Rose Rodriguez

Age: 22

Hometown: St. Petersburg, FL

Year: Senior 

Major: Management Information Systems 

Rose Rodriguez has found what she values most in service and life through the Service Scholars Program.

Entering Service Scholars as a freshman first generation student, Rodriguez confronted her reasons for volunteering in high school. Her previous engagement in service was to “serve others and” as Rodriguez said “make myself feel good.” During her entry year at Service Scholars these reasons were transformed.

“I went from serving others to make myself feel good to feeling good about myself and wanting to service others.” Rodriguez said.

For Rodriguez service had evolved into an experience rooted in reflection and mindfulness. She spent her collegiate career engaging with service organizations around the nation including Project Love, Woodland Harvest Mountain Farms, PeaceJam, iGrow, and Big Bend Homeless Coalition. Her most consistent service experience was with Impact America where she aided in providing working families with free tax preparation services. The experience allowed her to connect with the Tallahassee community and engage with her service values on a deeper level.

“When you are doing somebody’s taxes you literally have their entire year in document format in your hands,” Rodriguez said, “It really is an intimate process...being an emotional support to be able to have them understand and feel empowered in the process.”

Rodriguez has been a Service Scholar board representative and chair, and she is completing the Undergraduate Certificate in Leadership Studies. Through her extensive interaction with both programs, Rodriguez has been able to further develop her core values in service and life.

“Service Scholars and the center has given me this like ability to reflect through...and really hone in into what my values are and how I want to live them,” she said.

This process has helped Rodriguez to ensure her own integrity, including, she said, “the way that I show up in spaces and they way that I interact with people.”

Her self-described “mosaic experience” with service and leadership has deeply influenced her personal and professional development. Remaining mindful of the intersectionality of social justice issues has become a core principle for the way Rodriguez lives, serves, and interacts with others.

“Service is just a part of me,” Rodriguez said, “and I will continue serving on in the next community that I go to.”

Post-graduation Rodriguez will continue living and serving intentionally at Raymond James where she will enter their leadership track to become an IT project manager. Within the company she also hopes to provide professionals with insights on how to develop inclusive community identity groups for networking.

Rodriguez said her goal is to aid in the creation of, “spaces for people with same identities to be able empower each other and find a collective area to support each other within their professional development.”  

On a larger note Rodriguez has dedicated herself to the habitual practice of the values she developed within Service Scholars. It is her belief that, “you can always be more intersectional with almost anything you do and more intentional and more mindful.”

Despite her upcoming exit from the program, Rodriguez has developed a strong sense of home within Service Scholars and the center.

She describes her ties to both organizations as “Service Scholars being my home base but the center being like my entire community.”

No matter where she seemed to wander outside of both organizations, her most transformational work, relationships, experiences, and service always occurred in her self-described community and home.

“Service Scholars is a four-year program, it is the thing you come back to, the home you come back to.”