 All right, so we can go ahead and get started. So this will be recorded so people coming and going and also be able to watch afterwards. So I can start by just introducing myself. So my name is Ava Lunapuro Keegan. I'm the peer advisor for computer science and I'm a junior in computer science, engineering. And then if you want to go ahead and choose yourself, maybe a little bit about like your background and what your role is in first gen. So I'm a senior setting like to engineering. I have been with the first generation engineer student organization. For about four years now, I currently serve as the co-president of operations. Perfect. Okay, that's awesome. And then I was wondering if you could talk about kind of what for engineers is for what type of majors and people are in there and what the goal of your organization is. Sure, so first generation engineers is really for everybody regardless of major, as long as you're a STEM student or part of the co we do is we provide resources to you guys are help students academically, professionally. And really try and make the most of their time here at U of M and kind of fill in the gaps that might come with being first in student and not really knowing how to navigate for your institution. Great. And then can you talk a little bit about what type of events that you usually host? And then if there aren't any specific dates or when they usually happen. Yeah, we normally host some mainstays like here in the fall. We have a Halloween movie nights coming up this week on Thursday. We have a first transgiving that we do to kind of help students that aren't really going home, kind of create a community among the first year student. But beyond that, we normally just hold academic and corporate events on a regular basis. So we have corporate events going on this month or this week with Tesla next week. And we have an academic or academic major going on next month, November 11, where students at a grad level can come and talk between each other about different majors and meet professors to hopefully advance themselves academically. And then you mentioned about a mentorship program. Could you talk a little bit more about what that is like? Yeah. So the mentorship program is just a way to kind of build on the community of first gen students here at U of M. As first gen students kind of go through their four years here at U of M, we all kind of tend to learn a lot of different things about how to manage everything. And that kind of experience is so valuable to helping students that are coming into the university for their first time. So the peer mentorship program is really just a way of using the community of first gen students here on campus and trying to pull together a collective knowledge to help incoming freshmen or sophomores or just any first gen that really needs to ask questions and find a person in a way, account of how to solve a problem, learn how to do that and provide that resource. Okay, nice. That's awesome. And then I also saw that you guys have had a new scholarship program before and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what the scholarship program is like and if you will be having it again in two years. Yeah, definitely. The scholarship program is new. I think we've only known it about two times now. The scholarship is geared towards first gen students who display financial need that the student organization can try and fill in. So we normally have an application process that starts sometime next semester. It's available for sophomores, juniors, seniors and grad students and a lot of different things from financial needs to performing academically play into how we kind of disperse the scholarships. Before I think we only started with three, these past, for the first time we did it, we only started with three. This past time we were able to expand it to about five. And I think that we have a pretty good chance of expanding to more students this year. So I'm really excited to be able to go through that process and provide those kinds of scholarships. If you want to hear more about the process, just make sure to follow our Instagram because we will be one thing when we start rolling out like college of applications. That sounds like an amazing opportunity. That's great to hear. And then before you had mentioned about some professional opportunities, maybe some corporate mixers, things like that. Could you talk a little bit more about those professional opportunities and when you have them and what members can gain from that? Yeah, definitely. There are a lot of our corporate connections. We provide students a means to talk one on one with different recruiters and just representatives from companies that they may be interested in meeting. So a lot of it is kind of setting up just these opportunities for students to forward their career by talking to people from companies from a variety of industries. We have Google, we have Tesla, we have Bloomberg, we have Apple, Gartner, Harman. Just a lot of different companies that have shown a lot of interest in kind of coming and talking to our students. And me on that, we do offer professional development help that can come in the form of holding workshops for people looking to improve their residence, holding energy practice sessions, either between us and resources here in Memphis, or with companies directly since they want to come out and hold those kinds of events. So it's even more helpful if it's a big one for me that you are really interested in applying to and working for in the future. So that's really kind of the realm we provide students the opportunity to kind of ease their way into their professional careers forward. That's awesome. That sounds like a lot of really great opportunities for professional development. And then from there, too, I wanted to ask kind of about what type of leadership opportunities there are. I saw that you guys have a Student Advisory Board as well. Are there more things like that? Or can you talk a little bit about what that is? Yeah, of course. The Student Advisory Board is kind of the entry level for anybody looking to just kind of become part of the leadership for the organization. And it's not at all like you have to get voted in. You just sign up and we give you our system like a Slack and we start communications with you to get you more involved with the applications of the organization itself. So you come in with everybody on the executive floor, you hear about the different stuff that we're going on and you're able to find where you see yourself putting it in the organization from the leadership standpoint. It's a great way to just learn more about how the organization works and get a little bit of knowledge of how to get into these different events that we are going on and all the different operations that we have going on at any time throughout the year. But it's also really great if you intend to find your spot in the executive board because this is a really good time to learn kind of a little bit before you kind of jump in to putting yourself in for a moment on that position. That's awesome. That sounds like a really great opportunity as well. And then if you could talk a little bit about how students can join if there's a specific process you have to do, or if they can just attend events to join what kind of events you have coming up. You mentioned that at the beginning. You talk about maybe what the newest event is with that. Yeah, for sure. Honestly, it just reaching out to us is a good way to do it. If you guys do are interested in coming to the student advisory board and you see us at an event. That is a really good way to just reach out to us and say we would love to become more of a leader in the organization. How could I do that? Then that's fantastic. Then we can reach out and help you join the student advisory board. So it's just that simple. That's awesome. And then with that too, is there a specific way that you should engineers the whole program itself? Or is it the same kind of way just attending reaching out? Just attending and reaching out. The idea of our events is not necessarily something that everyone has to go to it's more just what you feel speaks to you the most what you think you can get the most out of. And through that, you know, we're able to meet with all these different people who really truly get the most out of everything. It doesn't have to be every single event. It just has to be wherever you can speak to the most. And if you don't see a lot of these things to you that they will just be wrong. That's great. And then to wrap it up, I just wanted to ask you kind of what is your favorite thing about first gen engine? Okay. My favorite thing about first gen engine is probably knowing that what me and this the amazing people that I work with on the student advisory board and the executive board are doing does help people or make their academic career before the professional career. Just feel a little bit more comfortable navigating university. And if we can even like provide a school amount of relief in some area of just going through university and being a control blazer as a first gen student, then that's everything to me. That's awesome. That sounds like there's a lot of great opportunities in first gen. There's a lot of professional leadership, social opportunities. And I'm really happy that we really have this conversation and talk even though there was some technical difficulties, I think that's a great talk. And so this will be recorded here. And I appreciate you so much for joining us and everyone else for joining us. I hope you all have a good rest of your day. Thank you.