Month: January 2016

-Kelsey Gohn ’16

Through the Berger Institute I’ve been able to have the liberal arts in action experience: I’ve been able to expand my research interests into a real world application and connect with the CMC community in ways that without the board I never would have been able to.

While Professor Kanaya was visiting my summer internship at KP, we were able to meet with another wonderful board member, Dr. Andrea Neves. She had so many stories to share and gave fantastic advice from her broad range of experiences over an amazing dinner. She gave us direction on what she felt like were great skills to gather during our time at CMC, like how to critically think as well as how she felt like liberal arts were an incredibly important part of our education. I’ve definitely taken her advice with me into my senior year and appreciated the opportunity to connect with the larger CMC family during my summer in new city.

I’ve also had opportunity to connect with CMC board members on campus as well as meet incredibly interesting people through Berger sponsored events. Berger sponsored Congressman Jason Altmire’s Ath talk on the Affordable Care Act. Since Professor Kanaya knew I was interested in healthcare, she set me up to speak with him before the event and sit at the head table with him. It was definitely a once in a lifetime in an opportunity to connect with him and have a frank discussion about his experience drafting health care policy.  I’ve made some great connections through Berger network and all of the wonderful people I met have shaped my career at CMC. I’m not sure that’s something people realize when they become a research assistant at an institute, not only do they gain the experience of research, but also a community.

-by LillyBelle Deer ’15

I have never been someone who enjoyed oral presentations. Presenting in class always made me anxious, so when Professor Kanaya asked us to speak as a group in front of the board members of the Berger Institute, I was immediately nervous. I didn’t know just how much preparation we would undergo for this presentation, and I was worried that I would my team down. A few weeks before the first presentation, our group got together to make the presentation and sent drafts back and forth to Professor Kanaya. A few days before the presentation we met with her for three hours and ran through what we were going to say until we got it exactly right. She gave us advice about how to make a professional presentation, since the way that we presented ourselves would be more important than in a casual classroom setting. I moved around too much when speaking and my slides had too much text; another team member spoke with a lilt at the end of all her sentences, so it sounded like she was questioning what she was saying.

Going into the presentation I was still a bit nervous, but not nearly as nervous as I would have been without all of this preparation. While listening to my team members talk and during my own portion of the presentation, I realized that we looked and sounded very professional. Our presentation materials were sharp and our speech was concise and hit all the right points. We were able to answer questions with ease and the board seemed to really enjoy our presentation. This experience gave me confidence in my speaking skills and tools to make more powerful and attractive presentation materials.