Hello!
I am traveling to Mexico next fall for a semester abroad. I am applying for the Gilman Scholarship, and I am looking for feedback regarding my Follow-on Service Project Essay. I have provided the prompt given by the Gilman website for reference. I am looking for constructive feedback, and ways I can improve my essay. Thanks for your time!
Follow-on Service Project Proposal
My essay:
For my proposed service follow-up project, I will promote the importance of international education, and the Gilman scholarship, to elementary school students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I will work with students from Ruskin Elementary, a K-6 school located in a low-income part of Dayton, Ohio. Most of the students who attend this school come from low-income families, are minorities, and have parents who never attended college. Many of these students will face unique challenges when it comes time to think about studying abroad, since most students who come from low-income families are much less prepared for college in general. I will be able to relate to the students on a personal level, since I too, come from a low-income family, and I am a first-generation college student traveling outside of the United States for the first time. My experience abroad, and the steps I am taking to make study abroad a reality will be a good demonstration for how these students can also achieve their goals. I am reaching out to this particular group, as I believe in the importance of making study abroad opportunities more available to students from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds in order to increase their global understanding, and to encourage them to pursue their own international endeavors.
I am currently a volunteer classroom assistant and tutor at Ruskin Elementary, and I have been volunteering there since August of 2016, which gives me unique access to the students. For my project, I will work closely with the Neighborhood School Site Coordinator and teachers to ensure that my project is successful. I have already been in close contact with the coordinator who has agreed to let me work with the students during the days that I volunteer. Volunteers at Ruskin are required to commit to 20 hours of service each semester. As such, I plan to use five hours of the required 20 to complete my follow-up project.
Specifically, I am planning to host five, one-hour cultural sessions with students from five different homerooms. My project will take place over the course of five weeks. With this time frame in mind, I will break up the time of the sessions into two parts. For the first 20 minutes, I will present to the students, and for the other 40 minutes, I will have them share their own ideas with the class about the country they want to study abroad in, and why. I will primarily work with the fifth and sixth graders since I already have close connections with those grade levels.
The presentations I will give to the students will focus on the overall importance of international education and the impact it can have on the their personal, professional, and academic life. I will also share information about the Gilman scholarship, how the scholarship and study abroad experience have impacted me, and about the importance of cultural understanding.
I will show the students pictures from my time abroad in Mexico, and I will also utilize various visual aids such as posters and cultural memorabilia from Mexico. I plan to make a poster highlighting the important reasons to study abroad, some of the main benefits of international education, as well as some of the scholarship opportunities that are available for students studying abroad. This will not only encourage students to study abroad, but will also help them to gain a greater understanding of Mexico's culture and society. It is important for the students to learn more about Mexico since they are our neighbors, and because Mexico plays a vital role in the United States' economy. I also hope to unmask some of the cultural misunderstandings between the two countries in order for the students to view Mexico in a more positive light.
For the second part of the cultural session, I will give the students a list of non-traditional study abroad locations to choose from. I have chosen non-traditional locations, as I want to get the students acquainted with areas of the world that they are not very familiar with. The students will receive a packet of countries, and each paper within the packet will include one country, a map indicating where the country is located, a few photos that share that countries' main cultural attributes, and the country's official language. I will then ask that each student select a country where they would most like to study, and I will have them write down a few sentences as to why they would like to study abroad in their country of choice. Students will also be asked to share with the class what future profession they would like to pursue, and how they will reach their professional goals by studying abroad.
I will begin volunteering with Ruskin again when I come home from Mexico after Christmas break. I anticipate that I will need around two weeks to prepare for the presentations, and I plan to begin them by the middle of January. Typically, I will volunteer for two hours at a time, two days a week. I plan to use an hour of the two hours I am there to host the session, and I plan to do one session per week. Since I plan to give five presentations, my project should be officially completed by the end of February. Additionally, the coordinator I am in contact with has already reached out to the fifth and sixth grade teachers who have each agreed to set aside an hour of class time for these sessions next January and February.
Furthermore, the coordinator is allowing me to document the experience so that I can post an article, along with pictures, on the Modern Language Department's Facebook page in order to share this project with my fellow classmates at my home university. By doing this, I will be promoting study abroad to students enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts, the impact of the Gilman scholarship to students who may qualify, and a community service opportunity currently available at Wright State University. My Spanish professors have been very supportive of my proposed project, and have encouraged me to share the article and photos via Facebook. I plan to have this component of my project completed about a week after I am finished with hosing my cultural sessions.
The goal of my project is to encourage and inspire younger students who belong to groups that are statistically unrepresented in the international education community to pursue their own international educational experiences in the future. The students I will work with come from diverse backgrounds, and many of them will be the first in their family to attend college, and the first in their family to ever travel outside of the United States. I want to continue being a role model and a cultural advocate to these students by sharing the importance of study abroad, the impact it had on me, and the future impact it will have on their lives. Since I am a student from a similar background, I believe these students will be able to refer back to my experience when making a decision to study abroad once they are in college. I am proud to be part of that process.Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,835 
4783 Liz, the first thing that you have to do in order to gain the attention of the scholarship reviewer is lower your word count. You have written 1202 words which, while impressive, just means that your essay is not as concise as it can be. Try to present the full essay within a 500 word count instead. That will show the reviewer that you have clearly thought out your plan, that the plan is actually doable, and that you more than understand the importance of the project. For starters, you need to present the organizations and people that you will be working with in a single paragraph that clearly explains their connection to the program and the way that these organizations will interact under your leadership.
Try to shorten your presentation to show your passion and interest for the activity by avoiding redundancies in your essay such as the repetition of representing the under serviced communities in your area. Your vested interest in the project is clear, but you need to better organize your thoughts in the essay. For example, you goals for the study should be in the upper paragraphs, possibly the first or second paragraph, not at the end of the essay. Summarizing your intentions will be important to the proper presentation and consideration of this essay.
As of now, the essay needs to have better connected paragraphs. You have 9 very long paragraphs at the moment. Try to make the essay more informative by combining the paragraphs of related discussions and removing the discussions that do not seem to be so important at the moment. Topics such as how you will continue to volunteer at Ruskin during Christmas break does not work with the requirement that the project be completed over a full semester. While there are no rules that say you need take a full semester to complete the action, it is important that there not be a gap between implementations. Do the work completely upon your return. When you have the time to completely dedicate your time to a continuous promotion of your project.
