Student Spotlight: Lisa Medearis

by Ann Abbott

The student in this picture, Lisa Medearis, has contributed just as much to the Spanish & Illinois program as she has gotten out of it--if not more! It is an absolute delight to see students bring all their talents and experiences together for the good of the community as well as their own learning.

Here are some highlights of Lisa's experiences and contributions:
But what I'd like to highlight here is the honors project that Lisa did this semester for the Spanish & Entrepreneurship course. With a project like this, we can really see the power of the James Scholar Learning Agreements--they can push students in new directions and have them create a deliverable that highlights their academic learning while at the same time contributing something of value to the community.

In Lisa's own words, this is what she did for her honors project:

"I have attached the final copy of my James Scholar grant project. In addition to writing a 1-page proposal for ECIRMAC, I conducted some extensive research on the Orange Krush foundation and their giving patterns (typical grant size, etc.), also attached."

I am very impressed with Lisa's research abilities, writing skills and ability to merge the two in very useful documents that can be accessed and utilized over and over again. When I asked her to document where she got the specific data on the number of Latino immigrants, she sent me this answer:

"Here's the link where I originally found the statistics. Since it was from FAIR (an immigration non-profit), I went on the US census website to confirm their stats (which checked out), so I just cited the US census bureau in the letter (shorter citation :)"

I would like to congratulation Lisa on her outstanding work and thank her for helping ECIRMAC, the local Latino community, and me.

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