Blaine Lynch-Gadaleta

HDF190: Marketable Leadership Competencies

Self-Awareness & Development: Personal Values

Personal Values is a competency within the category of Self-Awareness and Development. ​In
HDF190, emphasis was placed on the significance of knowing yourself before beginning to lead
others. During the class, I took the VIA Character Assessment, which allowed me to determine
my personal values. The results indicated that my top five values are: love of learning, judgment,
honesty, humility, and perspective. ​During my experience at URI so far, I have been able to take my
knowledge of my personal values and apply it to various areas of involvement on campus. For example, I
am a URI 101 mentor, which requires me to utilize my values of honesty and perspective to guide first
year students through their transition to college by mentoring and serving as a resource for them on
campus. I am also involved in the Philosophy Club on campus where I practice my love of learning value
through weekly discussions with fellow club members on a wide variety of subjects. In addition, I am an
active member of Rotaract, which is a service organization founded on the idea of service above self. This
organization strongly connects with my value of humility and allows me to explore my passion for service
through club sponsored service events for a variety of organizations. In addition to gaining the personal
values competency through my experiences at URI, the understanding of my personal values has helped
me shape and support my career goals. My current career goal is to spend time working in both the policy
and research realms of environmental science and geology, particularly addressing climate change or
natural resource conservation. Based on the the knowledge I have gained through this competency, I
realized that this career goal aligns quite well with my values. Geology, as it relates to policy and
scientific research, is a field that requires constant learning, judgment of presented evidence, honesty
regarding discoveries and policies, humility to learn from others within the field and work hard while
receiving criticism, and the perspective to view the world in terms of the big picture and the details. This
competency has allowed me to recognize my career goal will compliment all of the different aspects of
my personal values, while also challenging me to strengthen those values through the work I plan to do in
the future.

Strategic Thinking: Goals

Goals is a competency within the category of Strategic Thinking. This competency relates to what
you want to accomplish and the plans you set for yourself. In HDF190, I discovered that strategic thinking
is my primary strengths domain based on my Gallup Strengths. This means that setting goals, creating
plans, and organizing are things that come relatively natural to me. As a first year student who was
undeclared, I took two classes (URI101 and UCS270) in order to work on making an academic/major
decision. During UCS270, which is a class entirely focused on making both academic and career
decisions, I began to understand how to set goals for myself to reach my ultimate goal of declaring a
major or majors by the end of my first year. Throughout the year, I have met with advisors (both
academic and career) and have had discussions with professors within the departments I am interested in.
In addition to these meetings, I had planned to do some of my own research and reflecting in order to
evaluate my own thoughts during the process. In addition to understanding goals through experiences in
classes at URI, this understanding has definitely shaped my future career goals. This goal gave me the
opportunity to declare two majors (Geology and Philosophy), which will earn me two degrees within my
four years at URI. By setting and achieving my personal goal of declaring majors this year, I will be able
to move forward and work towards the career that I want in the future. In addition, having knowledge
about setting and achieving goals will be critical moving forward in both my academic life and my future
career.

Civic Responsibility: Inclusion

Inclusion is a competency within the Civic Responsibility category. Inclusion focuses on
building an accepting, diverse community and learning to embrace the uniqueness of every
individual. In my college experience, inclusion quickly became a central theme because I was
placed in a new environment with other individuals from different backgrounds who had
different experiences and unique perspectives. I became involved in clubs and organizations like
Rotaract and Philosophy Club, which were both focused on building community and engaging in
conversations about our own worldviews and experiences. In addition, as part of my learning
contract for HDF190, I participated in Safe Zone Training. While this was an assignment for
class, I chose Safe Zone Training because I wanted to become a more inclusive individual on
campus. During the Safe Zone Training, I learned about issues impacting the LGBTQA+
community, working definitions for gender and sexual orientation related terms, and the Cycle of
Oppression. But most importantly, I practiced active listening and began to understand how to
become an effective ally on campus and an inclusive leader. For example, a lot of emphasis was
placed on using inclusive language, which is something fairly simple that can make a huge
difference. I don’t think this competency has shaped my future career goals, rather understanding
and practicing inclusion has helped shaped my daily life. This is because inclusion is a critical
component of living as a human being and interacting with those around you. Safe Zone Training
enabled me to better understand all the factors affecting the situation and begin to assist the
LGBTQA+ community as an ally in overcoming those issues. After completing Safe Zone, I
hope to bring my new knowledge to the organizations I am involved in at URI and to my future
career in order to inspire change, raise awareness, and promote a more inclusive environment on
campus.