Celeste during her ARC days
Year of Graduation: 2012
Major: Political Science/ Minor: Psychology
Current Address: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
How were you engaged with ARC? Not just the seminar/internship/fellowship but describe the type of project.
I was involved with ARC as a summer intern in 2012. I split my time between State Farm as a Legal Intern and Mid Central Community Action. My work at State Farm involved mostly legal research and writing position papers, sedentary cubicle work. My project at Mid Central, however, was a bit more engaging. Mid Central had just gone through a management reorganization and was trying to figure out if the services they provided aligned with the actual needs of their target populations. My job was to conduct a community needs assessment to help answer that question. I ended up conducting a survey —drafting it in Spanish and English, distributing it door-to-door, at the library, at cooling centers during the heat wave, at bus stops, and eventually compiling and analyzing the results.
Where are you now?
What I’m doing now…I just finished up my first year at Marquette University Law School and I’m currently working as a summer associate with Harley Davidson Motor Company. Unfortunately, most of what I do does not involve much community engagement. But, I do see two interns who work in a cubicle down the way from me doing ARC related work. They are working on a project that would help redevelop the area around Harley’s Milwaukee campus (it is comparable in many ways to Bloomington’s west side). I like chatting with them about it, but unfortunately that’s the closest I get to anything ARC related.
Did ARC teach you what we were supposed to teach you? Did we teach you anything that was a surprise or outside of the learning objectives?
I think the biggest thing that ARC taught me is to be fearless in taking on challenges. You can’t be afraid to reach out and talk to the decision-makers, no matter how intimidating that idea might sound.
Share a great memory about ARC/IWU.
Celeste Borjas’s “Penelope”
This photo reminds me of the ARC summer. This is my Penelope. In this photo we are en route to Deborah’s with a 4th of July keg. She invited over the interns for a celebration. I remember Tess and Leo chasing her around the yard for hours that day.