Valencia Das

Bachelor of Arts, Criminology, 3rd year

Course: CSL 350 (Winter 2023) with Instructor David Peacock

Who was your community partner and can you describe the project objectives? 

Our partner for the semester is Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF). The project objectives were to code transcripts and answer the research question provided by ECF -"How did the ECF awards for students aid them to continue with their higher education?". Therefore, our job was to be able to answer that by working with interview transcripts of award winners. Using CBR, we were to get to a conclusion of if the award impacted the winners and if it did, how so.

What was your biggest takeaway from your CSL placement? 

The biggest takeaway of this placement was understanding the perspective of people from low socio-economic status. How their life is impacted by a lack of financial resources. It was enlightening to know how monetary funds and awards can really make a difference in their lives. It gave me a dual perspective - my own perspective of society and the perspective of how society really is. This actually will help me later in life as it has given me the opportunity to polish my skill of perspective-taking, where I can understand other people's points of view and not use my own biases to assume things about others.

How can you apply any newly gained knowledge/skills to your future endeavours (courses/employment/volunteering)?

As I said, it helped me polish my skills of perspective-taking. This is a very important skill to have if I want to work in the humanitarian field, which is my future career goal. I want to work with people who are less advantaged and knowing this skill will help me to not have any biases of my own and approach other people's situations with an open mind. This experience has also inspired a research idea that I hope to explore in the future. The idea is - How does low socio-economic status impact one's capability to climb the stairs to top-tier jobs? Is the glass ceiling truly unbreakable? If not, how can one break it? I am very excited about the skills and ideas I have developed through this placement and I look forward to the future when I can utilize them.