers were given a free limited edition OCS 50th anniversary t-shirt that the two of us designed and they were a huge hit!
At the end of January, we were fortunate to have had the opportunity to lead an OIIL Talk. We really enjoyed this event because it allowed us to collaborate with Peer Leaders from OIIL and the Peace and Conflict Fellows from the CCCE. Our OIIL Talk was called “Think Globally, Act Locally” and we had excellent discussions about cross-cultural civic engagement. Our talk covered giving and receiving abroad, types of intervention for relief work, positionality and intersectionality, and Academic Civic Engagement at Carleton. We learned a lot of information from this presentation, and we hope our peers did as well! Right after our OIIL Talk, we collaborated with the Career Center to lead a workshop called “OCS and Your Career.” The goal of the session was to help students identify the skills gained from their OCS experiences and learn how to highlight these skills and experiences in their career search, on their resume, and in job interviews. It was exciting for us to realize just how many skills and traits we gained from our OCS experiences that will help us thrive in our future careers. It was a pleasure collaborating with the Career Center to lead this workshop!
At the moment, we are planning a study break with an RA, which are events we love to do! It’s a great opportunity to visit various dorms and advise students about OCS in a more relaxed setting. Students always ask us great questions and the RA’s always bring great snacks! Additionally, OCS is committed to making OCS programs more sustainable and environmentally conscious. We are currently reaching out to various alumni of OCS to gather their input about how they believe their former abroad programs could have been more sustainable.
That’s all for now! Keep your eyes open for upcoming OCS events in the spring!