2020 – Erik Laucks
I have come to understand the Lafayette ideal as someone who acts with an intention that is empathetic, persistent, and community oriented. As I have grown and developed over these four years at Lafayette, I have tried my best to live with this intention. The prime example of this comes from my work with Refugee Action. Over the last three years, I have worked with a number of families to assist in their resettlement in whatever ways I could. Through this, I have learned that the only way to truly work with people and communities effectively is to act with a profound and constant sense of empathy and understanding. I have also become more persistent from countless interactions with landlords, employers, and government agencies, who have a knack for making things a little bit more difficult than they may need to be. The complex work of resettlement is impossible without the support of our community, both at Lafayette and in the broader Lehigh Valley. I have taken these lessons into my other work on campus and in my life.
My experiences in Kaleidoscope have been shaped by empathy, as I have dedicated myself to understanding people and always wanting to learn more. My experiences in the Course Scheduling Committee required tremendous persistence to navigate the intricate and sometimes opposing needs of the Lafayette community in order to create a course schedule that better facilitates the academic mission of the College. My experiences in the Food Recovery Network are rooted in a desire to give back to the community and to help those in need. I believe that these tenets are meaningful in all contexts, from academic to athletic to campus to community, and thus are the components of the Lafayette ideal.
Other Information:
Academic Activity/Award 1:
Marquis Scholarship|4|Recipients of a Marquis award display the Marquis’ ideals of global citizenship, scholarly pursuits, leadership, and concern for others.
Academic Activity/Award 2:
Dean’s List|4|I have made the Dean’s List every semester that I have been at Lafayette.
Academic Activity/Award 3:
Excel Scholar ‐ Department of Computer Science|1|During the summer between my first and second years, I worked with Professor Liew in Computer Science on a project that studied signal cascade modeling. I worked on creating a database of known models and a technique to create more complex models.
Academic Activity/Award 4:
ATTIC Tutor|1.5|I served as a drop‐in tutor for the Computer Science Department during my first and second years.
Academic Activity/Award 5:
Pi Mu Epsilon Honor Society|2|Pi Mu Epsilon is the national mathematics honor society. I was inducted in Spring 2018.
Academic Activity/Award 6:
Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society|2|Upsilon Pi Epsilon is the international honor society for the computing and information disciplines. I was inducted in Spring 2018.
Academic Activity/Award 7:
Association for Computing Machinery|3|Participated as a member in ACM during my first three years. I served as Vice President my sophomore year, which involved organizing meetings and events and coordinating the Computer Science Departments drop‐in tutoring program. I also participated in several panels and presentations through ACM.
Campus Service Activity /Award 1:
Kaleidoscope|3|Kaleidoscope is a social justice peer education group that aims to educate the Lafayette community about the Big 8 (race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, age, and socioeconomic status) and facilitate discussions about a wide range of topics. We hold regular events about various social justice topics, as well as facilitating a workshop during Orientation, working with Admissions to facilitate Our Beloved Community and Prologue, and working to create and facilitate discussions with a number of other organizations on campus, including the Gateway Career Center, the Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship, and several Greek organizations. I have served as one of the co‐coordinators of Kaleidoscope for the last two years.
Campus Service Activity /Award 2:
ISA|2|I have been a member of the International Students’ Association for the last two years, in which I have attended meetings, participated in and attended events, and helped with various tasks. I have also served as the International Students’ Advising Driver and Tech Assistant.
Campus Service Activity /Award 3:
International Orientation Team|2|I have been a member of the Logistics Team during International Orientation for the last two years. I assisted with airport pickups, room preparation, and event organization and became a resource and a friend for incoming international students.
Campus Service Activity /Award 4:
College Wide Course Scheduling Committee|1|I have served on the College Wide Course Scheduling Committee for the last year. We have been gathering information, meeting with different constituencies of campus, having regular meetings to attempt to develop a new course schedule that meets the needs of all members of the Lafayette community as the College continues through the expansion.
Campus Service Activity /Award 5:
Hoff Award: Service Above Self|1|The Service Above Self award is given to a student who best exemplifies the qualities of caring and concern for others through participation in service activities. I am grateful to have been the recipient of this award during my junior year.
Community Service 1:
Refugee Action|3.5|During the spring of my first year, following the now‐infamous travel ban, I joined a group of students in fundraising for the local refugee resettlement agency and raise awareness about the global refugee crisis. At the end of the semester, we officially became a club and continue to expand. We have held a number of events related to the refugee crisis: we have brought filmmakers, musicians, and comedians to perform, facilitated discussions, and hosted community dinners. In November of 2017, we began sponsoring our first refugee family, and have since sponsored several more families. We provide a range of service to our families, including, but not limited to, handling governmental paperwork, setting up medical appointments, enrolling children in school, finding employment, finding housing, and having regular tutoring sessions. We also provide interpretation services and furnish the apartments of all newly arriving families, including those whom we are not sponsoring. In total, we have provided assistance and/or sponsorship to 12 families. I served as the VIce President my sophomore year, the Government Chair, Medical Chair, and Logistics Chair my junior year, and the Case Management Committee Chair my senior year.
Community Service 2:
Food Recovery Network|3.5|During my first year, a few of my friends and I started working on a program to have students “donate” the value of their unused meal swipes to local food pantries, which ultimately developed into a food recovery program. We began by taking leftover food from Lower Farinon down to Safe Harbor, but eventually grew into a program that recovers food from several dining halls, recovers salad bar scraps for animals in the biology labs, and performs regular waste audits of Upper Farinon and Marquis. We have since recovered thousands of pounds of food and donated it to local food pantries. I served as the President for one year and as the Vice President for one year.
Community Service 3:
ASB: New Beginnings|1|I participated in an Alternative School Break trip this year entitled “New Beginnings”, which examined the global refugee crisis and the United States’ refugee resettlement program. Over the interim, we traveled to Atlanta, GA to volunteer with the International Rescue Committee for a week to learn more about these issues and to provide support wherever we could.
Community Service 4:
Mental Miles|2|I assisted in the coordination and implementation of the Mental Miles 5k for two years, which involved gathering volunteers, marketing, handling logistics, and working on a timing system for the race.
Athletic Activity /Award 1:
Ultimate Frisbee|2|I was a member of the Club Ultimate Frisbee team for two years, which involved attending practices and tournaments.
Special Interest Activity/Award 1:
GoPeer|3|During the spring of my first year, I began working on a business idea with two other Lafayette students. We eventually started a business called GoPeer, which is an online tutoring platform that hires college students to tutor K‐12 students. We have participated in several business accelerators, received funding from a group of investors, and have provided thousands of hours of tutoring to hundreds of families around the country.
Special Interest Activity/Award 2:
Apperture|1|Following a hackathon at the University of Pennsylvania, I worked on a project with two of my peers called Apperture, which was a social media location‐based photo sharing app. We continued working on the app, growing it to have a small, but active, user base.
Special Interest Activity/Award 3:
LLC/Monroe Neighborhood Resident|3|I have lived in the African House for the last three years. Our house aims to learn more about various topics related to different countries and cultures in Africa.
Special Interest Activity/Award 4:
Pep Band|4|I have been a member of the Pep Band for the last four years, in which I play the baritone. The Pep Band plays at the Lafayette home football and basketball games, as well as performing halftime shows and performing at other campus wide events such as Family Weekend and Block Party.
Special Interest Activity/Award 5:
Lafayette Swing Dance|1|I was a member of the Swing Dance club during my sophomore year, during which I was in a performance at the Lafayette Dance Showcase.
Special Interest Activity/Award 6:
Cryptography Competition|3|Every year, the Math Department hosts a cryptography competition in which teams of students compete to decode a series of clues in the shortest amount of time possible. My team came in first place in each of the three years we competed.
Special Interest Activity/Award 7:
IDEAL Center Business Pitch Competition Winner|1|During my sophomore year, I competed in the IDEAL (now Dyer) Center’s Business Pitch Competition, and with my teammates from Apperture, we came in first place.