Meet Emily Crum: Engaging with Student Interns as a Graduate Assistant
at the Pearce Center
After graduating from the University of Cincinnati in 2012 with her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, Emily Crum followed wherever her life took her. She worked in many different industries, leading up to her job teaching English as a second language. Her students are the ones who helped encourage Crum to pursue her passion for becoming a professor and motivated her to enroll in Clemson’s graduate program for Fall 2021.
After enrolling in the school, Crum looked for an opportunity to work closely with students. When she heard about the Pearce Center for Communication and their opportunity for her to work as a Graduate Assistant with undergraduate interns, she was immediately attracted to the program.
Her work started with behind the scenes coordination and ensuring the interns were set up for success when starting the new semester.
“This transitioned into more collaboration with the interns, helping them edit their documents and with the work they are doing with the community.” Crum said.
Crum works with all of the different intern teams, including English Unbound. She works closely with the team helping brainstorm ideas for the newsletter, develop interview questions, editing documents and even formatting emails. Her main goal of her work with the team is to learn from the interns while enhancing her own skill sets.
“I want to create a mutually beneficial relationship [with the interns] where I can learn something and also teach something at the same time. I am a big advocate of no matter who you meet, they always have something to teach you.”
Being face-to-face and working with interns in person has been very beneficial to Crum’s educational and career goals. She has been able to teach and learn skills, develop her teaching style and gain a better understanding of how to communicate and interact with students.
“The experience overall has been amazing. Appreciating the dynamics of everyone’s life and providing support to make sure everyone is healthy, happy and balancing everything well, whether that is school, work or life, is something that is so important here.”
Following her work with the Pearce Center, Crum plans on becoming an English professor and pursuing her Ph.D. to complete research within her field. She credits her work with the interns at the Pearce Center for giving her the opportunity to learn about students’ lived experiences as well as how to interact with them more effectively.
Written by: Gabrielle White
12/2/21