Lailatou is originally from Burkina-Faso (West Africa), and English is her 5th language. Lailatou came to the United States of America in 2012 to further her education. She is the first in her family ever to hold both an undergraduate and graduate degree. Additionally, Lailatou is a former alumna of Essex County College (A.S in Biology/Pre-Med), Rutgers University Newark (B.A in Biology, Chemistry minor), and Montclair State University (M.S in Biology). She had the opportunity to work at Rutgers Newark Learning Center as a Math tutor (all levels up to Calculus 2), at Montclair State University as a Graduate Assistant (GA) teaching undergraduate biology labs, and at Essex County College as the GS-LSAMP/S-STEM Coordinator.
As a science “lover,” Lailatou will be starting her second year as a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in the Microbial Biology Program. Therefore, she is more than happy to help any students towards their academic careers and goals: Time management to effectively pass your classes as an A student, choosing the right major, applying to graduate schools and summer opportunities for minority students, mentoring, writing a resume/CV/Cover Letter and a Personal Statement, requesting a letter of recommendation, balancing life and school, applying for scholarships and more. In sum, she looks forward to connecting with ALL students, especially WOMEN, regardless of their ages, grades, majors, race, religion, and cultures.
Lailatou’s Mentoring Project
Lailatou will meet with students first to get to know them and be able to establish a connection. After this, she will go over their expectations and career goals to understand what they are planning for their futures to help them in that direction. Additionally, she will monitor their progress to see if they are still on track with what needs to be done to get to their goals. Next, she will go over the challenges they face and how to overcome them. Furthermore, she will outline all the necessary steps they must take to get into graduate schools. Finally, we will reflect on ourselves by giving feedback on how this mentoring went, the advantages, and how we could improve it next semester when we meet. Thank you!