Beyond the Classroom
Slideshow
This slideshow contains 5 slides that will change every 8 seconds. The first button is to play and pause the slideshow, followed by buttons to go to the previous slide, next slide, or choose individual slides.
Providing students with an opportunity to experience a professional conference in order to take learning beyond the classroom is a personal goal of Assistant Professor Gabrielle Plickert.
Plickert encourages her students, many of whom have never traveled out of state, to invest in attending a conference to broaden their experiences. What started this year as a group of seven students attending a conference has increased to over 30 students with interest growing.
The seven undergraduate students of AKD, the Sociology club, gained knowledge of the importance of research, networking, and the many different facets of the sociology discipline, all while experiencing what it’s like to travel.
“Attending professional conferences allows the students to gain a sense of what they might find really interesting and reflect on the importance of research and exposes them to different areas within criminology,” says Plickert.
Gaining so much from their first conference experience the seven students enthusiastically conveyed all they had learned to the other members of the sociology club sparking interest in their peers to attend the upcoming Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) conference.
With Plickert’s support, the club raised funds to send over 30 of their members to the 2019 PSA conference in March. Sociology student, Sara Lopez says, “I really wanted to encourage students to get out there and travel to conferences as an undergraduate, to get some exposure early on and take advantage of the opportunities Cal Poly Pomona offers you.”
Plickert takes pride in being able to provide students with extra learning opportunities to engage with sociology in practical way.