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.