An elective she almost didn’t take ended up having the biggest impact on Eva Sardon’s time at the University of Georgia. A rising fourth-year student from Lawrenceville, Sardon arrived on campus as a Biology major on the pre-med track. After one semester, she switched her major to Political Science and International Affairs and has spent the years since building something she never quite expected: A path toward law, a roster of leadership roles, and a campus community she can’t imagine being without. All of it traces back to a single course she added at the last minute.
Eva Sardon is a rising fourth-year student double-majoring in political science and international affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. She is from Lawrenceville, Georgia. (Photo by New Student Orientation media team)
Needing one extra credit hour to meet her scholarship requirements, Sardon enrolled in UNIV 1202: Becoming Active Learners. She arrived with no expectations and left with a new sense of direction. The course introduced her to how students learn most effectively — through engagement, discussion, and reflection rather than passive notetaking. Before, she had been rereading her notes over and over and getting frustrated when things didn’t click. Active learning gave her a different set of tools, and more importantly, the knowledge that she could figure things out if she approached them the right way. “That frustration went away,” she said. “It just helped me put more confidence in myself.”
That experience changed how she thought about learning altogether. “It just kind of planted that seed for me wanting to explore active learning here,” she said. She applied to be a peer learning assistant (PLA) the following semester, and an active learning student worker shortly after.
She describes watching the arc of a semester: Students who won’t make eye contact in week one gradually become the ones leading discussions by the end. Former students stop her on the way to Tate to say the class was one they actually looked forward to.
Her involvement in active learning extends beyond the classroom. As a student worker, she helped run the Active Learning Summit, where ambassadors demonstrated strategies like concept mapping to faculty. She served as head of the outreach committee for the Active Learning Ambassador Leadership Council, where she managed social media, tabled, and delivered presentations to academic advisors about the program. She also presented on the PLA program at UGA’s Undergraduate Research Colloquium and at the Inside Higher Education conference in Atlanta alongside faculty, an opportunity she never imagined having as an undergraduate.
For Sardon, active learning and community have always been connected — people do better when they feel seen, engaged, and like they belong. Whether through the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the National Council of Negro Women’s Sister Circles, Georgia Daze, or a Maymester study abroad trip to South Africa, Sardon has made it her goal to stay connected and to help others feel that same sense of belonging she spent her first semester searching for. “I remember thinking I just wish I knew more people, I feel like I don’t know anyone here,” she said. “And now I’ll walk to Tate and know 50 people.”
Her advice to incoming students is straightforward: Don’t wait until you feel ready. “Lean into your community. Take advantage of it. A lot of the doors I’ve walked through here opened because of the people around me.”
