Collaboration and shared leadership imply that influences can arise from any direction in a group. This means that anyone in a group has the potential to be the leader at least from certain perspective and to some extent. As an IAS student at University of Washington Bothell, I was given many opportunities to task and develop my collaboration and shared leadership abilities by learning to work with other students with diverse background to identify dimensions of a project, generate and refine ideas, and pursue specific goals without losing a sense of the whole. Being a Community Psychology major student, I have gained many experiences on absorbing and producing knowledge that can inform social policies, social service work, helping practices, and community change by working collaboratively across diverse participants. Out of all my academic accomplishments during my journey at UW Bothell, there are three artifacts of mine can represent the transformation of me from independent worker to collaborative worker and giving me confidence in working efficiently with colleagues across differences.

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        The first artifact was a group paper from my BIS380 Bioethics class instructed by Professor Laura Harkewicz in Winter 2021, in which me and my group members were tasked to discuss and evaluate different versions of the ethical dilemma’s scenario, consider and apply the four primary ethical principles (justice, beneficence, respect for autonomy/persons, non-maleficence), then generate group decision on solving such dilemmas. During our group decision-making process, we were able to not only keep track of the benefits and limitations of each theory, principle, or text considered, but also keep track of the confusion and conflicts between group members involved in our discussion. One of the most important academic skills that I have adopted from this assignment is that collaborative working means to ensure every participant has the equal opportunity to fulfil their desired roles and build trust upon each other.

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       The second artifact was the Research Cluster Paper from my BIS313 Issues in Media Study class instructed by Professor Ron Krabill in Autumn 2021, in which me and my group members were tasked to explore a specific human rights issue (Death Penalty) and the public contestation around it in more detail, and devise at least one possible intervention, then facilitate the knowledge we have gained on the topic to the rest of class through group presentation at the end of the quarter. One of the most important academic skills that I have adopted from this project is working together as group on a serious research topic. I feel very grateful that everyone in our study group was cooperative and respectful. During our group working process, everyone was fully aware of their responsibility and was able to spend enough time and effort at their best. In this assignment, we all have had the chance to rotate the role from a group speaker to a group navigator both during and outside of class, and to collect and analyze everyone’s idea for the final research cluster paper and group presentation, and make sure every group member is satisfied with our group activities.

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        The third artifact was the Stanford Prison Study from my BIS 225 Social Psychology class in Spring 2021. In this piece I was tasked to study one of the most known psychology experiment Stanford Prison Study conducted by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. In this assignment, I was given the opportunity to identify, explore and understand more about the common psychological concepts in a collaboration and shared leadership scenario. By connecting to what I have learned from the class, I was able to identify the social psychological concepts acted out among the prisoners, guards, and the power of the situation, and understand how the power of the situation (i.e., a prison) influences group dynamics. For instance, the term social loafing which refers to the phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when working alone. The term groupthink refers to the phenomenon that the need for agreement takes priority over accuracy in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. This study demonstrates how easily an individual can be manipulated by the environment, and vice versa. It is important to keep reminding ourselves the original purpose before starts our actions and during the process of group work.