Bianca Mers is an honors international relations major with minors in organizational and community leadership, public policy and Spanish. She is involved in community service through the co-ed service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega; as president of the student organization Strong #likeagirl at UD, for which she serves as a mentor for young girls at an after-school program at Springer Middle School in Wilmington; and through her internship with REACH Riverside, a non-profit that is revitalizing the historically underserved Riverside neighborhood in northeast Wilmington.
As someone who believes in the value of differences, community engagement has been a central part of my college involvement because it has helped me to connect with and better appreciate other people and their experiences, Mers said. My passion for building better communities has also motivated me to improve the quality of life for students at UD.
Through her role as sustainability chair of the UD chapter of the United Nations Association, a student organization she co-founded, Mers encourages students to actively participate in global efforts for change. And as co-president of the Delaware Diplomats, Mers works to increase awareness of and decrease financial barriers to studying abroad for traditionally underrepresented groups.
We better prepared students to study abroad through increasing their intercultural communication skills by building relationships with international groups on campus such as the English Language Institute, Mers said. My on-campus involvement allowed me to actualize my commitment to creating positive change, which has influenced my academic path as well.
Mers, who said she is a first-generation, low-income student, is participating in the Ronald E. McNair Post Baccalaureate Achievement Program, which supports students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. Through the Program, Mers has been able to conduct undergraduate field research abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which helped direct her path to graduate school. She looks forward to pursuing a masters degree in city and regional planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the hopes that shell eventually be able to create more environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive communities through better planning practices and policies.
While I take great pride in my ambition and my own efforts, I know the experiences Ive had are as much a product of the people before me who have worked tirelessly to create these opportunities, Mers said. My community at UD has challenged, guided, and inspired me to become the person I am now: confident, motivated, proud, and above all, grateful.