Before going remote, we met with Nitya Velakacharla '21 (she/hers)and Pato Gonzalez '21 (he/his) to discuss their experiences as ECON DUG leaders. Read an excerpt from our interview below:
---
Why did you decide to be DUG leaders?
N: It was sort of passed down to us to be quite honest. We helped in different roles directly creating and organizing the events, then previous presidents asked us if we would be interested [in taking over leadership].
P: When we first started two years ago, we definitely noticed improvements that could be made in the DUG, especially with leadership. It wasn’t very active, and it was very clear that people at Brown have different responsibilities. Both me and Nitya had a lot of ideas about what we could bring to the DUG, what we could add, things we could change, how we could reorganize it to become a more active and more structured organization. I think the leadership that was there at the time kind of saw motivation to make such improvements. They asked us to step up and I have been very, very happy about the past year. We’ve been able to quadruple our budget and start a lot of different events that the ECON DUG had never done before. We’ve been working on completely revamping our website, also some internal reorganization, such as creating some different positions. We’ve recruited an amazing team of new freshmen and sophomores as well to create a more diverse team. We’ve also tried to be very focused on making a diverse team that comes from different backgrounds and ethnicities, different places around the world.
N: One thing that was kind of worrying is that ECON is one of the biggest concentrations. So, doing panels, pairing upperclassmen with first years and second years to start mentorship was a pretty big deal. That's our goal for this year — trying to create community within the department.
P: We were doing some events, like panels about life in the ECON department, but I remember friends telling me, "oh you are in the ECON DUG, how do I concentrate in ECON, how do I declare a concentration, oh it is shopping period, I don’t know what classes to take." We definitely thought about, well we are the ECON DUG so it's our responsibility to create those events in order to meet that need, and that is how we brainstormed about different events.
We’re still learning, obviously. Sometimes we have events that don’t have the turn-out that we anticipated. We learn from that and try to change that.
What are some of the rewards and challenges of being DUG leaders?
N: I think rewarding, first and foremost, probably the community. We really like the leadership team, but also meeting people at various events, we see similar faces, we get emails after the events from people who enjoyed it and with follow up questions, which is always great.
P: I think it is challenging just to be in a leadership position and have to manage so many people and be on top of so many people's responsibilities, but as Nitya said earlier, everything else kind of makes up for it, it is a personally fulfilling experience just learning how to be a better leader.
---
To learn more about the ECON DUG and how to get involved, please visit their website, Facebook, or email econdug.brown@gmail.com.