Laura Salazar
The Value of Adaptation
Adjusting to a new environment is already a challenging experience, but doing so while pursuing higher education takes that challenge to an exponential degree. How is one supposed to keep a consistent schedule while their body is trying to adjust to a much colder climate? Or memorize formulas and equations while adjusting to a brand new culture? It’s an impossibly tall order, but that’s exactly why international students are so valuable to any campus.
Adaptation and learning go hand-in-hand, creating an ouroboros of expertise feeds into a cycle that Laura Salazar is taking a step further as a Learning Assistant. Through this program she is embracing and sharing the adaptations she’s learned to help others learn and grow in kind.
Originally from Bogotá, Columbia, Salazar was inspired to pursue a degree in biomedical engineering when her mother was diagnosed with a cardiovascular disease. Wishing to help her and encouraged by local doctors, she pursued an education that ultimately led her to the U. “I have witnessed firsthand how technological advancements can transform communities,” Salazar explains, elaborating further that “I’m aiming to create biomedical devices, different diagnostic methods and innovative interventions that would have a significant influence on the care of communities with different heart conditions.“
Of course, it’s hard to do that while learning complicated topics like physics and biology via a second language, but Salazar was able to adjust and thrive through interactions with her class’s learning assistants. After some encouragement by them to join the program herself and inspired by her professor Claudia De Grandi (who hails from Italy), she became De Grandi’s LA to help other students adjust like she did.
“It’s helped me realize that learning and teaching is all about strategy,” Salazar shares. “Like, maybe a student doesn’t understand a subject when the professor first teaches it. It doesn’t mean they can’t understand it. They just need a different approach, a different strategy, and when we find the strategy that works for a new person we learn more too!”
In Laura Salazar’s opinion, experiences like working as a Learning Assistant is something that every science student should do. We learn when we teach, and by interacting with so many students and learning so many strategies, she is naturally building her ability to approach scientific problems from multiple angles throughout her future career. New environments foster new growth, and just as Laura Salazar is adjusting productively from Columbia’s pleasant weather to the extremes of Utah’s sporadic climate, so her work as an LA has proven equally nourishing.
Story by Michael Jacobsen