Student workers from across Penn State Brandywine recently gathered for a professional development workshop focused on identity and values. The Feb. 1 event, co-hosted by the Office of Advising and Career Services and the Center for Ethics and Civic Engagement, was one in a multi-part series of workshops dedicated to the professional development of student workers.
“It was eye-opening,” Ankur Sinha, a first-year Brandywine student and residence life office assistant said of the workshop experience. “It definitely brought in a different aspect of career development that I hadn’t thought about before.”
Introducing the workshops’ topics of identity and values, Coordinator of Career Services Christine Allen emphasized how the conversation students would be having reflected part of Penn State Brandywine’s Strategic Plan.
Beyond Penn State’s values of integrity, respect, responsibility, discovery, excellence and community, Brandywine’s strategic plan also encompasses the additional values of sustainability, connection and equity.
Vippy Yee, Rosenberg Director of the Center for Ethics and Civic Engagement and a co-facilitator of the workshop, participated in the subcommittee that developed equity as one of those additional values.
“If we are going to be genuine and authentic about our commitment to equity, it has to permeate everything we do with our students — in the classroom, co-curricularly, and when we're working with student employees. So I see this training as being fundamental to that, and I honestly wish that it was a workshop that I could give to every student on this campus,” Yee said.