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The Allegheny Gateway brings a world of opportunity to students
Center: Augusta "Gusty" Mead '16
The Allegheny Gateway. It’s what sets the College apart from its peers in higher education.
Students can walk into the refurbished confines of Pelletier Library now and find staff and faculty who are able to offer “one-stop shopping” for the resources they need to succeed academically, participate in service activities, aid in making career choices, and pursue graduate studies.
The Allegheny Gateway provides opportunities for students to study, work and live overseas, to engage in collaborative projects with faculty and other students. Through collaborative work and shared goals, the offices within the Gateway offer students an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to experiential learning. Students are able to transform classroom learning into real-world experience.
Allegheny is committed to providing an education that gives students opportunities to work with people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives, gain global knowledge, and engage with real-world challenges and complexities. Students will emerge from these experiences to become well-rounded employees, graduate students, entrepreneurs, or whatever it is they seek to become.
Here are the brief stories of six students who have passed through the Gateway portals and found amazing opportunities that have changed their lives. Read their stories by clicking on their names.
“I’m not a grandiose thinker, but as far as making change in people’s lives, that’s extremely important to me. That’s why I want to teach. That’s why I think my experiences abroad have been invaluable to my sense of self and also in how I view others. I think that changing the lives of people that you come into contact with is a good place to start.”
Xander (far right) serves as the liaison for Brother to Brother, a group for males of difference that is part of the Center for Intercultural Awareness and Student Success. The group meets biweekly and talks about anything from current events to things going on around campus.
“It’s nice to have that sense of community at Allegheny with people who look like you,” he says. “CIASS is essential to not only helping students succeed here, but also for framing their success as they graduate and enter the larger community.”
In 2014, Xander participated in an experiential learning trip to India. The trip looked at development, democracy and diversity.
“I gained a completely different perspective on the hierarchy of needs and what I take for granted,” he says. “The trip also made me focus on trying to break myself from my day-to-day routine and going out of my way to make small changes in how I interact with others.”
Xander took this experience even further by conducting research with Associate Professor Ishita Sinha Roy during the past two summers. Since Dr. Roy is planning to publish a book on student experiences and study-abroad learning, Xander spent the first summer doing a literature review and building an understanding of the scholarship that already exists on the subject. The second year, he cataloged his experiences in India.
Xander currently is looking at doctoral programs in English and African-American literature and hopes to become a professor.
Xander Bennett ’16
Gateway Portals Entered:
Center for Intercultural Advancement and Student Success (CIASS)
International Education
Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities (URSCA)
Hometown: Sharon, Mass.
Major: English
Minor: History
Activities:
Xander
Rachel DuChateau ’16
Gateway Portals Entered:
International Education
Civic Engagement
Career Education
Hometown: Latrobe, Pa.
Major: Communication Arts
Minor: Political Science
Activities:
“I want to make a positive impact on the world. I believe that starts with changing the way we focus mainly on economic development. We still have structural inequalities that affect people’s everyday lives. I want to make some sort of change in that regard, whether it is through being part of an organization that provides relief, or by making sure people get to a place where they have more possibilities open to them.”
Rachel did an internship in India during the summer of 2015 for Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement, partnered with the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement, in Mysore. The organization makes sure the community’s voices are heard, especially in policymaking.
“Whenever I decide to apply for a job, I want to make sure I work with an organization that holds those key values where, instead of looking at issues from the top down, they look at them from the bottom up. It’s more inclusive. You can actually make change in that way.”
She also studied for a semester in Lancaster, England. “I learned that there are different ways of organizing your daily life. There’s always something going on. I felt much more centered in the United Kingdom and India. I had time to take things in. I felt more connected to what I was doing. I had time to step back and reflect.”
Rachel has spent her alternative spring breaks in Cranks Creek, Ky., Wheeling, W.Va., and locally in Meadville. She also volunteers at Women’s Services in Meadville.
Rachel
“When you go abroad, you get immersed into a culture that isn’t your own. You learn how to become an independent person in a different country where you don’t necessarily know the language. It teaches you things about yourself, how to interact with other people, and how to make yourself involved in a new community. It teaches you to open up more.”
Mikki (on left) studied in Israel during her junior year as part of an independent study-away program. She spent six months in Jerusalem, where she did a research internship under a Palestinian woman at the Harry S. Truman Institute for Peacemaking. As part of this experience, she wrote a literature review for a project the woman is working on about media and its influence in the Arab world.
She also has served an internship during the summer with a lobbying firm on Capitol Hill, regularly speaking with members of Congress and helping to host town hall meetings.
Her community service includes working with teens at Bethesda Children’s Home. “Some of the greatest experiences and most profound are when I take risks. It teaches you not only to challenge yourself, but to also challenge the way things are.”
Mikki Franklin ’16
Gateway Portals Entered:
Center for Political Participation (CPP)
International Education
Civic Engagement
Hometown: Orange County, Calif.
Major: International Studies (Focus on the Middle East)
Minor: Religious Studies
Activities:
Mikki
Miguel Liriano ’16
Gateway Portals Entered:
Civic Engagement
Career Education
Hometown: Washingtonville, N.Y.
Major: Political Science
Minor: Global Health Studies
Activities:
“Being a Bonner Scholar has shaped who I am today. Bonner has shown me that there’s so much power in helping the community. I strongly believe in grassroots movements. I think that’s the true agent of change.”
As a Bonner Scholar, Miguel (second from left) completes more than 300 hours of community service each year. During his first year, he worked at the Meadville Area Free Clinic, where he helped low-income individuals without health insurance receive necessary medications.
Miguel continued that outreach in the summer of 2013 while also serving at Active Aging, which works with senior citizens in the community. During that experience, he helped to write a grant aimed at assisting seniors without health insurance to receive flu vaccines.
The following year, he began working on bringing the website PolicyOptions.org to Meadville. The site’s mission is to connect and inform citizens about local policies and issues. “The Bonner Program has helped me realize that my true passion is public policy and reaching for root causes,” he says. “That’s something I plan to take with me after Allegheny. The only way you can solve an issue, in my opinion, is from the bottom up. It’s about informing and engaging citizens. I think Bonner strives to do that.”
This past summer, Miguel changed gears and worked at the U.S. Treasury in Washington, D.C., where he helped to regulate large banks. He is now applying for full-time positions at the Treasury Department. Eventually, he would like to get his JD-MBA and work with economic and education policy.
Miguel
Frank Quezada ’16
Gateway Portals Entered:
Career Education
Civic Engagement
Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities (URSCA)
Hometown: Santa Ana, Calif.
Major: Physics
Minor: Economics
Activities:
“I can only think about how different my life would be if I didn’t come to Allegheny. I’ve grown so much. It’s not only through the classes, but it’s the people I’ve met.”
Frank always has had a passion for giving back, he says. In the Meadville community, he has tutored students during an after-school program and mentored adults through the Crawford County READ Program. On campus, he has helped to create Career NaviGator, an on-campus club that helps students find their passion and transition it into a career.
“I didn’t have a lot of career guidance at home, but when I found Career Education, they offered the guidance I needed,” he says. “I know there are students who also need that help.”
Because of his early involvement with Career Education, Frank secured a freshman-year internship with Acutec Precision Machining, a local aerospace and power generation manufacturing firm. He worked in quality assurance, learning about computer-aided design software and blueprints. He is now doing a second internship at Acutec, this time in the Finance Department.
Frank also spent time during the summer conducting undergraduate research with Physics Professor Doros Petasis. Through this experience, he helped to build a cooling system for Helmholtz Coils and a cavity for a device called an electron paramagnetic resonance machine. The cavity is currently being used at Carnegie Mellon University.
Frank
Haley Riley ’16
Gateway Portals Entered:
Center for Political Participation (CPP)
Civic Engagement
Career Education
Hometown: White Lake, Mich.
Majors: Communication Arts, Environmental Studies
Activities:
“I feel so different than I did three years ago. I love the professors and intellectual learning community that is here and all of the support and different programs we have. I’ve enjoyed every second of it.”
Haley participated in an experiential learning trip in the summer of 2014, joining a CPP bus tour of the south, where she visited sites important to the Year of Voting Rights.
“One of my philosophies is to challenge yourself with things. The trip was life-changing. We talked so much about policy. We got to go to the Southern Poverty Law Center and talk about social equality and economic discrepancies and privilege. It was a natural progression.”
She also represented the United States at the World Water Forum in South Korea in April 2015, receiving funding through the Gateway to make the trip possible.
“It got me thinking about non-governmental organization work as a career. Now I’m considering international and environmental law. A lot of that is influenced through the CPP. I’m in between policy school, law school and graduate school. All of these experiences combined to give me these different options.”
Haley’s civic engagement activities have included working during Service Saturdays and volunteering at the Humane Society and at Hog Heaven, an animal rescue farm.
Haley
