Student Update: Nicole Rodgers, BSPH ‘16

Nicole Rodgers, BSPH ‘16, interned through the Washington Center Internship program at the Office of Safety and Security at the Peace Corps headquarters in Washington DC. She worked with the Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response (SARRR) team with the goal of helping the team gain more understanding about the time response burden for the sexual assault responders in various countries. Since sexual assault crimes occur more frequently in certain countries, the SARRR team sought to improve the Procedures of Responding to Sexual Assault, as well as take in recommendations from responders. Nicole helped by analyzing and mapping out the revised Procedures. Eventually, she was able to send out drafts of the Procedures to various responders in Peace Corp locations all over the world. Responders were given three different scenarios and asked to give time estimates of how long it takes to complete the proposed Procedures. After analyzing her research, she was able to apply a beta-distribution to come up with confidence intervals that estimated the time burden of response in each scenario. Overall, she gained a lot of experience and was able to apply much of what she has learned in the BSPH program. She was able to network and meet many influential people. She attended an event where Hilary Clinton spoke and she met NC Senator Thom Tillis. She visited amazing museums and experienced the DC culture.