My Semester in the Newcomb Institute

Today is my last day of my first semester as a Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health intern. Throughout this time, I have had the privilege of working as a research assistant for Dr. Clare Daniel in the Newcomb Institute. Thinking back on this crazy semester filled with Covid and hurricanes, I realize just how much this internship has helped me grow to be not just a better researcher but a better advocate for reproductive justice. I started this semester working on a research study about the RRRH program. The goal was to provide a framework for other higher education institutes to use so that they create programs that cultivate social justice activism like this one. In this study, we took feedback from past participants and site supervisors to look at the strengths and areas for potential growth of the program. This paper has now been submitted and is under review.

After working on this, I also got the opportunity to help compile resources for feminist pedagogy educators in the time of Covid-19. While I am hoping that this is useful for educators it also deepened my understanding of feminist pedagogy and the challenges that have arisen this semester with virtual teaching. If you are interesting at looking at the guide the link is: https://spark.adobe.com/page/pBNzzHen7o3LW/#feminist-pedagogy

Finally, I ended the semester calling schools for the Louisiana Public Health Institute. The goal of this was to encourage the schools to fill out a survey about their sexual education and assault prevention curriculum. This was super interesting to me as being someone from out of state I did not know the educational climate of the area or many of the laws that governed this subject matter in schools.

All of these projects inspired me to become more involved in this type of work in the future and made me think about how I could integrate as I pursue a career in medicine and public health. I am very also excited to be continuing this work with Dr. Daniel next semester.

Sincerely,

Grace Riley