The Office of Health and Wellness<\/a> (OHW), Project Connect provides students a space to deepen their connections with one another by working on a five-week project of their choosing that culminates in a group celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGroups of three to five students meet once a week for a student facilitator-led meal where they share with each other through broad icebreaker questions and work on their group project. Previous projects have included organizing a kite-making workshop, hosting a mid-day slumber party and a gardening workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Student leaders and facilitators Nilay Pangrekar \u201924 and Kayleah Tsai \u201924 have been a part of the program since fall 2021, when students returned to campus following pandemic-necessitated remote study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBeing a first year online and not really knowing anyone, this new form of interaction really excited me,\u201d Tsai said. \u201cIt seemed pretty simple; we meet for one hour a week, and I made new friends out of it. Covid definitely made me feel a little isolated, so I was looking for any form to connect with other Mudders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pangrekar said he was inspired to become more involved and moved into a leadership role in Project Connect because of the challenges he experienced when trying to build new relationships across campus after remote study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think because of COVID, the class of 2024 felt cliquey,\u201d Pangrekar said. \u201cI wanted to stay involved and create a welcoming environment, so I moved from being a student participant to a student facilitator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pangrekar and Tsai said they are appreciative that Harvey Mudd recognized that the school needed a program like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is really reassuring to know that this program has backing from the school,\u201d Tsai said. \u201cThey think it\u2019s useful, they\u2019re willing to fund it and I think this program is pretty useful to all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Project Connect culminated its fall 2023 programming with a picnic on the lawn in front of the R. Michael Shanahan Center for Teaching and Learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Project Connect has helped over 130 students connect over the three-year span of the program at Harvey Mudd and continues to grow each semester. Students can sign up by emailing facilitators or OHW directly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Project Connect, a program that helps Harvey Mudd College students build new friendships across campus, celebrated three years of strengthening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[967,30],"class_list":["post-12682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-feed","category-students"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12682"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12695,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12682\/revisions\/12695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}