Throughout the core QUEST courses, students are encouraged by their professors to go after their ideas and designs that they create within the classroom. For many, they will shrug this off and not follow through with their ideas. Every once in a while, some students find inspiration to continue with their projects, seeing the immense potential their ideas have in making a true change. For Amy Liang of Q24, she was one of those few. Now, she leads the new student organization, the QUEST Development Series (or QDeS, for short), which is making way for the potential to help revamp core aspects of the QUEST Honors Program, both in and out of the classroom.

As something that started as a mentor’s project by David Dorsey (Q23), Yash Mehta (Q22) and Chris Yeager (Q22), the initiative behind QDeS is to teach students in QUEST skills and knowledge that might not be known to everyone in QUEST. Being a multidisciplinary program, students come from all sorts of backgrounds and have an eclectic array of skill sets, many of which can be useful for other students to learn. This past academic year, QDeS started out as a series of workshops and lectures on a wide variety of topics, from how to properly manage personal finances to using CAD programs.

A QDeS Lecture held last Spring on CAD

This upcoming spring 2017, QDeS is set on implementing another model that will allows professors from QUEST, as well as professors from the business, engineering, and science schools, to have these students hold guest lectures in their respective classes. This will be an opportunity for not only QUEST students to share their insights on a topic, but also allow the professors a chance to have these students come in and give a lecture on a topic in a different, fresh way. For example, if a professor’s class heavily revolves around a presentation, but the professor doesn’t have the ability to give a lecture on presentation etiquette, they will be able to reach out to QDeS to have a student teach the class one day on presentation skills in a fresh, interactive manner.

In the end, QDeS has the potential to provide students not only the opportunity to better learn from their peers, but also allow students to give a lecture on a topic they know well. In addition, professors from across these colleges will have an additional resource to pull from for their classes. Overall, QDeS has incredible potential to become an influential student group within the QUEST Honors Program.