At Golden Key, we value our Advisors and all they do to ensure our chapters succeed. These hardworking university faculty, staff and administrators volunteer their time to help Golden Key develop and maintain high standards of education.  In order to show our appreciation, we’ve decided to spotlight some of these great people. Next up is Aimee Pozorski from Central Connecticut State University.
 

1. What is your role at Central Connecticut State University?
   I am an associate Professor of English at CCSU. I am the contemporary Americanist, so I teach upper level American literature courses, but I also teach contemporary literature, writing courses, and special topics courses in the Honors Program such as Freud and Trauma.
2. How long have you been a Golden Key Advisor?
   I have been a Golden Key advisor since 2005.
3. What does it mean to you to be on Golden Key’s Council of Advisors?
   I was so honored to be nominated for Golden Key’s Council of Advisors! I work hard for our students, and think of them primarily as the target of my work, but never really understood how much that work also means to Golden Key Headquarters. I am very pleased to be on a team of outstanding advisors; all of them have taught me in their own way how to improve my own advising at Central.
4. How do you make an impact as a Golden Key advisor? Tell us a little about your chapter.
   My approach to most things in life – my work as a researcher and teacher, my work in the community, my work as a parent and a spouse – has been to strive for a confluence and balance, with everything supporting everything else. I see this often in the culture of the CCSU chapter: the Golden Key chapter leaders who are also involved in the elementary education program have made connections with their Education Club and the local Children’s hospital for service projects. The marketing student with expertise in social networking has improved our web presence a thousandfold in the last six months. The president who is also a history major brought in the support of a prestigious history faculty member who is now not only an honorary member but also a key note speaker at our fall New Member Recognition Event. These are just a few ways that Golden key members of our chapter have brought in aspects of their own lives and interest to help build the chapter; and in so doing, our chapter is able to boost these other programs in turn.
5. What do you enjoy most about being a GK Advisor?
   I most enjoy working closely with the officers and honorary members. Golden Key is one of the few honor societies we have that allows people to work together across disciplinary lines. I have learned so much from these stellar students who come from backgrounds in business, history, the sciences, mathematics, etc. My universe would be very small without my daily interactions with these committed students and faculty.
6. What is your favorite GK-related experience or memory?
   One of my recent favorite memories is meeting members of our Golden Key chapter at a local Relay for Life event. This is a cause with very personal meaning to our former President. I was busy early in the evening on a Friday, but I met the remaining students who pledged to walk all night on the campus of University of Hartford later that night. We walked several laps together with the thump of the DJ’s music behind us. We collected bracelets to string together with every lap. I was able to bring my husband and young son to that event and we all walked together. It was a very unifying experience, and also very emotional – walking with my son, knowing that some children lose their parents way too early in life but still find a way to emerge as leaders in their universities, communities, and beyond.
7. How do you think Golden Key members Stand Out, Stand Up and Stand Together?
   I think the inextricable link between the two pillars of community service and leadership allow Golden Key members to use their voices and take a stand for the common good. While all of these students are obviously stellar in terms of academics, I admire so much how they put their intellects to work – to make real change in the community and to inspire others to do the same.
8. What are some of your hobbies?
   My hobbies include gardening, running, refinishing old furniture, and volunteering with young children.
9. Where are you from/ where did you grow up?
   I am from Wisconsin, where I lived for most of my life. I lived in many small towns in Wisconsin, most noteworthy in Green Bay, until I moved to Atlanta when I was 25 for graduate school.
10. Beach or mountains?
    I like to swim, I like the sun, I like the sand, so, in that way: Beach. But I love the views, the hiking, the sense of exhilaration when reaching the peak of a bluff, so: Mountains.
11. Do you have any pets?
    I do have a pet. She is a 2 ½ year old boxer puppy named Athena. She is fawn colored with a white “owl” marking on her chest. So we named her after the goddess of wisdom and war strategy whose symbol is also the owl.
12. Coke or Pepsi?
    Definitely Coke. It has to be Coke. I earned my doctorate at Emory University after all!

 
Know a great Golden Key Advisor?  Email marketing@goldenkey.org with their info and we may spotlight them next!

Miss our earlier post on the Golden Key AXON 2012 project? Click here for Part 1.
Guest Blog from Thuy Anh, Ngo: Personal Reflection
Planning of Golden Key AXON 2012 started in mid 2011.  Our team started by researching how public high schools and universities in the United States implemented service learning in their classroom. We read books that distinguished service learning from community service and volunteering, introduced key components of problem-based service learning, and discussed the benefits of service learning to students, to the schools, and to the community. We also talked to professors and teachers who had experiences with service learning and fortunately, we were kindly supported by Ms. Lisa Jasinski, professor in the Education Department at Trinity University, who organized a mock brainstorming session that was previously used in one of her service learning initiative to help students identify social problems to tackle. Most interestingly, we had debates among ourselves to really grasp the essence of service learning and to set one another on the same page before we proceeded to actually plan the event.
As soon as we had carefully drafted our project proposal, we reached out to community members as well as off- and on-campus organizations to seek support for the project and to gather their opinions on ways to most effectively achieve our objectives. Getting Golden Key’s financial support was one of our most notable outreaching successes. The other was when we were able to establish partnership with the Center for Educational Excellence at the University of Natural Science, Ho Chi Minh City. Both these successes greatly strengthened our faith in the initiative.
I returned to Vietnam at the beginning of June and planned to launch the project at the beginning of July. At that time, however, some team members from the States were no longer able to pursue this initiative due to their personal commitments. I was faced with the first challenge: how to gather a team in Vietnam within the one-month time constraint to prepare for the launching. I should have felt defeated at that time but my faith in this initiative was able to pull me through. I reconnected with my Vietnamese friends and some of them were interested in pursuing this project. They even introduced me to some great fellows who later became very dedicated members of the team. Through other connections, I was able to reach out to university professors and social workers, who eventually participated as guest speakers in the conference. My first “wow” upon experiencing the power of personal connection and networking!
My second “wow” occurred when I attempted to get the group organized into one united and structured team. Our work moved slowly at first because we all attended to the same tasks at once. Many technical tasks started coming up, such as recruitment of high school students and college students as mentors, media and public relations, invitations of guest speakers, community outreaching, etc. To effectively manage all of these tasks, my team organized ourselves into different subgroups, each assuming a primary responsibility, with one primary contact per group. All of my teammates became much more committed and the work was done much faster when everyone knew their responsibilities. Even though we had to put the event off by 2 weeks, in the end we finally pulled it through to launch the conference in the middle of July.
Through this experience, I have learned to stay calm, focused, and optimistic in times of stressful incidents (e.g., some teammates having to drop out, refusal of some guest speakers, etc.) and challenges (e.g., meeting deadlines, meeting the targets, etc.). I also experienced the power of optimism and how always believing that we could do it, actually led us to successfully accomplish our goals.
Check back here next week for the final part in our series about Golden Key AXON 2012.
About the Author: Thuy Anh, Ngo double majored in psychology and math at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. While in school, she was very active as the Treasurer of the Golden Key chapter and the President of the International Club for two subsequent years. She loves working with other people as a team to bring forward events and activities that can meet particular needs of the communities, including both the Trinity and the San Antonio communities. After graduation, she wanted to continue serving her communities in Vietnam and AXON was born out of such aspiration. She enjoys traveling and is currently pursuing a career in teaching.