Alumni
 |
Margaret Redic
|
Margaret’s passion for community service developed after finding her niche volunteering with special needs children when she joined the ACEing Autism family in eighth grade. Margaret loves ACEing Autism because she is able to connect with children on the autism spectrum through teaching them to play tennis. In her junior year of high school, Margaret created an annual fundraising tournament for ACEing Autism—The Charity Cup—as a way for other high school students to get involved with the program.
During Margaret’s first year at Vanderbilt, she joined the Building Knowledge research lab, The After School Program, ACEing Autism, and Dance Marathon. All of these, along with some psychology courses, led to a redefined career path and perspective on service. Working with adolescents, especially those battling mental health illnesses, drug addiction, and childhood trauma, was what she wanted to focus on going forward. Margaret did this by joining the Stress and Coping Lab during her sophomore year, where she worked primarily on the Depression Prevention team, researching how to teach children coping skills and parents with a history of depression parenting skills as a way to lessen the risk of their children developing the disease. The lab shines a light on the hope and possibility research provides for the prevention and treatment of mental illness and connects Margaret’s academic, career, and service goals. Margaret continued delving into these interests by completing her Ingram summer service project with The SA Foundation in Vancouver, BC. At SA, she created a comprehensive parenting curriculum directed towards women’s specific needs covering parenting styles, discipline, resources for raising a child with ADHD, ODD, ASD, or FAS, and ways to talk to their child about their addiction and recovery.
After having ample opportunity to explore her service interests and join different organizations, Margaret’s junior year was dedicated to investing her time and energy in depression research and discovering how her current service pursuits may translate into professional avenues. She began working on her Honors Thesis based on her research in The Stress and Coping Lab and was able to study abroad in Denmark and witness and learn first-hand how they address mental illness and other common social problems. Finally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she had time to train and begin volunteering for the National Crisis Text Line which has given her more direct experience with the populations she wants to work with in the future. She looks forward to continuing this work and completing her thesis during her final year at Vanderbilt.
She is very grateful to be a part of the Ingram Scholars Program and to be able to spend the next year surrounded by people who share her love for service and community involvement and who encourage her to constantly reflect and improve.