I was honored to have been chosen for the Global Food Security internship here at Illinois. This internship was unlike the previous years. COVID-19 has massively changed our lives and impacted our experiences.

In my time as an undergrad at the University of Illinois, I had been searching for opportunities to create a societal impact as I progressed in my education. Being a Global Food Security Intern has allowed me to create an immediate impact while allowing me to comfortably balance other aspects of my life. Increased global food demand paired with a depleting amount of available agricultural resources will only compound the issue of food insecurity.

​For as long as I can remember, I have been incrementally challenging myself where my curiosity can flourish. It led me to explore different career paths and discover my interests and what I want to do day in and day out. While this journey is still taking place, my acceptance into the Global Food Security Internship (GFSI) Program and my internship with the Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) has allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

My whole life I have lived in a suburban environment. When my family needed food, there was always a grocery nearby. While I knew that food insecurity was a world crisis, it was not an issue that I had experienced firsthand. I went on to pursue a degree in Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and was fortunate enough to work with the Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) and Erica Leles on their data team.

My experience working with ADMI this semester was extremely eye-opening. When I took on this eight-week internship in March, I knew it would be a challenge. The final semester of my senior year was already filled with exciting and time-consuming activities. This included another internship with the Champaign 5^th & Hill neighborhood rights campaign and a job working as a contact tracer with Champaign Urbana Public Health District.

Woah – you must have read the title of this blog post and thought, “Say what? Essential oils can kill bacteria?” Well, our Global Food Security Scholar Research Project – investigating the effectiveness of essential oils at inhibiting the growth of Salmonella in water – provides evidence to support this claim.

Freshman year can be extremely stressful, especially when you’re at such a huge school like the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My high school was relatively small compared to most, so the transition from 1,500 students to over 30,000 students during my freshman year was not easy at first. Being a senior now and having had time to grow accustomed to campus, I’ve learned a few things about college and campus that I wish I had known my freshman year.

You can make the campus smaller.

A recent news item reported a “digital divide” between urban and rural high school students in Illinois due to few computer science course offerings in schools outside Chicagoland. Given the state’s workforce development needs in this area (around 14,000 unfilled positions requiring computer skills at the time of the study), it is concerning that the educational gap not only exists, but is growing.

Greetings, and happy fall semester! Campus is abuzz with excitement as students, faculty, and staff re-engage in face-to-face activities. It is wonderful to hear “I-L-L I-N-I” again.

Over the summer of 2021, I was able to participate in a virtual internship in Cape Town, South Africa with VA Corps, where I collaborated with public health leaders and nonprofit organizations in the field of HIV/AIDs relief and education.

Although this wasn’t my original plan for the summer of 2021 (I would have preferred an in-person study abroad experience), I believe the circumstances that brought upon this experience were unchangeable and I found the program, nonetheless, to be extremely valuable to both my personal and academic aspirations.