Diversity & Equity
Through my coursework in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, I have come to understand diversity and equity not as abstract ideals, but as practices that shape how knowledge is created and shared. My most meaningful learning has taken place in collaborative environments where cultural difference, ethical responsibility, and shared leadership are enacted through creative work. Two projects in particular, Halal Harvest: Food, Faith and Storytelling and Space SnapChat, demonstrate how I have developed these capacities across humanistic inquiry and design practice.
Halal Harvest: Food, Faith and Storytelling was a class-wide public food festival that explored Muslim cultures through everyday culinary practices. Rather than approaching Islam through political discourse or historical abstraction, our class used food as a culturally grounded entry point rooted in lived experience, ritual, and community. This approach challenged stereotypes by inviting audiences to encounter Muslim cultures through taste, storytelling, and shared space. For me, the project reshaped my understanding of equity, as food functioned as a cultural archive carrying histories of faith, migration, and regional variation in an accessible and nonjudgmental way.
Within the Middle East group, my primary responsibility focused on design and production. I contributed to the conceptual development and physical construction of a miniature Kaaba installation, which required multiple iterations and coordination across in-class and extracurricular meetings. When our installation partially broke down shortly before the public event, I completed the final version independently at home to ensure our group’s work could still be presented. This experience demonstrated shared leadership in practice, where responsibility and adaptability mattered more than formal authority. Presenting the work to a public audience reinforced the ethical dimension of collaboration and the importance of cultural care.
While Halal Harvest grounded my understanding of diversity and equity in cultural practice, Space SnapChat allowed me to apply collaborative leadership in a design context. Space SnapChat was a high-fidelity group prototype created for Introduction to Interaction Design that imagined communication between astronauts on Mars and their families on Earth. The project addressed extreme distance, time delay, and emotional isolation. Our group worked without a single designated leader, distributing responsibilities across research, persona development, interface design, accessibility, and ethics.
Collaboration shaped every stage of the design process. We analyzed existing platforms, developed a proto-persona, and refined our interface through prototype testing. Feedback revealed accessibility and visual hierarchy issues that none of us fully recognized individually. Through discussion, we revised color contrast, improved navigation, and addressed ethical concerns such as data transparency and encryption. This project reinforced my understanding that effective leadership often involves listening, synthesis, and collective problem-solving rather than directive control.
Together, these two projects reflect my growth as a collaborative and equity-minded practitioner. Whether working through cultural storytelling in a public art context or designing ethical digital interfaces, I have learned that diversity and collaboration are central to meaningful creative work. I now approach interdisciplinary projects with greater awareness of power, access, and responsibility, and with confidence in shared leadership environments.