Name: Sonia Doshi
Year: Class of 2016
Major: Bachelor of Science in Information – User Experience Design
Hometown: Long Grove, IL
Fun Fact: I jumped off the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere during my senior year of high school!
Her Campus: Can you tell us a bit about your work with the Healthy Minds Network?
Sonia Doshi: I am a research study coordinator for the Tinyshifts project at the Healthy Minds Network, a mental health research team on campus focused on young adults and adolescents. We create brief video interventions that teach coping skills to college students. Our slogan is “tiny shifts lead to big changes” because we focus on brief interventions like watching a video that could potentially have long term impacts in the way that you manage your stress every day. My job is to run research studies to test how effective those videos are as mental health educational tools for college students. In addition to that, I have been actively involved with a program called AthletesConnected in partnership with the UM Depression Center and the Athletics Department. The purpose of this program is to increase mental health awareness and access to support for the student athlete community on campus. Alongside these projects, I founded a student organization called the Healthy Minds Coalition, which brings together a diverse group of student leaders across campus to increase programming for mental health advocacy, both nationally and at Michigan. The two major events that we organize annually are the Tinyshifts National Film Competition, which calls on college students around the country to create and submit a short two minute film about how they cope with stress for cash prizes and the Mental Health Monologues, which is a free show where students powerfully share their experiences dealing with mental illnesses in the form of spoken word, poetry, or rant.
HC: Congratulations on winning the The JED Foundation’s 2015 Jerry Greenspan Student Voice for Mental Health Award! Can you tell us a bit more about it? How did it feel to be the 2015 recipient?
SD: Thank you so much! The Jerry Greenspan Student Voice of Mental Health Award annually honors a college student around the country that is reducing prejudice, raising awareness, and increasing help seeking on their college campus. It felt incredibly surreal to be chosen for the award. The Jed Foundation has given me the opportunity to advocate for mental health on a national scale, which has been a huge honor. There are so many students across the country, especially at Michigan, who are increasingly doing inspiring work to raise mental health awareness and reduce stigma on their own campuses, and I’m just excited to be a part of that movement and to be advocating for this cause.
HC: Tell us a bit about your role as the President of the School of Information Bachelor’s Association.
SD: I am part of the first class in the Bachelor of Science in Information (BSI) program, focusing in User Experience Design. It’s a new degree that has three tracks: UX Design, Information Analytics, and Social Media (starting Fall 2016). I have absolutely loved it. All of my courses are so collaborative, project-based, and practically applicable. The BSI is a technical and liberal arts degree that studies the intersection of people, information, and technology. Because we are such a close-knit community and have a big hand in shaping the direction of the program, a lot of us were looking for a way to further connect socially, professionally, and academically, which is why we founded the School of Information Bachelor’s Association (SIBA). The purpose of SIBA is to strengthen our cohort by offering more social and networking opportunities, connect with the UMSI community at large through professional and academic events, and to collect feedback about the BSI program overall. Right now, my role has been to kick off the organization, begin organizing these types of opportunities for our cohort, and plan for the organization’s sustainability. Moving forward, I’m excited to see how SIBA will make the experiences of our cohort and future cohorts even better in the BSI.
HC: You’re also the President of the professional co-ed technology fraternity, Kappa Theta Pi (or should we say KTPresident). Can you tell us a bit more about this group?
SD: Kappa Theta Pi is a professional technology fraternity on campus. We are a group of students from all different majors and backgrounds that come together because we are excited about tech – developing it, designing it, and talking about it. We have six different committees within our fraternity that work to provide technical, social, and professional experiences for our members. KTP is my family. I have never met a group of people who are more passionate, interesting, and driven than I have with KTP. It has been amazing to be able to support and expand this group’s capacity for change on campus.
HC: Sounds awesome! Anything else you’d like to add?
SD: First, I’d like to plug that the Tinyshifts National Film Competition is going on right now, and if you are interested in signing up, please email tinyshifts@umich.edu. For anyone interested in the BSI program or rushing KTP next semester, feel free to reach out to me, and I’d be happy to tell you more about either of them! Finally, to any students that are struggling or in need of support, know that you are not alone and that college is difficult, but there are people who care for you. Please feel free to reach out to me or find help at http://www.campusmindworks.org/. Go Blue!