Student Achievements
The Graduate Student Within the Assistantship - Rachel Lappano
February 25, 2026
Rachel Lappano is a Master of Social Work student and a graduate assistant for the Battle Creek Scholars Program. The Battle Creek Scholars Program provides individualized academic plans, personal support, study skills assistance, peer mentorship, and many more resources for the students in the program.
Each day of Rachel’s job can look incredibly different, however, an important aspect of her role is completing student appointments. These appointments go over student academic plans, how students are doing in their classes, career goals, mapping out the next couple weeks, and how the student is doing socially and academically, and typically last 45-60 minutes. Student appointments can go longer due to different students guiding the conversations in individual ways as the appointments are meant to be student led and give them control of what they want out of their time.
When Rachel is not in student appointments, she can be found either working on programming or participating in the Lead Mentorship program. Current programming that Rachel is working on is mock interviews and drop-in volunteering for the students in the program for an opportunity to volunteer in the community. For the Lead Mentorship program, first year students are connected with someone who has completed their first year. The goal is for first year students to have a mentor to discuss future goals with those who have recently been in the same position and gives students the opportunity to connect with others in the program.
Rachel pursued the GA position with Battle Creek Scholars because it provides similar skills to what is important in her social work career. The point of BCSP is to connect its students with resources to the school, community, and within the program. She is grateful that she can witness students grow and learn more about themselves throughout the program. Rachel highlighted the importance of the number of resources that the Battle Creek program provides and how the resources help set their students up for success. She enjoys seeing students realize the power that they have within themselves and all the things they can accomplish. Seeing them thrive and their personalities grow is Rachel’s favorite part of the job.
Rachel’s GA position has been greatly beneficial for her future career as it is teaching her how to find resources that she was not aware of prior and how to provide those resources to communities that she is working with. She is learning how to ask for help and advocate for herself in the workplace as she is always looking to improve for both her team and her students. She has learned how to connect campus partners to students as well as herself and learn more about overall programming.
After Rachel graduates with her master’s degree, she is planning to go into either medical or disability based social work. She has a passion for the healthcare field and dreams of working in a hospital one day assisting with medical stressors that many people face daily. She plans to use the skills she learned through her GA position to provide resources to the populations she works with.
We wish you the best of luck with your career, Rachel!