About My Practium

The McBride Honors Program requires a practicum to be completed to receive the Minor in Public Affairs. It emphasizes experiential education, cultural immersion, and course design. Students must first design an experiential educational opportunity worthy of three McBride credits, and then do it. The goal of the course is for you to pursue a worthwhile experiential learning opportunity – that is, to “learn by doing.”

For more information on the McBride Practicum, check out https://mcbride.mines.edu/practicum/.

I chose to work with the Title IX office on campus to implement restorative justice practices at Mines. I worked with them during the summer of 2020.

The Title IX office hopes that bringing restorative justice to Mines can help how we handle Title IX issues and help to improve the processes and the experiences of others. Students that experience gender-based discrimination struggle with a lot, and I hope that finding a way to implement restorative justice at Mines can offer more support to them as they go through the process of healing and recovery.

I gained knowledge of what goes into implementing changes on the Mines campus. I have been considering going into student affairs, and I think this experience gave me a better idea of what that would entail and if it’s right for me.

I designed my practicum with 4 learning objectives:

1. Understand how the Title IX office at Mines functions to provide support for students.

2. Understand the purpose of restorative justice on campuses and in the context of Title IX initiatives.

3. Understand how new policies are implemented on college campuses.

4. Understand how to tailor policy for specific communities.

And 3 outcomes:

1. Can research effectively to find relevant information in a timely manner.

2. Understand college policy-creating procedures.

3. Can communicate effectively through writing and presenting to get the implementation plan approved by school officials.

My objectives and outcomes include understanding what goes into policy-making on college campuses. My practicum experience allows me to gain firsthand experience in policy-making through working with Title IX to implement restorative justice on the Mines campus. Many master’s programs for student affairs include a practicum experience, often through an internship in a student affairs office. This is practically what I will be doing by working closely with Title IX and helping them create the new procedures and documents for restorative justice on campus.

I believe that my chosen practicum is a good experiential learning experience because it provides hands-on experience (creating the implementation plan) and includes metacognitive thinking (journaling throughout the process).

My practicum has 3 assignments to be completed: before, during, and after.

The Before Assignment involved researching restorative justice and writing an annotated bibliography, as well as creating a preliminary schedule for my practicum. This helped me prepare for the work I would be doing to complete my practicum.

The During Assignment involved journaling my days working on my practicum. The journal allowed me to reflect on my experience.

The After Assignment involved helping create a Facilitation Guide for trained restorative justice facilitators to use during the restorative justice practices.