Martel's S/STEM TRAIN Blog (2/24)

This week has been extremely busy for me. I attended a meeting of the EIDC committee, a cross-college meeting to plan and draft a district-wide Tribal Land Acknowledgement, and a meeting between me, another student senator, and a member of the district team leading the 4-year degree programs at the MCCCD to collaborate on a 4-year degree survey to get student feedback on the degree offerings. I had to spend a significant amount of time working with the Presidential Search Committee at PC, and I have to attend a 5-hour meeting for this committee tomorrow. I also led a meeting of the Student Senate tonight. On top of this, I had to take an economics final and take several quizzes and projects in my classes, prepare for upcoming midterms in several of my classes, and fill out a number of college applications.

All of these activities made it difficult to conduct much research for my S/STEM TRAIN project this week. But, I did some additional reading on the logic of Aristotle and its connection to mathematics.

Hopefully, in the coming weeks, and especially once I've finished midterms, I'll have the ability to devote more energy to my research.

On a brighter note, this week I was accepted into the Critical Languages Institute at the Melikian Center at ASU. This is an accelerated foreign language summer program where I'll be studying 1st year Russian. I've been looking forward to hearing back from the program for several months and I'm very excited to have the chance to participate in this incredible program. I was also offered a substantial scholarship that will completely cover the expenses of the program. This week, I also received acceptance into an industrial assessments internship program at ASU. This STEM program helps to conduct environmental assessments on businesses throughout Phoenix to help them reduce their energy consumption and reduce their ecological footprint. I'm very excited for this program as well, as it will allow me to gain more experience working in a professional STEM environment while making a significant contribution to the fight against climate change. The program also offers its participants free housing on the ASU Tempe campus, which is another major bonus! 

Martel's S/STEM TRAIN Blog (2/17)

This week I did more research on the influence of Aristotle's logic in the history of mathematics, as well as the mathematics involved in the architecture of the Roman Empire. So far, I've learned a ton of surprising and counter-intuitive things about these topics. But, a lot of this research has left me with more questions than answers. So, over the coming week, I'll have to dig deeper into these subjects to gain a clearer picture of how to relate what I've learned to my research project.

This week, PC-CAN! (Climate Action Network) finalized a merger with the Sustainability club at PC. Since our clubs are both centered around the environment and share many of the same goals and outlook, we think our efforts can be magnified by working together. 

Below I have attached a new flyer I helped the club create to spread the word about our cause.

We meet every other Tuesday from 4-5pm, and you can find our meeting invite by scanning the QR code included.

Martel's S/STEM TRAIN Blog 2/10

This week I had the chance to meet with both Matt and Josh, and they've given me fantastic advice on how I should go about researching my project. Now I'm working to compile a short guide on the main points in Aristotle's logical system. About a year ago, I took an Intro to Logic philosophy class at Mesa CC, and the textbook we learned about the Aristotelean system was very systematic and easy to understand. Regrettably, I rented an online textbook for that class and no longer have a copy. But, after getting a refresher on some of the concepts, I'm confident I'll be able to formulate a solid summary of the main concepts after a bit more prep. This will ultimately help me to identify the aspects of his logic that might have influenced mathematics throughout history.

A few weeks ago, I created a meeting poll for the Student Senate to choose an additional regular monthly meeting date, doubling our number of meetings. At the meeting this week, we were able to nail down a time that works for most of our schedules. I think will be a really positive step for the committee since it will allow us to keep updated on each other's work throughout the month and work together more closely. Having more face-time with one another will also be very beneficial.

Martel's S-STEM Blog (2/3)

This was my first official week working as the producer of the STEAM Talks podcast, a project I'm really excited about. This season promises to be very exciting and will feature a number of important guests and topics. Some of the episodes will feature students talking about their own experiences. So, if you're interested in starring in any of the episodes, stay tuned for more news! 

I also started researching topics in the history of math and logic for my research project. This has been an interesting experience, which is bringing me into contact with many studies of the role of logic in cognition and psychology, as well as several other subjects. Tomorrow, I will meet with Matt to learn about research opportunities in statistics. 

The Student Senate has made major strides in publicizing our activities and role across the MCCCD colleges. One student senator began to reap the rewards of weeks of their hard work when they received approval from their college to publish several messages in faculty and student newsletters, and to broadcast them on television monitors across their campus, including one message about the student senate feedback form, and another about a district-wide 4-year degree program survey created by the Student Senate. This senator is also doing a lot of work to encourage and support the other student senators to 

We are working closely with administrators at the district to improve and popularize our 4-year degree program survey. Hopefully, the data we collect can help leaders at our college to learn valuable information about the 4-year degree programs. 

Martel's S-STEM Blog (1/27)

Over the past two weeks, I started several new classes and began attending a number of other regular meetings at PC. I'm just starting to get adjusted to the new schedule. This semester I'm taking a heavy course-load, with a lot of math classes, so I'm doing whatever I can to get ahead in those classes early in the semester. This week I led a meeting of the Student Senate where one of the members brought forward a number of exciting projects the student senate will begin working on in the coming weeks. One of the projects is to bring forward a proposal to the MCCCD administration requesting a scholarship be established for the Women's Rising organization. The male counterpart of this organization was already being offered a scholarship. But, there was no scholarship for the Women's group. One of the members of this group reached out to a Student Senator at one of the colleges to help correct this imbalance. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this effort. We are also working to send out surveys on all campuses that will be offering four-year degrees to get student input on the degrees being offered and the ones they would like to see in the future.

This week, I also created a virtual suggestion box for students to contact me about any issues, feedback, and concerns regarding their experiences here at PC. To advertise this suggestion box, I also created a flyer with a QR code that links to the Google Form survey. I'm creating similar forms for the Student Senators at the other colleges, as well as fliers to be distributed on the different campuses to help  advertise the forms. 

Feel free to share this flier widely on the campus and with your friends. I always try my best to address the concerns of all students at PC and to boldly act as their advocate in the Student Senate. Please consider filling out the form yourself. I would love to hear from all of you. 

I can also be reached at student.senator@phoenixcollege.edu.