Real World Policy Applications 3/10/25 (Late Week 4)
Sophia L -
Hi everyone!! Apologies for my late blog post for week 4. This past week I had the immense honor of being one of two delegates to represent Arizona at the United States Senate Youth Program alongside Cameron Mirmelli! We were able to meet some incredible people in Washington D.C. including Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth. Although we had a packed schedule every single day, I was able to apply my senior research project to a lot of the incredible experiences and speakers that were on the agenda.
Here are the key takeaways I had.
First of all, I was able to talk about both education policy and the predictors regarding dropout with Ambassador Ana Luisa Fajer, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Mexico in the U.S.. Given that Arizona is a border state and one of the major predictors for my AI-model research is English speaking ability, proximity to the border, and state, it was incredibly insightful to hear her perspectives on tactics she has found beneficial in bridging the divide between immigrant students and English-catered learning. She told me about work she has done in Arizona, specifically partnering with ASU to ensure that immigrant students are able to assimilate into university educational experiences and other educational experiences she’s had in lower level schools.
Additionally, I was able to learn more about the intersection of Artificial Intelligence with policy work and historical preservation from Senior Advisor James Byron at the National Archives and the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Given that innovation and technology are so important in the modern day, it was incredibly insightful to heat about the role of artificial intelligence in things like preservation of our nation’s oldest documents and analysis of patterns in how they were written and how artificial intelligence is being used at the highest levels of national policymaking and defense decisions at the Pentagon.
If anything, my experiences on this trip were truly illuminating and reinforced the power of AI and how excited I am to continue working on my project to build up for bigger projects like the ones I witnessed this week in my future.
Talk to you soon!
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