Ep. 38: The Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program w/ Dr. Laura Antkowiak & Jessica Cook

3:25AM Mar 29, 2023

Speakers:

Dr. Ian Anson

Dr. Laura Antkowiak

Jessica Cook

Keywords:

students

sondheim

umbc

program

community

scholars

research projects

public service

majors

working

people

public policy

jess

serve

college

scholars program

campus

research

study

cohort

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring the best of UMBC's social science community to you.

One of the most daunting and exciting prospects of arriving on a college campus as a student is the fact that soon you'll be making new friends, some of whom will even become lifelong confidants and central figures in your adult life. You know, it's hard to figure this out, though, as anybody who's been to college will readily attest, you might have some vague acquaintances that you knew from before you arrived on campus and you try to get closer. Maybe there's a strong clique that's already formed, and that seems to share your values and interests. So then do you try to butt in, or maybe you form some fast friendships only to have them fizzle as the early weeks of college give way to more durable patterns, and then maybe the whole thing gets turned on its head when everybody leaves for the first winter break. All this to say that forming community is hard in almost any context. But one useful way to do so is to find folks who share the same passions. I was able to follow that advice early in my time in college, and I remain deeply involved with a group of friends that manages to transcend geographical distances and newfound family responsibilities to stay closely connected. Thank goodness after all for group chats. But finding your passions and connecting them to a group of people is a complicated thing to do. For students who have specifically identified a passion for public service, I have really good news though. UMBC has exactly the community for you. This is the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars program. It's an interdisciplinary scholarship program that supports, inspires, and empowers talented undergraduate students as they address society's most pressing problems. Sometimes scholars address urgent social problems alongside communities through service learning, internships, activism, research, and the study of policy issues. The program honors Walter Sondheim, a champion of Baltimore's renewal, a business leader, and an advocate for public education. This program is something of a unicorn in the ranks of American universities. And I'm delighted to be able to discuss it in depth with two people who are deeply engaged in its operations. Dr. Laura Antkowiak is an associate professor in the UMBC Department of Political Science, as well as the director of the Sondheim program. According to the copy from the Sondheim program, Dr. Antkowiak feels grateful to work every day with students who share her fascination with tough social challenges and public policy issues, and how citizens might work on them inside or outside the political process. Joining Dr. Antkowiak in conversation with me today is Jessica Reynolds Cook, associate director of the Sondheim program. In addition to working full time to support the program, its students and its operations. Jess is also a doctoral candidate in International Education Policy at the University of Maryland College Park. I'm truly blown away by all the ways in which the Sondheim program helps its students pursue their passions while engendering a deeply engaged community. And that's why I'm so thrilled to bring you my recent conversation right now.

Once again, I'm really delighted to welcome Dr. Laura Antkowiak and Jessica Cook to the program to talk a little bit about the Sondheim program at UMBC. I think this is a really cool program. And I'm excited to talk about just what exactly it is. And I think maybe the first question to ask that might get us into unpacking what all this program is about is ask a little bit about its name. So the Sondheim program is named after Walter Sondheim if my notes are correct here, and I was wondering, starting off with, with Dr. A over here, if you might be able to tell us a bit about this individual Walter Sondheim who he was and sort of how his personal story sort of informs what the Sondheim program is all about.

Your notes are correct, Dr. Anson. Walter Sondheim, Jr. was a business leader and a civic leader involved in the city. He'd been an executive at Hoschild Kohn, a department store for much of his career and spent some time in the military. He was a family man, but what he's probably best known for that's part of his legacy in our program was his work with a variety of civic organizations and government agencies. He had his hands in so many projects. In education, in housing and urban renewal in and around Baltimore and around the state. Among other things, he played a pivotal role in the conversion of the Inner Harbor from being a rat infested dock to the tourist attraction that we have known it as for decades now. He had been head of the Baltimore City School Board at the time, Brown v. Board of Education came down and he pushed for the rapid desegregation of city schools. That work is so important it's actually featured right now in the exhibit at the Maryland Center for History and Culture for whom we just took the Sondheim scholars on a field trip this past Saturday before this recording, and he was involved in other projects around the state and was so consequential that New York Times published his obituary, but he was a very modest man, and often not singing his own praises, but others sung them very, very loudly in the obituary. Credited with not only being very effective, even if behind the scenes and the work that he did, but praising his integrity, his humility, his empathy. It was others who wanted to put his name on the program, not him himself. And that says a lot about who Walter Sondheim is, and about the kinds of values that we like to look for, and also nurture in our students.

Wow, that's, that's really an incredible backstory, and I think speaks to the, the notion that what you're doing in the Sondheim program is developing some of these values that are, I think, so important in today's sort of political environment today, social environment. And speaking of the notion of public service, right, so Sondheim, the program itself is, you know, again, thinking about its name, about this notion of public service, trying to get students who are passionate for this, who are interested in this, and trying to cultivate that that sort of skill set that approach that kind of, as you're saying, with with Walter Sondheim, kind of that that lifestyle, more or less. What is public service, though? I think probably some of our listeners are thinking about this and wondering what all that encompasses. And I wonder if maybe Dr. A you can start, start us off? And maybe, maybe, Jessica, you could continue this conversation?

Yes, I agree. That's a little bit of an open ended question. And I think sometimes leads to some confusion that makes us think about, you know, how do we need to market the program a little bit differently, in order to clarify that at the outset for our students. Of course, we get a lot of wonderful applicants who fit this very, very well. Some people hear public service and they think, volunteer. Some people hear public service, and they think serving as an elected official because of that term, public servant. We understand public service much more broadly than that. Public service is a vocation, it's a value, it can take many different forms. One can serve the public inside or outside of government, within government, one can serve the public as an elected official, or as an expert working within a government agency. One can serve the public as an advocate and activist, one can serve the public working in nonprofit organization, one can serve the public from a job in private business, doing socially impactful work there, and through the work that one might do in the community outside of one's own job. And that's one reason why Walter signs example is so important. His regular job was a business was in business. He was a department store executive. And yet he was very heavily involved also on his quote, unquote, free time, in a variety of different civic problems around Baltimore. And he got more deeply involved in that after his retirement. But his case shows just how broad public service is. We encourage our students to explore multiple ways of serving inside and outside of government, and through volunteering, through leadership of organizations on campus and off campus, through activism,, and for research, which can play an important role in developing a vision and problem solving strategy for many of the most important social issues of our time.

I think Dr. A covered that very well. I might return to some of the things she just shared as we're talking further about the program, but I think we can leave that right there.

Well, so Jess, I actually had a question, maybe that you can help us answer which doctor a kind of put this up on a tee for me. So this is ultimately a podcast that's about the social sciences, and it's about social science research. Most of the time, obviously, we have student projects that we feature we have the projects that many of our current faculty are working on. Sometimes we feature some of the work of visiting scholars as well. And so the notion that public service can also be research oriented is something that you might imagine has got me very interested and I'm sure some of our listeners are also quite interested in this as well. So how does that work? How is it that students are engaging in research, under the auspices, let's say, of public service?

Very good question. We have students doing research in a wide variety of disciplines. We have students doing independent research projects, and also students working on faculty research projects and serving as assistants. We have, let's see, currently, I think we have a student in economics who is doing an independent research project, and we'll be presenting at URCAD this spring. He's researching student loans and student financial education in high school and in college and the impacts of those kinds of programs on student loans and student loan repayment in the future. This student has also worked on faculty research projects. Another example of a research project, we have a student who's majoring in Media and Communication Studies and Political Science. And that student is working on an independent research project about social history and the history particularly of gay nightlife in Baltimore City. So our students really do a wide variety of research projects. Dr. A, do you want to add any any notes on research projects, perhaps in political science?

Well, actually, I was going to offer notes on research projects outside of Political Science, although we certainly have them. Sondheim scholars in recent years working on political science research projects having to do with social movements and public policy. We've had a student working on some immigration related research. We've had students studying refugees, and the ways that they process things. We've had students doing research projects with people who have recently emerged from incarceration, studying how they readjust to society. But one of the things that's really cool about our program is that is open to students of all majors. So we actually have a fairly large percentage of our students who are coming from STEM fields, which are not typically associated with public policy, and public service. So we have had students in the recent past, doing independent or research projects or faculty led research projects, trying to study in mice how brains process is alcohol or other substances. The goal was eventually hope to lead a long term, develop some long term solutions to substance abuse and understanding addiction. We've got another student who is working on a research project right now that technically deals with zebrafish, but there's hopes for some implications down the road. And I can name some more examples of these. We've got students doing some data science work, that has been an increasingly important area in the field. Policy is increasingly data driven. So they're learning a lot of really techie skills going to special summer institutes, developing their own ideas for independent projects. So I just want to stress that aspect of it, that public policy needs the expertise of so many different fields, because there's really no issue area really, that government doesn't touch in some way, or that other major social institutions aren't touching in some way as we deal with the big challenges of our time.

Wow, this is really inspiring, really exciting to me. And you know, so many conversations that I've had over the span of doing this podcast have all been about, or many of them have been about, this distinction and the artificial nature of the distinction between basic research and applied research, maybe in today's world, and the notion that the students are,most of them, engaging in some kind of basic research, learning a skill set, that they might be able to eventually apply in a career, be it within the research, sort of infrastructure or outside of the research infrastructure in some sort of more directly public service oriented career is really exciting. That's really cool to think about these students getting to hone these skills in research and then take that that skill set and apply that to as you're saying, Dr. A I really like this idea of big questions, right, big questions that are of consequence to society, to the lived experience of individuals that that is really, really exciting. Speaking a little bit about these careers, though, I wanted to ask you, maybe this is a question for both of you. If you could tell me a little bit about what Sondheim students tend to do after they finish the program. Obviously, as you're mentioning Dr. A, this is a program that has not only social science majors in it, right? This is open to all majors across both the sort of STEM disciplines the STEM, STEM world if you want to call it that, and in the social sciences in the arts and humanities, right. What are these students end up doing after they have sort of inculcated or cultivated that is these careers are these these approaches towards public service?

We have alums doing all kinds of things. We have students, well, former students now now alums of the program, working in every level of government, from the local government in Baltimore City, to state level government to federal government. We have alums at the IRS and working with, we've had folks in the Department of Education. We also have alums working at the international level. I spoke with an alum last week who is currently working for the United Nations Population Fund (Dr. Anson: wow). In addition to some of these policy oriented roles, we have students working in more applied and direct care fields, direct support fields, we have several alums who have gone into social work, into teaching in public schools, and into law We have many students going into law, practicing law, and working in law related careers. We also, as Dr. A mentioned, have many students who are STEM majors. We have a couple of students who are currently in medical school or who will soon be starting medical school. And these students often have a really interesting mix of technical skills, obviously, as you would need working in health care, but also interest in public policy and serving those who may be underserved within within health care. Those are a couple of examples. And I'll leave it there.

I'll say also, just to get a little bit more concrete, graduate study is very common among our Sondheim scholars. (Dr. Anson: I can imagine). A few years ago, we did a survey of our alumni. And we have I think, now probably about 250 alumni or so in the program. We're relatively young program because it enrolled its first cohort starting in 1999. But at the time we did our survey, about three quarters of them had either completed graduate education. We're talking medical school, law school, traditional graduate school, whatever it might be, or had that in progress. So that's very common. And then we also asked people about sector of employment. Government was the most common, but coming in at 40%, things were fairly well distributed among the other sectors as well, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector as well. It's really neat to me to think about this increasing network of Sondheim Scholars being spread out all over the country, even the world, with several Sondheim Scholars we have in foreign countries right now, bringing their Sondheim values, bringing their UMBC experience all over the place to these disparate workplaces to inform public policy and to inform private practice. And the alumni are so wonderful too because so many of them give back. Coming to offer to serve as guest speakers in our classes or to be connected with our students who have interests in their fields, coming to some of our events, helping to serve as interviewers, with when we select our next round of scholars each year. They're a really fantastic group.

Wow, that's, that's really exciting. And I think a little bit about what makes this program potentially unique. I think one thing that strikes me is the notion that these students are so sort of socially networked with one another. And the degree to which this this as you're mentioning these cohorts, this kind of community is is a natural offshoot of the passionate nature of these students and their and their academic careers. Could you speak a little bit about that sort of what is it that students are doing in this program that tends to foster such an active and vibrant community?

We really take a lot of pride in working with our students from the day they accept their offer of admission into the Sondheim Scholars program. We work with them over the summer before they start at UMBC as first year students. We have an orientation program, where they get to meet some of the older students in the program. And that cohort, we generally have cohorts of around 15 students, that cohort really gets to spend time together, thinking about how they're going to connect with each other, what they want to get out of their college experience, what they want to give during their college experience. And so we have that extended orientation program. When students arrive on campus at UMBC, they take two courses together in their first year. They take a writing course in the fall semester, and they take a public policy and public affairs course in the spring semester. Both of those courses are limited in enrollment to just the students in the first year cohort. So those students are seeing each other and together multiple times per week. They're also involved in weekly service learning with nonprofit and educational organizations in Baltimore. And so they serve weekly with places like Great Kids Farm, which does environmental education with Baltimore City Public School students, or the Esperanza Center, where our students are assisting in English as a second language classrooms. So those students are very connected to each other from their first year, and they're working on group projects and serving in the community and participating in the events and activities that all of our Sondheim Scholars participate in. We have a strong focus on experiential or applied learning. You probably got that from what we've been talking about so far. So in the first year, all of our students are involved in service learning in the community. We expect all of them to complete at least one internship during their time at UMBC. And do a second experiential learning activity, whether that's another internship, whether that's leading an alternative spring break program, whether that's taking on a leadership role within service learning, or working on a research project with a faculty member or their own independent research or studying abroad. We let students kind of tailor the program to their interests, their academic interests, and support them along the way, as they kind of chart their paths.

I'd like to circle back to the theme of community a little bit more. So that that first year experience, I think, is really key for a lot of the students. In addition to the experiences that Jess mentioned, the small classes and the special orientation experience, which involves two overnights that they'll do in June, we also have a program wide retreat in September. It's mandatory for the first year students and then the upper level students can choose whether or not they want to come and some do. And one of the beautiful things about it is that it's organized by students themselves. Some of our upperclassmen who take this on as a labor of love, they design the retreat, they lead the retreat, Jess and I are there for the opening session on the Friday and the closing session on the Sunday morning, but otherwise, it's the students on their own, which is a really beautiful thing as well in the program. We also have a strong ethic of peer mentorship. All of the incoming first year students get at least one, typically two peer mentors from among older Sondheim scholars. And they typically get so many because our older students are very eager to take on this role, and embrace that. Students go their separate ways to an extent after that, but we do have six program wide events every year where people get back together. And the students have their own ways of connecting as technologies evolve, for example, a lot of them develop cohort wide Group Mes, and they have chats that go on throughout that, which is a really beautiful thing. We periodically survey our alumni about their experience of the program and its impact on lives, and one of the themes that I consistently hear in those survey responses and just anecdotal conversations, was how much it meant to be in this group of, some of them made lifelong friends, but in particular, they were with people who shared their values, and help strengthen their values working together. It can be a very lonely and almost sort of countercultural thing, sometimes, I think, to care enough to take real action on problems and also to buckle down and be a responsible student. Your Sondheim Scholars have to be to win and then to maintain their scholarships, and the students find that support in each other while also building a high level of trust in the classroom, which I think contributes to why we have such a tight knit community while it's also very diverse community in terms of the students backgrounds and interests.

Wow, that is so cool to hear about it. Just thinking about this idea that I really want to touch on this again, this this idea that it may be a lonely journey to try to live out these values and to really take take oneself seriously at this level. And it's it's really, really heartening to think that students who are on that track who have that mindset are able to find community in in this program and share those experiences with one another. I'm sure that's a really vital thing and something that strikes me as pretty unique, right? I mean, this is kind of a program that is not replicated very often in universities around the country. Am I right about that?

To be honest, I don't know that for certain. That's one of those research projects I might tackle one of these days if we had more time, but there's never time. The more important thing is helping the people who are right in front of us. I will say, I will say these two things I actually personally went to, participated in a program that was similar to the Sondheim program when I was an undergrad at the University of Notre Dame. It was called the Hesburgh Program in Public Service. But I think the program at Notre Dame wasn't nearly as good as the program that we have here at UMBC.

Jess is nodding, right.

to cultivate community. So I definitely give us a lot of credit there, although that experience was foundational to me and being able to relate to my scholars. And then the other thing that, that I would call. I'm aware that the University of Maryland has just started up a public leadership program. I think they're stealing our great idea. No offense intended to the elite who I know they're running to it. But we've got something pretty darn special here, I think. And the model that UMBC has set for it Scholars Programs, which emphasizes community is something that I get a sense that really goes above and beyond what I've seen in the sort of curriculum focused programs that we had that I went to, or that they have over at College Park. And it's so UMBC, because that's sort, that's one of our core values, taking care of people, supporting each, other having a collaborative culture.

A unique culture within a unique culture, let's call it it's I think, really speaks to the the impressive nature of this program. So let's just say I'm sold on this program. I'm excited. I want to be part of it, too. And so, Jess, if I were a prospective student, let's say, who's interested in potentially being part of the Sondheim program, how do I do it? Obviously, what I've heard so far is that this is a very prestigious program, I'm going to need to need to bring my A game if, if, if I'm reading you correctly,

Right. So students go through an application process where they submit a written application, they tell us a little bit about themselves and how they see themselves fitting in with the program, what their aspirations are for the future. We're looking for students who have a mix of strong academics, a demonstrated interest or potential for deep community engagement, whether that's, you know, some students are in organizations, other schools that are service or social action oriented. Some students are leaders in athletics and their high schools. We're looking for students who have shown leadership, or who show that potential for leadership in the future. We're looking for students who are really curious and open to learning things from different disciplinary lenses, and putting together a lot of disparate pieces into something that is unique and will hopefully have a positive impact on the world in some way, shape or form in the future. We are looking for students who are community minded, both the community beyond the campus but also community within the program, and community on the UMBC campus. We have students, we want, we want our students to think of the Sondheim Scholars program as one of their communities and perhaps even their home base at the university. But we also want them to be active members of other communities, other organizations on campus, whether that's in a council of majors or whether that's in the Center for Democracy and Civic Life or whether that's in club sports. We want students to really practice being in community with each other.

I will add too that we are also looking for signs of interest in public issues and policy among students. One of the pieces of their application is a short essay in which they write about a problem or issue of concern to them and what they think should be done about it. And we are looking, in particula, tha, that students also link that up with some of their major fields of interest, because some of those fields are not so obviously connected to public policy and to public services. We understand it more broadly than others, so we want to see either at the written application phase or later at the interview phase. Our finalists, recently went through those, in person interviews with teams of our alumni and faculty and staff and students, but we're looking to see them talk about how this particular course of study that they have in mind is going to have an impact on the larger community in some way. Whether that's a local community, state, community, national community, global community, whatever that might be.

Awesome. And it seems to me like the payoff here, if you're able to succeed in this application, it's pretty great, right? I mean, we're talking about a pretty hefty scholarship, is that correct?

We our our scholarships range from $5000 to $15,000 per year for in state students. So that top tier, the $15,000 tier, will cover the full cost of tuition and fees, and then provide a little bit extra toward living on campus for those students who live there. And these scholarships, our top scholarships are more generous than what are available to the general UMBC population in terms of merit scholarships. And then of course these students are still eligible for additional need based financial aid from various sources. And they can still look for scholarships from outside sources, and other places. A lot of our students because they are so responsible, and community oriented, can often get their full cost of housing, room and board, covered by going on to be resident assistants, as many of them do, and they're great at that. Their scholarships are also available to them all four years, as long as they keep their grades up, and they are maintaining other program requirements in terms of event participation, advising, and other things that we do. And then this may or may not be the place to talk about them, but we also have some other financial awards that are available to our students to help offset the costs of unpaid internships or study abroad or research experiences, or provide them a little extra money that they can use for academic enrichment or professional development activities outside of UMBC.

Wow. And on top of all of that, right, the community that is fostered by the program, something probably that you can't put a dollar amount necessarily on top of. So that's really cool. Um, before I let you go, and again, I want to thank you both so much for your time, and for talking to us a little bit about this program. I want to put you on the spot here and just ask if you had any just very brief words of advice for any of our listeners, be they students or others on campus that might be listening, informed, perhaps by some of the the experiences that you've had coming out of the Sondheim program.

I think first I'd like to share something about our program that maybe hasn't been covered as well, in our discussion so far, that, that's also important to the essence of it, and that's the kind of mentorship that we provide within the program. Students get all kinds of individualized attention and support in this base of community they have. They need to come and see me or Jess once per semester. They're welcome to come more often than that, some of them do. And we try to really get to know the students as a whole person and have conversations with them about a variety of different things appropriate to their stage in development, whether it's about class choice, whether it's about grad school, whether it's about internships, jobs, sometimes totally off the field issues that are going on and in the students lives that they just feel like they need someone to talk to. And we provide a lot of really intensive assistance for those students who want it with a number of different things, such as reading personal, drafts of personal statements for graduate school, or conducting mock interviews, or connecting them with alumni we know who we're working with them in a field of interest. So that's sort of a last important thing about the way that our community works here. As far as advice goes, I would tell the students dream big and take some risks to work hard for that. And I think that's especially important in the post-COVID era, because one of the things that I'm observing not just among Sondheim Scholars, but the broader population of students that age at UMBC, and also among my children and my neighbor's children, and their other social networks. I have three teenagers themselves, two still in high school. one whose graduated from high school, and so I've got on top of these things to an extent, at least as much as someone my age can be who's gonna be a little bit of a step. And I realized that there's a little bit of ambivalence there about reengagement, socially speaking. Talking to people, getting out there, getting active on the community. On the one hand students want to do that, and I think they know it's good for them, and they want that, but on the other hand, there is a temptation to be comfortable at home rather than than getting out and going places, volunteering hands on, running for office, getting involved in clubs. I think there is, certainly there was a lot of social damage, a lot of academic damage that was done to students during the course of the pandemic. It's very, very sad. And it's not fair that those students would have had to go through that. But I just want to encourage would be applicants out there that if you're feeling that pull to make an impact. If you're feeling that pull to bring community back together, can sometimes be hard, it's often hard to get students to work together with you. It's often hard to make that sacrifice and go out and do what you need to do. Take those extra classes. Go join up that community organization. Do some form of activism and advocacy beyond social media. But do it. It has such a payoff, not only for your ability to get scholarships like this and look different, but also so many students tell us after the fact how much they have enjoyed engaging in the experience, like a service learning experience that they were pressed to do as a requirement. So I would call on them to do the same. And then considering also that a lot of our audience is going to be people who are maybe not necessarily students themselves. If you're at UMBC, check for those Sondheim Scholars, in your classes, or as you go out. They are awesome. If you are looking for a research assistant, think about a Sondheim Scholar. If you're looking for students to recommend for positions of responsibility and leadership, think about a Sondheim scholar. I think they've gotten a little bit shy about introducing themselves. My predecessor as director used to always tell the students "don't forget to introduce yourself as a Sondheim Scholar." You know, it's that humility that's tangling against the good honor that it is to be, have that title and be part of that program. And it also we'd love the support. We welcome support of faculty and staff and alumni and other people from the wider UMBC and campus community, with our program and with our students, either as mentors, offering them internships in their fields, or opportunities to shadow, coming in and being a guest speaker, we'd love to have you come reach out to me or to Jess, if you want to have a relationship with our program. Let's talk.

Yeah, taking off my podcast host hat and putting on my professor hat very briefly. And then putting, switching them again, I can vouch absolutely for the incredible quality of the Sondheim students when they've been in my classroom. It's definitely, I that your your words resonate, let's say with me in terms of my own experience with these students. They would absolutely make for some fantastic RAs as well, so let me echo that point. But Jess, we also wanted to ask you briefly if had any words of advice inspired by the Sondheim program.

Yes, I would say for potential students who are applying for the program, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have a 4.5 GPA and have taken 12 AP classes and be the president of NHS and the captain of the swim team. That's not necessarily who we're looking for.

Does it go up to 4.50?

Oh it goes higher in some of the counties. Ian, you would be surprised. You don't have to be that student to be an excellent fit for the Sondheim Scholars Program. You don't have to have done everything already. We're looking for that interest, and that desire to be part of our community and to grow in the community and as part of the community, both individually and as part of the group. And it's okay to make mistakes. When you're in high school, when you're in college, when you're in life in general, you're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you will take those risks, sometimes it won't turn out how you expect it or how you wanted it to. And those are all learning opportunities. You don't have to have your whole life planned out. It's okay when you're a first year, second year student not to know what you're going to major in. It's okay if you're graduating from college and you don't have your job or graduate school lined up yet. People develop at different paces. And so it's okay to have a winding path. We certainly don't want to, you know, encourage students to be completely undirected, but there are different opportunities and the thing that you do when you're coming out of college is not necessarily the thing you're going to be doing for your whole life and your career will likely take some different turns that you're not expecting, and that's okay.

Jessica Cook. Dr. Laura Antkowiak. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today about the Sondheim program. I'm really excited to hear so much about the incredible work that you all are doing. And I really look forward to hearing hopefully in the near future about some of the awesome research projects that some of the students are conducting.

Thank you so very much.

Thank you.

With UMBC's spring break only recently concluding, this episode was a perfect opportunity to give our intrepid intern Alex a break from his Campus Connections hosting duties. He still worked hard to mix and edit this episode though. And for those of you who look forward to Alex's updates each episode, have no fear. He'll be back with a brand new Campus Connection next time. Until then, I hope you can also find time to take a well deserved break from your ongoing tasks and commitments, and that you can use the time to find centering and restoration. Oh, and even if you're taking a break, don't forget to keep questioning.

Retrieving the Social Sciences is a production of the UMBC Center for Social Science Scholarship. Our director is Dr. Christine Mallinson, our Associate Director is Dr. Felipe Filomeno, and our production intern is Alex Andrews. Our theme music was composed and recorded by D'Juan Moreland. Find out more about CS3 at socialscience.umbc.edu and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, where you can find full video recordings of recent CS3 events. Until next time, keep questioning.