Mia Upchurch

As a coach I create positive and encouraging environment to motivate athletes to give best efforts. I work individually with players when struggling to enhance confidence and strengthen court skills and provided guidance and mentorship to volleyball athletes to help reach full potential. I also prepare athletes for special competitions and tournaments and support them during their games. I do tons of research and implement new training methods and technologies to increase athleticism.

As a Graduate Assistant I work under the general supervision of the Director of Financial Aid. I am primarily responsible for assisting in operations related to the awarding and notification of financial aid awards. In addition, I am also providing assistance to undergraduate student workers as well as other aspects of general financial aid operations. I am required to meet with my supervisor and staff routinely to learn financial aid rules and regulations and maintain confidentiality of student records.

I was responsible for establishing and maintaining a strength and conditioning program for my assigned sports teams. A good program comes with three very crucial goals of improving athletic performance, reducing athletic injuries, and teaching lifelong fitness and movement skills. It was important for me as a strength and conditioning coach to facilitate a collaborative relationship among sport coaches, athletic trainers and the strength and conditioning staff. I helped athletes set, pursue and attain individual and team goals, developed and implemented programs focused on improving power, speed and endurance, enhanced functional movement pattern of each athlete and led daily training sessions.

As an intern I would participate in strength and conditioning testing and training sessions. Attend coaches meetings and Intern training sessions, assist the coaching staff with cleaning and maintaining the facility and equipment as well as provide support with updating and maintaining athlete training programs.

It was my job as an ASL intern to lead students through lessons in ASL vocabulary and grammar developed by the teacher I serve as liaison. With the PowerPoints developed by the teacher, I would help teach students about important ASL concepts such as topicalization, glossing, classifiers and non-manual markers. I would also help students with in-class ASL practice. This internship was a semester long 3 times a week hybrid class.

Being a media specialist helped me gain experience in developing social media content plans that are consistent with the Gallaudet University Student Success department. As well as creating consistent, meaningful content on all student success social media platforms, including writing and editing social media posts. It was my duty to manage a high volume of daily social media posts while also communicating with social media followers, responding to queries in a timely manner. It was crucial to stay up to date on best practices and trends in social media.

This job gave me the opportunity to enhance my human relation skills, leadership skills, knowledge, confidence and service to others. It gave me an opportunity to serve as a role model while assisting in the transition and retention of new students and undergraduate students. A peer mentor is an upper-level student who supports new students in their transition to Gallaudet University and connecting students to use university resources and self-development skills. It was my job to give one-on-one guidance, support & mentorship to 16 freshmen students by leading class once a week while serving as liaison with GSR 101 Instructor.

JumpStart-ASL is an immersion program for deaf and hard of hearing emerging signers and an opportunity for undergraduates new to the deaf community and deaf culture to learn and develop ASL skills among peers with similar backgrounds. JumpStart peer counselors are to help students emerge in the signing community and help guide them throughout their journey at Gallaudet University.