Overall, I had growth in all competency areas except leadership and systems thinking

skills where I kept the same score of 3.1. Regarding the 4 domains I chose to focus on at the
beginning of the semester, I had growth in each domain throughout my semester of different
experiences. To begin, I had a 0.6 growth in the policy development/program planning skills
competency. I was able to learn most of the information from community health class, but
unfortunately, I have not had a lot of opportunity to implement policies or services yet. Through
class I learned about organizational strategic planning but in my community nutrition field
experience I was able to contribute to development of program goals/objectives for the Pullman
School District. Due to my current student status, I am not yet in a position to implement policies
or programs; however, I plan to improve this by gaining experience in my future supervised
experiences next semester when I can begin performing the work of a professional RDN.
My largest area of growth was a 1.2 growth in cultural competency skills. After
completing this community health class and learning about cultural competence in my helping
skills in dietetics class, I feel much more confidence in my ability to describe the value of a
diverse public health workforce. I also feel more confident in my ability to address the diversity
of individuals/subpopulations in a community when developing/implementing policy or
programs. Helping skills in dietetics helped me gain more cultural competence through lecture,
mock interviews with a variety of patients/clients, and a cultural reflection assignment that really
widened my perspective on how much more I have to learn about culture to continue improving
this specific competency. To grow further in this competency, I plan to gain further exposure to
more cultural diversity through my supervised practice experience with WSU and a long-term
care facility. Even with significant growth in this competency, I plan to continue improving in
this area for the rest of my career because of how vital it is to be culturally competent when
interacting with the public.
Next, I had a growth of 0.6 in the community dimensions of practice skills competency.
Most of my growth in this area is contributed to my community nutrition experience with the
Pullman School District, collaborating with Jessie Campbell, the nutrition services supervisor.
Jessie was my preceptor, whom I worked with to create educational materials/curriculum for the
students, parents, and staff in the Pullman School District. This experience helped me gain more
confidence in my ability to collaborate with community partners since I had never had this
exposure prior. Additionally, I was able to provide input on developing, implementing,
evaluating, and improving programs/services within the school district that either needed
developed or needed modifications. Even with this experience, I am still lacking in experience
directly informing the public about policies/programs/resources available to the community since
I have not had much experience directly working with the public. I again plan to improve this
competency when working with patients/clients in my rotations next semester through providing
them with plenty of resources at the end of our meeting that they require.
I had a small growth of 0.5 in the financial planning and management skills competency.
My largest area of growth was understanding how to describe the public health funding
mechanisms. I learned many of these mechanisms from community health class, however, I also
learned a lot about the public health funding mechanisms when in my community nutrition field
experience researching about different school funding options. I also gained some knowledge on
operating programs within a budget through my field experience this semester, although I plan to
improve this during my food service nutrition supervised practice experience next semester when
learning how WSU athletics center operates on their budget. I also plan to gain more knowledge
on how to contribute to the development of program budgets while in my foods service rotation.
Lastly, I had a 0.8 growth in the analytical/assessment skills competency. Throughout
several different classes I conducted research very often to find supporting evidence for
assignments, projects, and curriculum I created. Doing so much research helped me gain more
skill and confidence in my ability to select valid and reliable data I could utilize to support my
work. I was also able to improve my ability to describe assets and resources that can be used to
improve the community’s overall health. This progress was a result of collaborating with Eat
Smart Idaho this semester and learning about the different resources available for improving
community nutrition, specifically working with school-aged (and preschool-aged) children. I
plan on improving this competency next semester in my rotation at a long-term care facility,
where I can assess the specific community at the facility for factors that may be influencing their
health.
A competency not mentioned above that I would like to improve is the leadership and
systems thinking skills competency. Although my score is a good score at 3.1, I did not observe
any improvement in this area throughout the semester. Given the current pandemic, achieving
growth in this competency was difficult with the lack of in person experiences available.
Although circumstances made this challenging, I would like to shift some focus to improving
this competency since leadership skills are so important for my future career. I dream of opening
my own gym/clinic where I can be a personal trainer and RDN all in one, however, I will need
leadership skills to run my own business and manage employees. I plan to gather some
leadership experience when assuming the role of a RDN in my clinical supervised practice
experience. When in the role of a nutrition professional, it is vital to have strong leadership skills
to successfully guide the client through a meeting and gain their trust in your knowledge. In
conclusion, I am pleased with my growth in the four domains selected at the beginning of the
semester and plan to continue improving these and the other mentioned competencies next
semester as I finish school. I achieved my goal of improving cultural competency the most and
still find this competency to be one of the most valuable skills to have. Learning more about
cultural competence in several different classes this semester sparked a new passion of mine and
I intend to always advocate for improvement in this field.