Graduate Assistant Spotlight: Sylvia Vivian Boguniecki
My name is Sylvia, and I am currently an MSEd student within Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy concentrating in Learning Sciences. I earned a Bachelor’s in statistics and psychology and a minor in data science from Northwestern in June of 2024. As a first-generation, low-income student, I have always been interested in the roles that emotional regulation, mentorship, and academic motivation had on other first-gen students when starting to navigate the college system. This connects to my role as a counselor for the Summer Academic Workshop at Northwestern where I hosted workshops about financial wellness and spread awareness about resources that could benefit students in their academic journeys.
Studying at Northwestern opened my eyes to my passion for education. Throughout the years, I have worked as a freelance tutor, an intern at the Museum of Mathematics, an administrative and research aide at the Northwestern-Evanston Education Research Alliance within Northwestern’s Office of Community Education Partnerships, an administrative aide at the Baxter Center for Science Education, a math tutor for Tutor Corps within Chicago Public Schools , and even a math curriculum lead for the non-profit STEAM & Dream. My goal is to support students in any capacity, whether it be through developing curriculum and academic materials or by working with them in a more personal setting.
With my STEM background, I align my work more with the math field as I want to help students fully acknowledge and utilize their STEM potential by building their confidence from the ground up. Many students, especially now, believe that they are either a “math person” or not. However, I have, and will always remain, under the impression that we are all mathematically inclined because math is all around us. Therefore, there is a need to inspire K-12 students to persist in their STEM courses to achieve the goals they set out for themselves which cannot be achieved without a support system and a fundamentally sound academic curriculum. As I look ahead, I plan to work toward becoming a secondary math teacher with a Polish Bilingual and ESL endorsement to support students in their mathematical journeys.