About two years ago, Cal State Fullerton was selected as one of four campuses nationwide to participate in the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network.
The network provides scholarships, mentoring and retreats for 10 female students each year to help them develop leadership skills, and transform themselves and their communities in the process. CSUF currently has 20 BOLD Scholars.
In response to their charge of transforming themselves and their communities, the first group of BOLD Scholars has taken on the development of a podcast found at https://soundcloud.com/astoldbybold
“We wanted to create something that could reach as many people as possible and be accessible for many,” said Dinorah Ortiz, a senior studying psychology. “In creating a podcast, we have developed a platform to discuss various social justice issues and reach out to CSUF students.”
“Because CSUF is a large public university with more than 40,000 students who largely commute to campus, we created a virtual platform for all students to exchange ideas, experiences and stories,” said Kristy Nguyen, a junior studying biological science. “This podcast has been part of our program’s initiative to confront a specific issue we see on campus: a lack of engagement in social issues.”
All of the scholars are involved in the podcasts in various roles, including as writers, interviewers, researchers, episode managers, editors and more. To determine the topics of the podcasts, the group develop proposals and each podcast has different interviewers and features different faculty, staff and students.
“Our hope is that our podcast episodes will encourage listeners to become involved and engaged and more aware of social problems affecting us every day,” said Nguyen. “We see the podcasts as a tool for education to promote dialogue and deeper thought.
“For example, through the ‘Power, Privilege and Oppression’ episode, some of our listeners shared that they were unaware of the privileges they held given their certain identities,” she continued. “With our podcast, we were able to show them that they could leverage this privilege to provide the space and platform for marginalized voices.
“By offering unique perspectives of various students, faculty and staff from different areas of our campus, we are able to keep gaining insight into our podcast themes.”
The first group of BOLD Scholars, led by Milagros Aranda, BOLD Women’s Leadership Network program site coordinator; Mary Ann Villareal, associate vice president for strategic initiatives; and Guadalupe Espinoza, assistant professor of child and adolescent studies, are:
- Sandra Belat, senior, health science
- Thabat Dahdoul, senior, mathematics
- Deanielle Ford, senior, kinesiology
- Mikaela Francis, senior, human services
- Monique Francisco, senior, human services
- Destiny Martinez, senior, English
- Kristy Nguyen, junior, biological science
- Dinorah Ortiz, senior, psychology
- Iman Roberts, senior, sociology
- Danielle Scheel, senior, chemistry