International students are a significant percentage of the Bruin population. UCLA takes pride in its culturally diverse campus and has always been active in helping the international student body, especially with the help of the Dashew Center. Her Campus spoke with Morgan Neubert, Program Supervisor at the Dashew Center on her work in serving the international student community and how she manifests female empowerment in the workplace.
Her Campus: Before we start, can you tell me where you went to college, your graduation year and your major/minor?
Morgan Neubert: I went to UC Santa Barbara and I double majored in History and Education. I graduated in 2011. Then I went to grad school in 2016. I went to University College of London in the UK and I did a Master’s in Higher and Professional Education and I graduated with that in 2017.
HC: How long have you been involved with Dashew?
MN: I started Dashew in April 2018.
HC: What’s your current involvement or job title at Dashew?
MN: I started in April as a Program Coordinator. Basically planning programs and events for international students and scholars at UCLA. A lot of those programs are to create intercultural interaction between domestic, American-born children with international students and scholars. At the end of June, my boss left so I took over interim as the Program Supervisor for the programming unit at this office. Then I was officially chosen for that position around a month ago. So now I am the Program Supervisor, basically meaning I’m overseeing the programming unit so I have one Program Coordinator right now and I will be hiring another Program Coordinator. I do similar things as being a Program Coordinator but at a higher level. I make sure all the events and programs are running, you know, budgets and making sure that we plan out in advance — kind of the overarching of our programming.
HC: Did you have any extracurricular activities in school that helped get you to where you are today?
MN: Yeah! At UC Santa Barbara I worked for the Daily Nexus, which is the newspaper like the Daily Bruin. I wrote the food column, did special issues like “Best of UCSB,” and also sold and created ads for the newspaper to local businesses. I also worked for the programming board and planned all the events and programs for the student body, kind of like ASUCLA. They called it AS Program Board and we created concerts, movie nights and things like that. Lastly, I was apart of the UCSB Cheerleading Team and I played intramural soccer.
HC: Coming back to your experience here, what’s your favorite memory working at Dashew?
MN: I don’t have one memory. Honestly, a lot of it is the ambassadors. I think just in general, hearing everything that you guys want to do. Even just our meetings, like being in a room with so many student leaders from so many different countries and just working with them. It’s so cool to see the things that they are passionate about and trying to help foster everything that I can to support their ideas is my favorite part. It’s like “we can do anything, we’ll figure it out!”
HC: So the phrase “global connection” appears a lot on the Dashew website. What does this term mean to you and how do you think you can help make it happen?
MN: I think on a personal level, global connection has been a huge part of my life. From when I was young, I studied in France when I was in high school through a Rotary exchange. Then I studied abroad when I was at UCSB in Germany, then I did my Master’s abroad and I’ve also taught in Tanzania. So I feel like all of these experiences — putting myself in a different culture or interacting with different cultures, has really helped me grow as a person, to learn more about myself and also to open my eyes to so many other things. So I want to do the same thing for people at UCLA. International students AND domestic students. Creating those cross-cultural interactions is creating global connection, right? Hong Kong doesn’t seem so different because I know this person now and I’m like, “Oh! I feel more connected and more understanding of others because I’ve made these global connections even if it’s just right here at UCLA.” So I think I try to do that by bringing people together. A lot of the time, students are not in the same location. You’re not necessarily going to meet someone from Vietnam or from wherever unless there are events or programs that are putting you together. So I think that is step one.
Then step two is bringing people together with things that they actually like to do. Everyone loves food. No matter what country you’re from, you’re going to like food, so let’s put you together to eat food and say, “Oh, my country eats food like this and this!” And I think we try to do certain programs that ‘force’ and encourage students to interact. For example, we played human bingo at the Ambassador Meet & Greet where students got a bingo sheet and would fill it out if they met someone who spoke a different language, or if they met someone from a particular country. I think that supporting you to make you meet others is the basis of a lot of the work that we do.
HC: Since Her Campus is a magazine for college women and you’ve studied and worked in a university environment as a woman, we’d like to know what female empowerment means to you.
MN: I have always felt empowered personally, I think because I grew up in an all-female family (one sister and a group of single moms). And so for us, it’s always been like “females can do anything just as much as males can do,” and I’ve grown up with that just being normal for me. I know other people or other females didn’t have that, and maybe they weren’t encouraged to do things based on if they’re male or female. But for me, since I’ve always felt very empowered as a female, I aim to help empower other females with leadership opportunities and things that can build your self-confidence to empower you to, therefore, empower others and bring up females in general. As I said, I’ve never had a personal experience where I felt less than because I was a woman, but I know that it does happen. So the more you can support each other, the more you can empower each other.
HC: You mentioned earlier that you were involved in a lot of organizations when you were in school, and you held multiple leadership positions. What advice would you give to the college women at UCLA who want to take on leadership roles?
MN: I think the big thing is having confidence in yourself. There’s no reason that you can’t do something because you are a female. And I think confidence makes other people feel confident in you, right? So I think the biggest thing is to believe in yourself. If you don’t know something, you’re not expected to know everything. Be honest about it and say, “Wait, let me get back to you. Let me learn more about that topic.” It is totally okay, and that doesn’t lessen you by any means. Having confidence in everyday life helps in every aspect.
HC: Would you like to share some of the events that we can expect from Dashew or the Ambassador Program for the rest of the school year?
MN: The Ambassador Program has a lot going on in January. There’s going to be a one-stop resume workshop in partnership with the Career Center, which is actually the night before a big career night. We’re going to have a bunch of employers that are going to come meet international students, and they’re specifically there to hire international students. Also, the ambassadors are going to do the Food Fair at the end of the month, which as I said, food always brings people together. We’re going to see Wicked, travel to Long Beach in February and we’re having a Superbowl party. Also, Study Halls are a good place to study and we’re looking to expand on those. We’re also doing an art and writing collective which is going to be happening every other Wednesday in the Dashew lobby. We have all kinds of paint and art supplies and hopefully, in the end, we can put together an international student project that would come out once a year written by international students for international students.
Be sure to follow the Dashew Center’s Facebook and Instagram pages, as well as the International Student Ambassadors for more upcoming events!