Aafreen Zaidi
During this award recipient’s four years at Rutgers, they have proactively sought out a diverse set of opportunities to help Rutgers student body, especially first year students. Coming in as an honors academy student, they understood the difficulty of transitioning into a new environment while meeting the academic rigor of Rutgers and has made it their mission to ease this transition for future students.
They started their first summer at Rutgers as a counselor for the Equal Opportunity Fund (EOF) program. They provided extra tutoring during off hours and put together pickup volleyball games to help student relieve stress. After the EOF program, they became a site leader for the Discovery program under the Leadership and Experiential Learning. They facilitated discussions for students to set goals for their upcoming semester and fostered connections between students by actively learning about their commonalities. They were recognized for their work and was selected to come back as a leader for the sustainability track, where they was able to incorporate their passion for renewable and sustainable energy. They also served as alternative break site leader for DC Lead where they led 45-year students to the nation’s capital to learn about hunger and homelessness. Upon finishing studying abroad in Melbourne, Australia, they also become an ambassador for Rutgers Global. Through their unique experience of studying abroad as an engineer, they served on countless panels for the Engineering Honors Academy, Rutgers Engineering Honors Council, and School of Engineering to show students that it is possible to study abroad as an engineer. They continue to extend their involvement by becoming a First-Year Interest Group Seminar (FIGS) instructor, a resident assistant and an ambassador for the School of Engineering. As a FIGS instructor, they were selected as one of two students to teach a college accredited course in “Exploring Engineering.” They spent countless hours between their full-time internship to develop the 10-week curriculum from scratch. As a resident assistant, even under the current circumstances, they continue to keep in touch with their residents by holding virtual events in hopes to provide entertainment during trying times. They have also become an ambassador for the School of Engineering. They are held in high regard and were selected for the “Best All Around Ambassador” award in the Fall. Some of their largest contributions came during the outbreak of the Covid-19 which caused Open House and the remaining campus visits to be cancelled. They filmed, edited and created seven videos for the Rutgers SOE YouTube page. This act of kindness emphasizes their desire to help prospective students truly see the amazing opportunities Rutgers has to offer.
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