Finding Your Passion …
Ready to dig deeper into a burgeoning interest? Grinnell will give you the tools.
... through courses
For Lilianna Bagnoli ’15, the topic she wanted to dig into was international development. Her First-Year Tutorial about corporations and their role in developing countries got her started. Another course her first year, Introduction to Global Development Studies, sealed the deal.
“I can’t think of a problem I’d rather spend my life working on than international development,” Bagnoli says.
During her second year, she took a three-week short course about the importance of sociocultural compatibility in creating successful development initiatives. The course was taught by 2011 Grinnell Prize winner James Kofi Annan, president of Challenging Heights.
Challenging Heights is a nonprofit organization in Ghana that provides education and support for children who have returned from slavery and horrific forms of child labor.
... through internships
Grinnell Prize winners not only interact with students on campus, but also offer summer internships that allow students to immerse themselves in social justice work.
Bagnoli completed internships with Challenging Heights in Winneba, Ghana, and the Hovde Foundation in Washington, D.C. during the summer after her second year.
By the end of her internships, Bagnoli’s interest in international development had evolved into a passion. So she created an independent major — international development studies.
Bagnoli studied in Pune and Delhi, India, her third year. She studied economics at St. Stephen’s College, which included the traditional cramming for cumulative final exams. “I learned a lot through that.”
She also interned with a corporation to figure out how, as required by a 2013 law, to spend two percent of its profits on corporate social responsibility in India. Additionally, she helped measure the impact of that spending.
... through research
Bagnoli’s experiences in India directly led to two major research projects her senior year:
- Situating her own experience at a multinational corporation in India within the international landscape of corporate social responsibility.
- Spatially analyzing the locations of India’s informal labor force, which is her senior thesis project, a requirement of her independent major.
Her thesis “is a product of living in the country,” Bagnoli says. “Being able to explore someplace else and come back and situate it within a rigorous academic framework is special.”
The stereotyped view of India is a country sharply divided between rich and poor. “But there are really expansive webs of interaction between people of a variety of socioeconomic and religious backgrounds,” Bagnoli says.
In addition to sharpening her research skills, Bagnoli is developing top-notch writing skills. “Professor [Patrick] Inglis [sociology] has been incredible in preparing me to write at a professional level, always probing me to think about my audience, how my research contributes to the current literature on my topic, and what ‘puzzle’ or unanswered question I am addressing in my writing,” Bagnoli says.
“The opportunity to have a mentor who’s overseeing your project and who can offer a critical lens on what you’re studying is incredibly valuable,” Bagnoli says.
Lilianna Bagnoli ’15 is from Berea, Kentucky.