About Me

My name is Tanatswa Lyle Sambana and I am currently a junior pursuing a degree in biomedical sciences with a concentration in pre-health and a minor in psychology. I am from Richmond Virginia, but was born in Zimbabwe, a country in southern Africa. In the fall and spring of 2021-2022, I will be a senior at Old Dominion University. While being a regular student, I am also involved in different ODU organizations, from College of Sciences Ambassador to being the vice president of ASA: African Student Association, and being a peer mentor for TRIO: Student Support Services. The main reason why I joined Innovate Monarchs was to try something outside my comfort zone, and make friends. I wanted to add to my skills something that was different and also unique, and the Innovate Monarch program was the right option for me.

When working with my team in order to figure out a solution to Old Dominion Universities efforts to create a university that is prepared for African American and Latin X students, a lot of data was gathered. We were able to come to a consensus and that was many African American and LatinX students have difficulty accessing specific resources, or have troubles with just not being understood of what the root issue is. When there is no understanding amongst different individuals issues will certainly begin to evolve, and will lead to a prolong time for those issues being resolved. By having a common understanding with the people in power (Faculty and Administrators) and students, less time will be taken to solve issues or grievances. More time will be spent learning and understanding the experiences from both sides.

Our solution to the issue was The Shadowing Experience. Our main goal for the solution to our identified challenge, is for students, faculty, and administrators to walk in each other’s shoes for a day. Faculty and administration will shadow students, and vice versa, students will shadow faculty and administration. The purpose is to gain a better perspective of how one side experiences the university, and deals with situations.

The process that helped my team and I come up with this solution is called the design-thinking process. The first step was the empathy phase were surveys were sent out to students, faculty, and administrators. Meetings between faculty and administrators were scheduled to discuss our solution and receive feedback. The second step was the defining phase were major insights and themes were identified. Those insights and themes were the age gaps (between students, faculty and administration), hypocrisy, and a lack of resources. The third step was the ideation phase were we just came up with many different ideas that lead to our final solution. Some of those ideas were generational training of older generations, college pre-training, and peer mentors. The fourth and final step was the prototyping phase. This phase involves putting all the phases together that helped us achieve our amazing solution of The Shadowing Experience.

Mindset of Human-Centered Designer

I practiced the Innovation is for Everyone mindset when I had to embrace the ambiguity of the whole process. This taught me that there is no one way to solving a problem and to be open minded. I had to trust in the steps that I was being given, and also trust in myself that I have all the tools and skills to accomplish the task at hand. It was hard for a science major to start the Design Thinking process, but once I was fully involved in the process that is when I saw how there is a link between the scientific method and the design thinking process, but the design thinking process is more creative.

I practiced the Know Your Why mindset when I had to stay motivated and remember that the work that I am working on is for the greater good of the Old Dominion campus for African American and Latin X students during the process. This taught me that no matter the obstacles that you face trying to figure out a solution that works, it takes time and you can not rush the process. Just take it one step at a time. There were times when self doubt got in the why, and life challenges would affect how I would think. By having an amazing team helped me push pass my self doubt, and remember that I am a person of color who has been given the opportunity to contribute to a changing campus.

I practiced the Show & Tell mindset when I had to work with my team on our website during our process. This taught me that working with a team brings more creativity and more ides to a project that will provided information, and hopefully inspire others to join or take action.

I practiced the Radical Collaboration mindset when I had to have conversations with faculty and administrators during our process. For our solution to be successful we needed to talk to a variety of people, and the only way was talking to the people who would be largely apart of the solution. This taught me that hearing from different perspectives, even when you do not have constant communication, will be beneficial to the overall product. These meetings with faculty and administrators were conducted to obtain feedback on the pros and cons of our solution, and how we can improve it so it can be implemented on campus.

I practiced the Empathetic & Human-Centered mindset when I had to make sure that the solution was representing the thoughts, ideas, and feelings of the students, faculty, and administration. This taught me for a great product to be successful individuals have to be involved from the start of the process. If you listen to the needs of the individuals you are working with people involved in that situation, and gathering real life data. I also learned being a good leader means stepping back and just listening to what people have to say.

I practiced the Embrace Ambiguity mindset when I had to avoid coming up with a solution within the first few weeks of the program. This taught me to be patient and trust the steps that I am taking. By taking a steady approach to solving an issue, and not knowing everything left my mind open to possible solutions, and also I was able to see and understand different perspectives. Embracing ambiguity helped me grow and become a better leader.

I practiced the Iterate, Iterate, Iterate mindset when I had to change our "How Might We" question. This taught me that there is no wrong or right way of doing something. Based on the data that we had gathered, our previous "How Might We" question was not compatible with the data. This lead us to changing the question to fit the data, and this helped us create a personal and interactive solution that would help the ODU campus prepare for African American and Latin X students.

Applying Innovate Experiences in the Future