Summary of What’s Key About Transformative Education
Brett Fuller, Academic Development Manager for Pioneer Academics, asked the panelists to introduce themselves. They both illustrated their talks with slide presentations, and used the details of their own organizations’ offerings to make their points.
Michael Parkin, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Erwin N. Griswold Professor of Politics at Oberlin College, began with the question: What’s really the value of conducting rigorous research as a high school student?
Parkin described his in-depth involvement with Pioneer as a four-time mentor, and his new perspective as an administrator working with Pioneer scholars: “I’ve had some of the most fascinating conversations with young people who are writing these brilliant papers.” He identified three benefits of research: helping students to explore their interests, enhance their scholarly abilities, and lay the foundation for career success.
He described how the Pioneer experience, in particular, provides all three benefits. The first is the opportunity for a high school student to participate in a program led by a leader in the field. “You’re not just going to be getting the standard sort of papers to read. This is going to be the best stuff in that field.” You will “conduct your own primary research under the guidance of somebody who does this for a living.”
This close relationship between mentor and student leads to Pioneer scholars receiving a detailed evaluation of their work from a college professor, which is invaluable on a college application. “It is rare that a 16- or 17-year-old would have a document in which a college professor has written extensive detailed notes on your performance in a college level class.” Pioneer scholars stand out because they have already done college level work.
Particularly the rigor of research experience offers long-term benefits for later life. The scrupulous research process Pioneer requires “allows you to explore and be creative…to produce high caliber work at a young age,” making sure you really enjoy your chosen field.
Grant Zhang is Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Rural Debate Initiative, a nonprofit organization that focuses on advancing debate education resources in the rural United States. He also works as an investment professional. For Zhang, debate was his path to success, offering him academic motivation, scholarship opportunities, intellectual challenge, and a way to transform an argumentative personality into a successful career.
He described how he uses the skills he learned in debate in his work in investment. In-depth research is critical—learning how to find all available facts about a topic, evaluate sources for reliability, and organize material in a way that supports one’s conclusions. Clear public speaking, the ability to convey material logically and succinctly to inform and convince one’s hearers, is an invaluable skill in the business world.
In response to the question, “how can an impactful academic experience support your development as a student, a person, and ultimately a professional,” Zhang cited the benefits of critical thinking skills and the ability to present oneself in a holistic way, and Parkin identified confidence in meeting challenges.
00:00:01 Brett Fuller, Pioneer Academics: Alright welcome everyone to our final session of the day. Thank you all so much again for joining us. I am joined by Michael Parkin of Oberlin College. And Grant saying from the rural debate initiative, I will introduce, I will turn it to them rather to introduce themselves. And if there’s time at the end of the session. We will do a brief QA. And I’ll also do a couple of quick announcements to wrap up the summit at large. But for now, we will focus on Michael and Grant. Michael, if you would introduce yourself.
00:00:33 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: Hi, everyone! I’m Mike Parkin. I’m an Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Politics at Oberlin College, and maybe before I get started, Grant, if you want to introduce yourself.
00:00:43 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: Hi, I’m Grant Zhang. I’m the co-founder and executive chairman of the Rural Debate Initiative, which is a nonprofit organization that focuses on advancing debate education resources to the students of the rural United States.
00:01:03 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: Great thanks. So, I’m going to share my screen. I have some Powerpoint slides here. Jump right in. Great. So hopefully you can all see that. Please stop me if you can’t see that. As I said, I’m Mike Parkin, Associate Dean and Professor of Politics here at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, which is just outside of Cleveland. And today I want to talk about the value of research, and kind of start with this bigger question, which is kind of an interesting question and kind of a fun, light hearted question, which is, what’s really the voice of conducting rigorous research as a high school student. One of the things that has amazed me in my connections with Pioneer over the years is that there are so many fascinating, brilliant young people who don’t mind spending a large part of their summer actually engaged in rigorous research, working really hard on research. So what I wanted to do today is, I wanted to give you my perspective. And I have multiple perspectives on this as to why, I think this is a really important and valuable thing to do. So, for those of you in the audience who have already completed something like a Pioneer Academics research. Semester. I wanted to just highlight some of the things that you got from doing that maybe that you’re not so aware of. From my perspective. And then for those of you who are thinking about doing it in the future, I really want to encourage you to, to think very seriously about doing it. Because there’s a lot that you can get out of it.
00:02:28 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So with that in mind, I should probably preface this entire talk by saying a few things. There are a couple of things that I really love in this world, and 2 of them happen to be Oberlin College and Pioneer Academics. So you’re gonna hear a lot of gushing from me, particularly about Pioneer and I just want to let you know I’m doing it on my own free will. No one’s, you know, asking me to do this, but it is something that I do feel very strongly about and very positive about. So, as I alluded to, I come at this from a couple of different perspectives. The first is as an Oberlin College faculty member. I’ve been a professor of politics at Oberlin for 15 years, I teach primarily classes in American political behavior.
00:03:06 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: More recently, in the past 2 years, I’ve moved over to administration at Oberlin. So now I’m an associate dean, and I start to think about what kind of students as an institution Oberlin is looking for. Prior to coming into this office you know, I thought a lot about as a faculty member. What do we look for in, in talented students in my classes. I’ve taught a lot of classes at, at Oberlin in political science, and I’ve seen a lot of students, and I think I have a pretty good sense of what enables a student to succeed at the college level. And then, finally, I’ve had the good fortune of being a Pioneer mentor on 4 different occasions. I’ve taught a class called Media and Politics for Pioneer, to students literally from all around the world. Students from China, various parts of Africa Turkey, Greece, the United States, and it’s been a fascinating experience. So, when I go to address the question of, why might a young person want to do something like Pioneer? I address it from these multiple perspectives as a college faculty member, as somebody who knows what succeeding in college looks like for a student as an administrator, understanding what colleges are looking for out of student applicants, and as somebody who’s worked in Pioneer, I think I have a pretty good sense of what makes Pioneer very successful.
00:04:16 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So, let me just say a little bit more by way of background for those of you who may not be familiar with Oberlin College. As I said, Oberlin is a college in northeast Ohio. It’s a selective Liberal Arts college with, you know more than 40 different majors, everything from anthropology and biology to sociology and theater and everything in between and it’s a really kind of selective place where students come with a great intensity to, to learn. But what makes Oberlin particularly interesting is that it’s not just a liberal arts college. It’s a college and music conservatory. And that brings a lot of energy to the campus, a lot of artistic energy to the campus. So, I would argue that it’s a pretty unique place in many regards.
00:04:57 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: One of the other things that makes it, I think, deeply unique and this is something I was talking about this morning during the college fair is that it is a place of deep commitment to learning. So obviously, the faculty, like faculty at all institutions is very, are very committed to, to learning and studying a particular subject. But the students at Oberlin have this you know, deep thirst for knowledge. They want to learn and it’s an exciting place to be when you’re surrounded by people who every day get up, just wanting to know more about the way the world works. So, it’s been a great place for me as a faculty member and as administrator, and one that I hope that you know you on the call right now might think about applying to. On, on the other side of it I wanted to say a little bit about my background as somebody who’s worked in Pioneer. As I said, I’ve taught Pioneer class 4 times on Media & Politics, and each time I’ve taught the class, I mean, it’s been pretty similar in the sense that I start with 4 group sessions on various topics that have to do with media & politics in the United States. So, the first is we look at media effects. We try to figure out how media messages about politics are inferred by our brains, how we process that information.
00:06:03 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: Then we look at incivility and disinformation in the political context which I’ll tell you. I talk about this in my Oberlin classrooms, and we always have fascinating conversations, but there’s nothing quite like having a conversation about political disinformation with students from all over the world. You, you hear and start to understand things that you just don’t get when, when the group is, is more homogeneous than it than it is in Pioneer. We also talk about digital politics and how candidates campaign online, and a lot of the exciting things that are going on there. From there like many of Pioneer classes, we then go into independent research sessions. And so these are 1 h sessions that I have with each student each week for, for 5 weeks. And you know, on the face of it. It’s easy to just sort of describe it as that. But I really want to pause for a moment and, and really talk about the value of that, and, and how uniquely valuable that is.
00:06:56 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So, consider for a moment that if you are a 16 or 17 year old person interested in political science, you would get the opportunity to speak one on one, once a week for an hour about your research. That’s incredibly valuable, and I don’t know where, where, literally, where on earth you could get that. Certainly, if you come to Oberlin you would talk to me about politics, but you wouldn’t get that kind of intense attention.
00:07:21 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: And so, as a young person thinking about this program or somebody who’s maybe already gone through this program, I just really want to highlight how valuable that is! Pioneer hires some of the most talented academics from across the country, and if you, as a 16 or 17 year old. Get that person’s ear for 5 h or 6 h to talk about your research that that’s just an incredible opportunity. So I think everybody who has the opportunity should really try to take, take advantage of that.
00:07:48 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So, from my perspective as a faculty member who had taught in Pioneer, I can say that I’ve had some of the most fascinating conversations with young people who are writing these brilliant papers. Two of the papers I want to highlight is one student from California, who recently wrote a paper on the narrowing of election outcomes in an age of partisanship. You would think that as the country polarizes more and more that our election outcomes would be spreading out more and more. But in fact, he found empirically that they’re not, and he tried to understand that puzzle, I thought, was a fascinating paper. Also had a student from Korea, who wrote a paper on what he called Blame Journalism, which is an activity that I understand happens primarily in Korea.
00:08:26 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: That he took a deep dive into the way journalists cover various controversies that I found really fascinating. So, it’s not just the students who benefit a lot from these, one on ones and certainly the faculty who teach in Pioneer get a lot out of it as well. Pioneer also does, as many of you know, a fantastic job providing additional research and, and training or research training on things like how to write a research paper, how to how to go about finding your materials, your sources and, and I really appreciate the work that they do there.
30 00:08:55 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: And perhaps the thing that I like most about Pioneer is as a faculty member when I’m done at the end of the semester I have this form that I fill out for each student where I basically grade this to give the student a grade. And I answer very detailed questions with what I hope is pretty expensive feedback on how the student did in this class. Now you may think for a second, that well, that sounds pretty standard, pretty normal, but in fact it is, it is pretty rare that a young person, a 16 or 17 year old, would have a document in which a college professor has written extensive detailed notes on your performance in a college level class. As a student. You can then take this document and use it in your application to a college or university in the United States, or wherever you’re planning on studying. The great benefit of this for me meant that I didn’t have to write a lot of recommendation letters, but also it means from my, my administrator hat tells me that this is a very important document, because if I’m in the Admissions office and I see a student send this document in, I know that this is genuine authentic evaluation of the student’s ability to conduct college work.
00:10:01 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: There is a lot of other data that is so nicely presented in the way that Pioneer puts it together. So, I think this is a tremendous value for young people and, and for the colleges that they apply to. So that’s the, the background I wanted to give. You also wanted to just sort of dive into why I think students actually do engage in this research and what they get out of it. So, if you’re you know here today, watching right now, I imagine that you have some personal motivations that are highly academic and scholarly. And, in fact, that has been what I have found with Pioneer students, bar none. The students come in and they’re excited. Yeah to, to literally, in some cases meet me at 11:00 o’clock at night, where they are, or 7:00 o’clock in the morning to talk about research. It’s, it’s a brilliant thing to see. But obviously, if you have that kind of motivation, you should definitely be doing a program like Pioneer.
00:10:51 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: The other cool thing for me about Pioneer is that they do an excellent job of providing opportunities all across the spectrum. It’s not just Natural Science courses, it’s Humanities courses. It’s courses and social sciences, and part of my role as a, as an administrator at Oberlin is, I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate a lot of the work that gets done in Pioneer, and I’ve seen just brilliant work across the board from all of these different subjects. So as a young person thinking about Pioneer, you should be thinking about the exact thing that you’re interested in, because I’ll bet you Pioneer has a class or a program for that.
00:11:27 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: The other thing is that if you take a class at Pioneer, you’re going to be reading and discussing absolutely interesting material. And I can guarantee that it’s going to be interesting material because these classes are led by leaders in their field. These are people who know the cutting edge research who are on top of this research. These are probably people who have written some of the most cutting edge research. So you’re not just going to be getting standard sort of papers to read that, that somebody thought, well, this sounds interesting.
00:11:52 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: I mean, this is going to be the, the best stuff in that field. And I’ve seen that over and over again. And perhaps the, the final motivation that may be driving you to more something like this is having this ability to conduct your own primary research under the guidance of somebody who does this for a living. You’re given the time, you’re given the resources, and you’re given the guidance to do this really quite well. And it’s, it’s a heck of an opportunity, particularly for people of, of, you know, in their late teens because those opportunities may not exist in the high schools that they’re in currently.
00:12:25 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: The second is that you may have scholarly motivations for doing this right. Maybe you’re thinking about college and of course you’re thinking about college. How do I get into college? How do you get into good university and, as I said before this detailed evaluation that gets written by a college professor, you know, on your Pioneer experience is, is worth its weight in gold when it comes to a college application, because it is, it is so honest and pure and detailed, and, and it’s so much better, I think, in my opinion than a, a standard recommendation letter. This tends to, you know, weight towards the things that are, you know you do well, and maybe not talk about some of the other things these evaluations are, are right on point. The other thing is, is that I can tell you by doing these annual evaluations which we do each year at Oberlin of all of the work that’s done at Pioneer, that this is an incredibly rigorous program, and you know it’s easy to say that it’s rigorous. But let me give you a little bit more context here.
00:13:17 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So when we evaluate the work, the classes that are held in Pioneer and the student work. One of the questions we ask is, you know, is this a college class? Right not? Is this, you know, a really good high school class? Is this a college level class? And of all of the work we’ve evaluated for more than 5 or 6 years, we have never found a class that’s anything less than a college level class. In fact, we often find classes that are far beyond what you might expect for a first year of college class. Similarly, we also find that the student work is always worthy of college credit. I mean, if you do a Pioneer course, you get Oberlin college credit which you can transfer later on. And so we have to make sure that it’s reaching that standard and absolutely is. And again, a lot of the student work is, is far above what we would expect for students in their first year.
00:14:04 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So it is an incredibly rigorous program and allows you to say, listen, you know how I did in high school, but this is how I would do in college, right? Because I took a college class and, and here it is. It also helps to prepare you for that first day of college, right? First day of college is pretty nerve wracking, and you’re going to go into that having done Pioneer with a lot of confidence, I think that you know that you’re up to this task.
00:14:27.460 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: Whereas you may be, you know, starting by other students who are confident, but they’re confident in their abilities as high school students. They were very good high school students. That’s why they got into a very good college, but you would know that in fact, you not only succeeded in high school, but you can also do the work that’s required of you at the college level. And finally, perhaps you’re motivated by some long term kind of job related professional goals, and I think that’s, that’s fair. I mean, we’re all thinking about our careers from a very young age. Now, some of the technical things you’re going to learn and Pioneer maybe you’re interested in Chemistry, you’re going to learn, learn some new fascinating Chemistry. It’s going to take a while for that to pay off in terms of a job related skill or, or getting a job somewhere but it will, right, because it lays the foundation for the learning that you do afterwards.
00:15:12 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: And then finally, it allows you to explore and, and be a little bit creative while you’re still young, right? And as you get to be my age, you know, things start to get, you know, really serious and kind of tighten down, and, and you have fewer opportunities to, to change paths. But Pioneer allows you to really do this high caliber work at a young age to make sure you really like it. Maybe you really thought you liked chemistry, and then you took a Pioneer class, and it’s just absolutely going to be your thing like you’re just convinced of that. And I mean, that’s a really valuable thing to get as a young person, and it’s so it can help you start your path. To our success.
00:15:49 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So putting all of these things together, it really kind of feels like they’re building blocks, right? I mean, you may be driven by personal interest to do something like Pioneer and I think you’re going to get a lot out of it on a personal level. You’re going to be challenged and you’re going to learn a lot of very important things about yourself. In terms of your scholarly abilities you’re going to become a better student, and you’re going to be challenged to do college level work that I think once you’ve succeeded in that, you’re going to have a lot more confidence. And then, finally, this is going to lay the foundation for the career success that you’ll have moving forward.
00:16:21 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: So, that’s all I wanted to say at, at this point. I want to thank you for your time, and I’m going to pass it over to Grant, and then, when he’s done, if there’s time for questions, I’m more than happy to answer any questions that you have.
00:16:32 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: Alright. Thanks, Mike. This my little background is going to be a little similar and, and our presentation is going to be similar to what Mike had already mentioned. But you know, from a different angle, you know. Just a little bit of background on myself. I was a debater when I was in high school. I didn’t have a whole lot of other opportunities in my high school to, you know, challenge myself intellectually or academically. Just because those opportunities weren’t really available to me at the time, and debate was really the mechanism for me to do that.
00:17:09 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: I was very successful in debate both, you know, at a local and national level and at the collegiate level, and and where I had scholarship opportunities to go debate. For you know, major national universities, and I ended up taking one to go debate at at New York University and you know that role has prepared me for many things. For example, I was a debate coach for a number of years while I was in college and then I’ve kind of transitioned more to the nonprofit side outside of college, you know, working with institutions like the Bay Area Urban Debate League and then starting the Rural Debate Initiative. But aside from that, I also work as an investment professional and the skills that I’ll talk about later. That debate has instilled within me are very, very critical in shaping the way that I both do research and communicate my research to key decision makers for them to, you know, a, a, a pro of investment decisions, or to, like, you know, turn down an investment decision, for example.
00:18:18 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: So a, a little bit of a background on me and how debate has benefited me in particular is, you know, coming into to high school I had, you know, relatively low levels of academic success, and low levels of competence. I struggled a lot with bullying when I was in middle school, and you know I was kind of very defeated, and I didn’t feel like I was really good at anything in particular. And what you know, I the one thing that was like a big learning lesson from, from that was like, you know, because I was defeated. And you know I had issues. I had issues with my parents, and I argued with them all the time. So, they ended up recommending that I, I joined debate because I just like argued with them all the time. And in that essence, you know, I joined because I was like, why not? I’m not really doing anything anyways and you know it really unlocked a lot of you know, opportunities for me, because it’s the first time as an activity that I, I joined something that really challenged me intellectually, and I had a community of people around me that wanted to see me succeed in particular. So, a little bit of background on, on what debate is, so the type of debate I competed in in high school is called policy debate. It’s where you have a year long topic and you have, you know, you debate that year long topic from, you know various angles. So, for example, in my senior year of high school, the key, the topic was around, you know, exploration and development of the world’s oceans. And you know, you have a lot of creative freedom for how you want to tackle this topic. You can have conversations about, you know Russian, U.S tensions within the Arctic Ocean from a geopolitical lens you know, militarization of the ocean.
00:20:11 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: You can dive into like science and, and like the, the study of, you know fish and other. You know, creatures in the oceans like coral reefs and learning about mechanisms to improve us. Energy policy and solving problems like climate change, or even something salient to your own communities. For example, if you live in California, you have you know there’s been drought in California, and you know you could talk about how ocean desalination is a mechanism to address that drought in California. And because you have this topic for the entire year, you really immerse yourself in all of the economic, political, and critical literature within that topic, to make sure that you’re very prepared to debate and anything that could come up here.
00:21:00. Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: So, you know, when, when I, I debated for a year on, on ocean, ocean policy, for example, like I really became an expert in all aspects of the ocean policy. Starting from when I was in starting from when I was in, you know, like a debate camp where we really immerse ourselves in, in the topic and, and did a lot of research. And that research could range, you know, across a, a numerous amount of things they could be, you know, research from an academic institution like Oberlin College. But it could also be, think tanks like, you know, the, the Brookings Institute. Or, or it could be from, you know, major, you know, major global companies that focus on, you know, economic research. So, like this could be, you know McKinsey and Company, you know Goldman Sachs, for example.
00:21:52 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: So you, you have a broad pool of, of areas where you can pull research to, to support you know your arguments, and that that research needs to be rigorous because. you know, you’re really trying to, you’re really trying to the judges that you have in debate. They’re very, you know they’re, they’re often well trained and they’re often coming from an academic background, so they can know what type of research is, is higher quality versus lower quality in nature.
00:22:23 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: And debate is not only important in terms of the research that you do, but it’s also an important in terms of the delivery of that research to make sure that it is done in a succinct and impactful way in order to convince your judge that you should win that debate.
00:22:42 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: And that experience is extremely important in preparing you both for a career, academically and professionally, where you will need to be able to, to logically and succinctly defend the research that you produce in front of a committee of experts. So, you know, I use these skills particular today, you know, in a, in an investment professional setting. And, and one example of this is, you know, I, I made it an investment in transportation and, and logistics. So, you know, a warehousing business that was in the west coast of the United States, and one of the key things about a port adjacent warehousing business is that you know you’re getting goods from elsewhere outside of the country and with the West Coast it’s typically China and the geopolitical interconnectedness of the United States and China, and the tensions that the United States and China had on trade relations was a topic that we had to explore very much in depth and I we had to package the materials you know that we’ve uncovered to our investment committee, which is a committee of experts that you know they’ve made 400 investments in their career, to convince them to support our investment, in spite of, you know, challenges and trade and, and intentions on that.
00:24:10 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: So, debate is a very EQ and IQ focus activity that can really help you build a career in any form of professional services, whether that be management, consulting, investment banking or, or, you know, consulting or, or investing. So in that sense, I also wanted to give a little bit of an overview of the World Debate Initiative. You know, the World Debate Initiative is the first nonprofit organization to focus on providing debate programs to rural students across the United States.
00:24:46 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: Founded by a group of people that benefited immensely from debate. Like myself. Our, our mission is to use debate, to empower the rural population where it was traditionally very, very difficult to have access to debate before we’ve had, you know, online learning, for example. So, you know, before you would travel to tournaments in person. But after Covid one of the, the great benefits despite, you know, Covid creating lockdown, is that it really unlocks the potential of online education.
00:25:16 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: And you know, we, we run a lot of our programs online for students that, you know, wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend a tournament in person, because you’ve got very, very long travel distances that make it, you know, logistically impossible. If you’ve got to travel three hours to attend a local tournament.
00:25:37 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: And you know we have 2 types of programs. And the first is debate programs which are targeted specifically to students within the rural United States which involve weekly coaching sessions with, you know, high quality coaches that the rural debate initiative will provide free of cost, debate, tournaments, and summer debate camps.
00:26:02 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: And here we have 20 partner schools across you know California, Vermont, and Ohio, and you know we have affiliated organizations, you know, in, in North Carolina and Virginia.
00:26:16 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: And you know, we’ve been expanding very quickly this, this year is the first year that we’ve actually started any actual debate programs. So, so like my co-founder, Kelly and myself have founded this organization, you know, back in in 2022 and, and we’ve recently being a lot of momentum.
00:26:33 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: And you know, one example of this is, we’ve had 26 out of 60 students that signed up to join debate after one of our sessions in their school. The second type of program that we have is a nonprofit immersion program. So, this is a program that it’s also available to non-roll students. And it’s a range of internship volunteer and training opportunities for students to be involved in the inner workings of a young nonprofit where students will learn how to build, manage and fundraise for nonprofits. So, you can visit our Pioneer booth for more details if either of these things are more interesting. But as a little walkthrough what that might entail. So, like on the internship front, we have specific positions in social media, you know, outreach in terms of finding partnership schools or a holistic nonprofit immersion program where you will get into a series of educational seminars and engage in thought provoking conversations like this one.
00:27:42 And we will also coach you on how to build your own community initiatives. Secondly, you can volunteer for the role to meet initiative, you know, 10 plus hours a week, for example, will qualify you, for you know, a world debate, initiative, service award where you can either volunteer as a debate coach or a volunteer fundraiser. And you know, of course, these initiatives helped me a lot, you know. Debate helped me a lot in, in college as well, but you know it really helps you package, it will help it really help you round out your package in terms of demonstrating that you know you’re very, you’re serious about something, and that you have both the IQ and EQ to succeed in an intellectual and professional environment, which is something they care a lot about.
00:28:35 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: But that that’s all from my front, you know. Thank you for the time here, and you know, would welcome any questions if we have any time here left. I’m not sure, Brett, but like I’ll hand it back to you.
00:28:47 Brett Fuller, Pioneer Academics: Yeah, thanks so much, Grant. I, I think we probably have time for, for one question, maybe. And, and I, you know there were a couple of questions that were coming in. Kelly answered a couple of questions on your behalf in the chat for you. But my question will be to both of you and, and essentially, it’s a, a summary of what you’ve hit on in different ways and whether it’s research or whether it’s debate or another initiative that’s students can, can dive into. I wonder what you want students listening you, what you want their takeaway to be in terms of how can an impactful academic or co-curricular experience like that, how can that not only support your, your college search process, which you both touched on, but how does it support your development as a, as a student and as a person, and ultimately a professional and I’ll defer to you who wants to start there?
00:29:42 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: I, I could start. So, you know, I didn’t have opportunities for like traditional academic research. But the research that debate instilled within me was like it’s, you know, pretty crucial, for you know how I thought about both college and, and being able to position myself for college. So, you know, like debate, for example, was, was really big on, on developing critical thinking skills. It was very big on developing, you know, critical research skills in terms of immersing myself with a body of literature and identifying myself with, like, you know qualified a credential research as well. And, and lastly, being able to present and package myself in an impactful way to, to like develop a holistic package. So, for example, you know debate a lot of the time is really about, you know, packaging everything in a, in a way that’s convincing and articulate, and that is a way that that can help the way that you shape your college application as well.
00:30:43 Grant Zhang – Rural Debate Initiative: So, keep that in mind and as I journey into college that helped me, you know, think critically about, you know the various topics I was learning. You know, I was in business, for, for example, as an undergrad so we’re talking a lot about economics. We’re talking about a lot about, you know, international foreign policy and the connectedness of economics and business. So that experience from debate, that research experience in that experience, arguing these topics really inform that for me. And it really helps you know how to pull my career as well, which I touched upon earlier. Sorry if that like, we already discussed a lot of that. But you know I wanted to package that in a more succinct way.
00:31:32 Michael Parkin – Oberlin: Yeah, I would say, from, from my different perspective, from the things that I’ve seen, one of the things that determines an individual success is their confidence. And I, I don’t mean arrogance, but I mean confidence. And I think what something like being involved in debate or, or taking a Pioneer class allows you to do is at a young age it allows you to really challenge yourself and to think seriously about what you can do and, and what you still need to work on a little bit. But if you were to complete something like Pioneer in a field that you’re really kind of passionate about, you’re going to definitely be challenged. It’s going to be difficult. But when you make it through and you succeed and you write an incredible paper that is just going to give you confidence that is going to help in every stage from there. It’s going to give you confidence when you’re applying to universities and colleges. It’s going to give you confidence on day one. It’s going to give you confidence throughout your college career, and hopefully, that confidence will carry over to your job search after that. So I think there’s this benefit the challenge gives you, and that challenge can give you a confidence.
00:32:38 Brett Fuller, Pioneer Academics: Great thank you so much. I do have a, a few announcements here as we wrap up not only this session, but the Second Annual Co-Curricular Summit. First of all thank you all again for attending. Thank you to our panelists Professor Parkin and Grant Zhang and I hope all of you will join us again next year for our Third Annual Co-Curricular Summit, which we anticipate being in September again next year. We will send more information as we get closer to that date. A couple of other quick announcements, the recordings for these sessions will be available on this platform. We anticipate for the duration of October so if you wanted to revisit some of the information that was shared today, you are welcome to do so through this platform. You can also get some additional information about Pioneer as well as next year Summit and additional events on our social media channels. So just be sure to follow us there, and I’m told I, I also need to announce the leaderboard here for folks who will be receiving prizes for us for their engagement today with our session.
00:33:49 Brett Fuller, Pioneer Academics: So apologies in advance if I do mispronounce your name. Luckily your pronunciation of your name will have nothing to do with whether or not you earn this prize. But I can announce the top 10 here, starting with 10, and we’ll work our way up Afra Nawar, Ishitta Groverr, Almas Elayyan, Rian, Rian Iwano, Berra Nur Yasein, Mian Muhammad Khalid Rehman, Katrin Flores, Amalia Sardiha, Jingtu Zhang and Ka Pui Cheung are our top ten. You will be receiving an email from us in terms of claiming that prize. Thank you all for engaging with us, and I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of your weekend. Thanks. Everybody.
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