One very large paper stands between me and the end of the quarter. This has been a challenging quarter, between 40+ hours per week at my internship and spending another grossly enormous amount of time completing readings, assignments, projects and the likes for my classes, I'm not sure everything has fully hit me yet. Perhaps that will happen when I venture home for the holidays; a short respite before it starts all over again January 3rd.
In looking back over what I've learned in all my classes so far, and the real time experiences I've had at my internship, I am beginning to see some of the major themes take form.
There's the arms race - Our relatively new football program still trying to find its legs, while attempting to gather the support and financing the other FBS schools have so that they can keep some of the amazing local talent, well, local.
Growth in facilities - 10 years into the program, our football team is, at long last, getting an on-campus stadium after finally securing the financing.
Academics vs. athletics - Student-athletes who may not have been accepted to the school based on their academic successes, accepted for their athletic abilities and the potential success they can provide to the program.
The fight between Olympic and non-Olympic sports - Our campus does not have a men's track & field team despite great interest, because they have not been able to create a way to balance out this new men's team with a women's team to stay compliant with Title IX.
Football will always be king - While home to virtually all athletics department staff, almost all the women's sports locker rooms, academics, sports medicine and university at large classrooms, football runs the athletic center building, and when they want a room or don't want you to have it, then it shall be done. When their staffing offices occupy as much space, if not more, than either the remainder of the athletics department staff and coaches offices and the academic support services offices and work space, it is clear who runs the show.
It's been interesting to see how everything comes out into the open when you've been trained to look for it. I can't wait to see what the next semester brings at my internship as football goes out of season, and the other sports take center stage, with some recently very successful teams. Will football remain king? My guess is yes, but I also think it will play a Prince Charles to the other sports' Prince William. Everyone knows football will be king, but a strong following want to jump over them to see what the young gun can do.
Here's to happy paper writing and a relaxing holiday break!
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Like buildings, we build success one brick at a time
With the exception of one long paper due in a few days, I completed my assignments for the quarter last night when I submitted my Facility Enhancement Proposal. The purpose of this assignment was to enhance a currently existing athletics facility on our campus to meet the growing needs of the facility and its users. This could have been providing more space, updating features and facilities to meet codes, or enhancing certain features of the space to make seats more marketable or to allow sponsors more enticements for becoming involved among countless others.
My enhancement stepped away from the competition venues and took a look at the building that houses the athletics department, and focused on enhancing the student-athlete academic services offices and spaces so that they were more efficient and effective for the student-athletes, mainly through providing them with more space to grow and allow student-athletes to study comfortably.
What I learned about facility enhancement through this project is that there are a lot of small variables that can greatly impact whether or not you can succeed with an enhancement or even simply how you progress. For my enhancement, I had to come up with 2 separate plans for expanding the academic center - 1 for if the football offices moved into the new stadium when it was completed, and 1 for if they did not. While it may seem like a small difference, the resulting enhancements ranged on one end to simply taking over the abandoned space left by the exiting football personnel, to building an entirely new 2-story addition to house the academics center. Clearly this is going to have a huge impact on budget as well as what can be done with the different spaces to meet the needs of the student-athletes and the support staff.
I also learned that you have to be flexible with enhancements as sometimes you'll have to make decisions on the fly if something isn't turning out the way you want or expected. It's better to remain flexible and not get strung out over things as this will allow you to reevaluate and make changes more quickly.
I didn't learn much about my leadership style through this solo project, but I did learn that I have the ability to think through enhancement projects like this from start to finish, which I think will ultimately provide me with the confidence to broach an idea like this once I am within an athletics department. Demonstrating that confidence would hopefully also demonstrate my ability to think on my feet and take initiative on projects.
I'm excited to take what I learned with this project and add it to my tool belt for future jobs.
My enhancement stepped away from the competition venues and took a look at the building that houses the athletics department, and focused on enhancing the student-athlete academic services offices and spaces so that they were more efficient and effective for the student-athletes, mainly through providing them with more space to grow and allow student-athletes to study comfortably.
What I learned about facility enhancement through this project is that there are a lot of small variables that can greatly impact whether or not you can succeed with an enhancement or even simply how you progress. For my enhancement, I had to come up with 2 separate plans for expanding the academic center - 1 for if the football offices moved into the new stadium when it was completed, and 1 for if they did not. While it may seem like a small difference, the resulting enhancements ranged on one end to simply taking over the abandoned space left by the exiting football personnel, to building an entirely new 2-story addition to house the academics center. Clearly this is going to have a huge impact on budget as well as what can be done with the different spaces to meet the needs of the student-athletes and the support staff.
I also learned that you have to be flexible with enhancements as sometimes you'll have to make decisions on the fly if something isn't turning out the way you want or expected. It's better to remain flexible and not get strung out over things as this will allow you to reevaluate and make changes more quickly.
I didn't learn much about my leadership style through this solo project, but I did learn that I have the ability to think through enhancement projects like this from start to finish, which I think will ultimately provide me with the confidence to broach an idea like this once I am within an athletics department. Demonstrating that confidence would hopefully also demonstrate my ability to think on my feet and take initiative on projects.
I'm excited to take what I learned with this project and add it to my tool belt for future jobs.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Austin, TX Bids for the D2 Championship Festival... Sort of
Today brought with it the culmination of one of the most challenging group projects I've had to complete since my undergraduate years.
Our task: To select a city to host the 2013 Division II National Championships Festival and create a bid presentation, a complete marketing and promotions plan, a participants manual and an accompanying Facebook event, which we were to invite our classmates and instructors to. Trying to complete a project of this magnitude when group members are 3,000+ miles away, immersed in internships and jobs requiring 40+ hours per week, proved to be quite a challenge in logistics and coordination.
As for what I learned about event management and marketing from this project, I can't say it was much new. I've been planning and marketing events since I was 8 or 9 years old. My Girl Scout troop and I used to plan, organize and put on a handful of events each year for other troops in our council, which hundreds of girls and their troop leaders would attend each day. Additionally, prior to returning to school, I worked at an advertising and marketing agency where one of our services was planning and managing events and another was creating and executing marketing and promotions plans often times in conjunction with a PR firm we partnered with. I like to think events are what I do; they're a part of who I am. I suppose you could say what I did learn was that an event like the DII Festival existed and quite honestly had there been more time to actively work on this project and give it the attention I used to give the events I planned at my previous job, there would have been no contest as to which city would have won the bid.
When we turn this around to look at what I learned about my leadership skills during the completion of this project, I would say that much of what I already knew was confirmed through this project. While I often happily jump into the leadership role because, unfortunately, I'm a bit of a control freak and like to have control over my own grades and outcomes, just as often, leadership roles fall into my lap by default whether it's because I have a solid understanding of what needs to be accomplished or because people feel comfortable with me working them through the process successfully. I think that my "position" as the go-to person for questions on projects and assignments all summer and autumn quarters put me in the position of default leader for the group because they felt that I could direct them in the right direction with this project, while hopefully taking them along the least painful path. Additionally, as a leader I like everyone to feel comfortable when working on a project, and so I had each of my teammates select something they wanted to do so that hopefully they would tackle that component with enthusiasm. I often take a back burner on this and end up working on whatever no one else wants to work on, even if it's not my specialty. I'm willing to tackle the difficult components, while having my hands in everything else by helping teammates complete their parts. My role tends to end up with me as the hub of the group with my team members each bouncing ideas off of me and using me as the one person who knows every other component and how they should all mesh together to create one solid final outcome. I would say it's almost as though I'm the traffic cop for the group, directing everyone with their individual parts to one common central goal.
One area I've been able to improve upon a bit since my undergraduate group work days is delegating tasks and letting go of some things. I've learned that I simply can't take on everything and I have to begin to trust my team members to help me out and complete their components well.
Lastly, I take pride in often becoming the default leader because to me it shows that somewhere along the way I've managed to instill a confidence about myself in my team and that they are confident in me taking the lead on something that will affect their success in a class or on a project. As a leader in any capacity, there's not much more you can ask for.
Our task: To select a city to host the 2013 Division II National Championships Festival and create a bid presentation, a complete marketing and promotions plan, a participants manual and an accompanying Facebook event, which we were to invite our classmates and instructors to. Trying to complete a project of this magnitude when group members are 3,000+ miles away, immersed in internships and jobs requiring 40+ hours per week, proved to be quite a challenge in logistics and coordination.
As for what I learned about event management and marketing from this project, I can't say it was much new. I've been planning and marketing events since I was 8 or 9 years old. My Girl Scout troop and I used to plan, organize and put on a handful of events each year for other troops in our council, which hundreds of girls and their troop leaders would attend each day. Additionally, prior to returning to school, I worked at an advertising and marketing agency where one of our services was planning and managing events and another was creating and executing marketing and promotions plans often times in conjunction with a PR firm we partnered with. I like to think events are what I do; they're a part of who I am. I suppose you could say what I did learn was that an event like the DII Festival existed and quite honestly had there been more time to actively work on this project and give it the attention I used to give the events I planned at my previous job, there would have been no contest as to which city would have won the bid.
When we turn this around to look at what I learned about my leadership skills during the completion of this project, I would say that much of what I already knew was confirmed through this project. While I often happily jump into the leadership role because, unfortunately, I'm a bit of a control freak and like to have control over my own grades and outcomes, just as often, leadership roles fall into my lap by default whether it's because I have a solid understanding of what needs to be accomplished or because people feel comfortable with me working them through the process successfully. I think that my "position" as the go-to person for questions on projects and assignments all summer and autumn quarters put me in the position of default leader for the group because they felt that I could direct them in the right direction with this project, while hopefully taking them along the least painful path. Additionally, as a leader I like everyone to feel comfortable when working on a project, and so I had each of my teammates select something they wanted to do so that hopefully they would tackle that component with enthusiasm. I often take a back burner on this and end up working on whatever no one else wants to work on, even if it's not my specialty. I'm willing to tackle the difficult components, while having my hands in everything else by helping teammates complete their parts. My role tends to end up with me as the hub of the group with my team members each bouncing ideas off of me and using me as the one person who knows every other component and how they should all mesh together to create one solid final outcome. I would say it's almost as though I'm the traffic cop for the group, directing everyone with their individual parts to one common central goal.
One area I've been able to improve upon a bit since my undergraduate group work days is delegating tasks and letting go of some things. I've learned that I simply can't take on everything and I have to begin to trust my team members to help me out and complete their components well.
Lastly, I take pride in often becoming the default leader because to me it shows that somewhere along the way I've managed to instill a confidence about myself in my team and that they are confident in me taking the lead on something that will affect their success in a class or on a project. As a leader in any capacity, there's not much more you can ask for.
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