Hoover Dam and Las Vegas Weekend!

I am already at the midpoint of my last week in Arizona, still can't believe how fast it has gone! The other interns and I took our last big trip for the summer, we went to Las Vegas and on the way up we made a stop at the Hoover Dam! I have always wanted to see the Hoover Dam so it was awesome that we were able to stop...it was great to see! It was weird to think about how much water it was holding back and how much concrete went into building it. Las Vegas was a good experience as well, I enjoyed seeing all the sights and walking down the strip at night. We did a package deal of dinner and a show, we decided to see the Lion King and eat at Strip Steak which was all at the Mandalay Bay. This was my favorite part of the weekend the dinner was delicious and was by far the fanciest dinner I have had, and to top it all off the show was very cool! Here are some pictures of the weekend!

I enjoyed this view a lot!

Great to see such a cool structure!

Very tall bridge that was awesome to see too!

New York New York!

Now I actually have to go to New York...

You can see everything in Vegas!

Not the greatest picture, but we stopped to watch the water show as we were crossing an overpass!

Such a great show!

We went to a parrot show on our last day, this was another great thing to see! This lady was or is on America's Got Talent this season...her birds are trained well!

I had another great trip...it is amazing to me how much I have seen and done this summer! I am going to a Diamondbacks game tomorrow as my last big thing of the summer, then I will finish up my last two days at work and then I will be off to Maryville! I'm excited!

Camelback Mountain Round Two!

Okay so like I mentioned in my post earlier in the day, I went back to Camelback Mountain over the weekend! This was my second time going; the first time I was hiking in the middle of the day and it was very hot, not making it all the way to the top...I told myself that I would come back another day and make it! This time I left in the morning...still hot, but not as bad, I made it a to the top! It was great, I really enjoyed going back and hiking. I envisioned myself getting out there a lot more than I did this summer, but it just flew by so quickly. Here are a few pictures from the top of the mountain!

It was great to just sit for awhile and enjoy the view!

I saw this bird on a cactus...so I decided to take a picture...I like it!

ONLY 8 MORE WORKDAYS LEFT!

My experience is definitely coming to a close. I am in my 8^th week here and I only have 8 workdays left! The past couple of weeks at work have been good, I have been doing a lot of follow-ups with vendors who are interested in the events we offer. The deadline to sign up for these events is August 1^st, that is coming up quickly. So a lot of what these weeks have been is finishing up discussions and attaining more event sponsorship. I just learned yesterday that we have surpassed opening revenues last year by 5,000 dollars so far and counting! This figure also doesn’t include all of the in-kind donations that some events we will be receiving.

I have been impressed with some local vendors and how much they want to contribute to ASU Fall Welcome events. At the very beginning of my experience Rebecca and I went to my very first vendor meeting with Sunflower Farmers Market. They are a local grocery store, that has really been great with sponsoring many events. There is a mini-bus called the Orbit that is free public transportation for students that drives to different spots that are close to campus. Sunflower Market is one of these stops. They had the idea to get in contact with the multiple places that the Orbit stops and join forces and sign up for our Welcome Zone. This way they would offset some of the costs and they will still be able to outreach to the Student Population. Sunflower is also participating in two other events, they donated 7,000 reusable bags to Passport to ASU which is there Student Organization and Resource Fair and they will be setting up and sponsoring a watermelon stand at the Tiki Luau which is an RHA sponsored event. They approached us with a lot of these ideas, so it was nice to see their creativity and willingness to show support and get involved.

As my experience is wrapping up I have set aside some time to setup some meetings with different people within University Housing. I have talked to one Associate Director of Residential Life and have another one setup for later this week. I will be talking to the Director of Residential Life on Monday, and then the Business Operations Manager on Tuesday. It is nice to hear some of their experiences and the different opportunities that are out there.

Over the weekend I took the time to go back out to Camelback Mountain to hike again. I went the very first full weekend I was here and I didn’t make it to the top. I said I would go back another time to hike to the top. So I achieved this goal this weekend! I left earlier in the morning so it was too hot, and I made it. I plan to post some pictures soon!

For my very last trip here…the Interns have planned a trip to Las Vegas this weekend. We will see how it goes, it should be fun! It will be nice to see everything!

SANDSTORM?!

Arizona has been full of experienes...but I can definitely say that I wasn't expecting this one. So one of the other interns and I decided that we needed to go to Wal-Mart, it was a normal trip and was sunny and partly cloudy when we left...no big deal. We pull into the parking lot and I see a big cloud off in the distance...and I  commented "I think a storm is moving in"...but it was more than moving in...it was quickly approaching us! As we got out of the car and were walking into Wal-Mart we got blasted in the face with sand/dirt and things were literally blowing over in the parking lot. So we quickly got into the store, but we were followed by a lot of sand/dirt that filled the air in the store. I thought it was pretty cool! I can now say I kind of got stuck in a Wal-Mart in a SANDSTORM! One of the other interns lives on the Polytechnic campus and he was able to take a few pictures of what it looked like approaching his building!

As you can see...this cloud was no joke!

Everything was about to be engulfed in sand!

This is what it looked like all around!

The storm lasted for probably about an hour and driving back to our building it caused electricity to go out so there was no streetlights or stoplights, so it was an interesting drive back to campus. This was an experience I just had to share!

San Diego!

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend! I watched the Tempe firework display on the roof of a 15 story residence hall, it was neat and you could see the whole city of Tempe around us. Last weekend Kelly came to visit me and we drove six hours to San Diego. It was was very nice weekend and the weather was great! I am so happy she was able to come see me! We went to the San Diego Zoo, Sunset Cliffs, and one of the many beaches they have there. Here is some video and  pictures from our weekend!

We fed the giraffes while we were at the zoo...that was a lot of fun, but wish they gave us more food!

We got to see two pandas!

Koalas!

This is not a very good picture...but we got to see a real BEARCAT!

Later that night we went to Sunset Cliffs which was nice and the closest I have ever been to an ocean!

Then the next day I got to swim in the ocean! It was awesome!

Again this was a great weekend and kind of marked the middle of my experience! Weird to think about but I only have 13 more workdays left!

Miscellaneous Work Updates

Today marks the end of my 5^th week of my internship. That means I only have four weeks left…so time continues to fly. Everything has been going well, today I will be going to Gilbert Gateway which is a marketplace in Mesa near the Polytechnic campus to do my last area of vendor outreach. Previously Rebecca and I have outreached to Tempe Marketplace, Mill Avenue (in Tempe), and Downtown Phoenix. I have been following up with all of our new contacts in the past couple of weeks trying to get more committed sponsors.

Over the past five weeks I have contacted a lot of vendors over the phone, but also have had some in person meetings with the following places:

·         Sunflower Farmer’s Market

·         Bank of America

·         GPA Insurance

·         Wal-Mart

·         Swift Charities

·         Windmill Suites

·         City of Chandler

·         Verizon Wireless

I have really enjoyed these meetings, and they have all become committed sponsors to ASU Fall Welcome Events.

I had a meeting yesterday at Wells Fargo Arena where the check-in process takes place along with the vendor Welcome Zone opportunity on the fall move-in days. This meeting was to discuss the setup along the concourse and outside of all different stations; a lot went into finalizing plans, mostly to make sure that nothing was going against fire code. I am currently working on mapping out where each of our 28 vendors and counting will have their tables setup for the Welcome Zone.

I have two more training sessions left on the next couple of Mondays, and I am looking forward to them. They are Spirit, Pride & Tradition and Social Entrepreneurship.

So these are just some miscellaneous work updates…but everything is going great! Whoo! Kelly is visiting me this weekend, and I am very excited! We are going to San Diego and going to the Zoo/the beach. We are going to have a lot of fun! This is by far the most traveling I have ever done…so it’s pretty cool! Grand Canyon last weekend, San Diego this weekend…awesome!

GRAND CANYON AND SEDONA WEEKEND!

The other interns and I went to the Grand Canyon and visited the city of Sedona this weekend. The GRAND CANYON is the coolest thing I have ever seen, I am so happy I got to go there! We squeezed this trip into two days, so there is so much more to see and do and I am definitely going back for more at some point. The weather was perfect which made for an even better trip and experience! Here are some pictures from the weekend!

My first view of the Grand Canyon...amazing!

This was a cool walk-out point that I found...you had to climb down to get to it and I did. Very high drop!

This is me sitting on the edge of that very same walk-out point! IT WAS AWESOME!

Me and the other interns...it was a great day!

Now this is Sedona...this was a hike that we went on. The city is filled with these reddish mountains...great scenic views everywhere!

I found a friend on the hike!

Sendona has a very weird terrain...one minute we were on a hike surrounded by red desert mountains, then the next..green forest?

Nice little creek we had to cross while were on this hike!

The trail was also surrounded by these cool rocky cliffs.

This weekend was packed full of adventure, and it was great! Enjoyed this a lot! Haha...oh yeah and work is good too! I will have some updates soon.

Downtown Phoenix Adventure!

Over the weekend the other interns and I went and explored Downtown Phoenix. We walked around for five hours, luckily we were surrounded by tall buildings so it was mostly shaded and not terribly hot. The day was good and we took a lot of pictures and saw a lot of cool things. The Downtown area has Ambassadors walking the streets for people like us who didn’t know what we were doing. They told us where to go and what to see, which was very helpful. I was also able to show the other interns the Downtown Phoenix ASU campus since I got a tour of it and they hadn't so that was nice to be able to show them around. Some other things that we saw included: Chase Field where the Diamondbacks play, the arena where the Phoenix Suns play, the Phoenix Convention Center, which had a bunch of different art pieces inside and outside that you could look at, and pretty much the whole Downtown Area in general. Here are some pictures from the day:

This is on the Downtown Phoenix ASU campus...they call it "The Jellyfish", it lights up at night and I hear it looks pretty cool!

At Chase Field...I'm hoping to go to a Diamondbacks game sometime this summer.

This is right outside the arena where they play.

Some art made completely of sand...pretty cool!

Lots of tall buildings...which I always enjoy seeing.

Just another adventure, I'm very thankful for all the experiences and things I get to see this summer! I am going to the GRAND CANYON this weekend! I have never seen it before and is something that I really wanted to do while I was down here, so I am glad the other interns wanted to go as well.

Sustainability Training Session and Fourth Week!

Yesterday’s Training Session was on Sustainability, it was presented by my supervisor Rebecca. She gave us an overview of what ASU is doing, and what some of their goals are. It was interesting to hear all the information, and I would say I learned a lot. They focus on balancing the environment, economy, and society when it comes to thinking about sustainability, and with that in mind they came up with four long-term goals.

1.       Carbon Neutrality – they hope to run one-third of their campus buildings solely on solar energy by 2020. Currently they have a lot of solar panels across campus on top of buildings and parking garages, but have plans to install many more until they run out of room.

2.       Zero waste – both solid and water by implementing the 5 Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, and Recycle.

3.       Active Engagement – get all of ASU’s students and faculty/staff involved

4.       Principled Practice – this area expresses how they are going to achieve their goals

They have really tried to put a great emphasis on sustainability in University Housing getting their Pro Staff, CA Staff, and Student Organizations involved. They have the three Ps: Purchasing, Practices, and Programming; all of which reflect things you can be doing to be more sustainable.

A cool thing that I learned about is Campus Metabolism, it is this website that produces information about each building on how much energy the building is using. Students can go to website and look at their residence hall they live in and if they make an effort to turn off their lights, and use less energy they can see the difference they are making on a month to month basis. They have hall competitions to see which hall can make their percentages decrease the most, and they have worked out well. They are working towards getting all their buildings on campus connected to this website.

This was a good session and there was time to share what our campuses are doing so I heard other ideas from Missouri State, San Diego State, Florida International University, Central Michigan, and Utah State.

My fourth week is going great! I have been following up with vendors over the phone and through email and have been preparing to do some vendor outreach in Downtown Phoenix on Friday.

Meeting with RHA Advisors!

I am working throughout the summer on vendor outreach for Fall Welcome Events, but other areas within University Housing are interested in doing some outreach of their own. These other areas like to set up meetings with the area that I’m working in to see what we have done and to find out more information on how to get started.

I had a meeting with two of the RHA Advisors last week. They are interested in doing some outreach to vendors to help sponsor the many conferences students attend throughout the year. Since I have attended some of these conferences, they thought it would be good to have me to help them brainstorm what they need as RHA to get to these conferences and to what extent vendors would want to get involved. I really enjoyed sitting down and talking to them, it was nice to use my experiences from conferences and what I have learned from my internship so far.

They are looking at having vendors help fund the costs associated with conferences and donate materials or giveaways. An option that we discussed would be creating sponsorship packages, that would most likely take the form of having vendors give a monetary amount and in return RHA would provide them opportunities to reach the ASU/conference population. Some ideas were to include the company logo on the delegate conference t-shirt, allowing vendors to come to campus to do some tabling in high-traffic areas, invite the vendors to come to RHA programs throughout the year, putting the company logo on the RHA website, and giving them involvement in Finals care-packages. This was a productive meeting, and I felt like I was able to help them get started with something that their RHA has never tried before.

"A" Mountain!

Over the weekend one of the other interns and I went to the north side of campus to visit "A" Mountain. They informed me that there are hiking trails on the mountain, which I didn't know...so we decided to hike up. This isn't a huge mountain by any means, but it was a nice walk up to the top where there is a giant "A" that students made. Here are some pictures from the day:

This is the reason why they call it "A" Mountain.

Nice view of campus!

It is right next to their football stadium...so here is a little glimpse.

So this was a nice little adventure that was only about a 15 minute walk from where I live on campus, I am sure I will make plenty more walks over there before this experience is over.

Training Sessions and More!

There are four interns here for the summer. We are all in different areas, but are brought together once a week to do some professional development activities. The other interns are in the areas of Guest & Conference Housing and Student Staff Training, Recruitment & Retention. Yesterday was our first training session, but it was more of a meet and greet with the Director of Residential Life at ASU. Her name is Kendra and she gave us a lot of good information about their program here. She talked about her involvement in Student Affairs and the path that she took to get to her position. Also she was able to provide us with some insight on fun things to do in the area, which was nice. The meeting happened over lunch, so we just asked questions, talked, and ate lunch. We were encouraged by her to make the experience our own and contact other employees in our areas of interest and set up a meeting with them to learn more. I am hoping to start a list of people I would like to talk to throughout the summer and get help to find them.

The other training sessions for June include:

·         Sustainability

·         Spirit, Pride & Traditions

·         Social Entrepreneurship

I also had the chance to sit in on a couple of move-in planning meetings on Monday. This was cool to hear about another process and how they work everything. The team that meets has a wide range of positions all of which handle a different aspect of move-in. I met the Coordinators of Marketing, Operations, Technology, Interior Design, and Guest & Conference Housing. One of the Associate Directors was there along with me and my supervisor the Coordinator of Strategic Initiatives & Sustainability. They check-in about 10,000 students in two days on the Tempe campus, so you can imagine how detailed their process has to be. Something new this year, which was a big topic of discussion was their new wireless check-in system. Each resident will check-in at a central location in Wells Fargo Arena and will scan their “Passport” that will automatically check them in. From there, they go through the vendor fair “Welcome Zone”, pick up their keys at the end and then they are off to their specific hall to move in. I learned a lot of new information in the past two days, so I am looking forward to the coming weeks!

Third Week...Really? and Vendor Outreach

So I am in my third week of my internship and I can’t believe how fast time is moving, it feels like I was just driving here yesterday. Things are going great and are definitely picking up speed. On Friday, my supervisor and I did some vendor outreach using the marketing materials that I put together. We went to the Tempe Marketplace and went store to store talking with managers or employees that were working. It was nice to get out of the office and walk around a shopping center for a couple of hours. We went to about 30 stores that we didn’t have contacts from and got to update our vendor list with their information. We will see how successful this was, but we did talk to one excited manager from Nationwide Vision who was very interested in getting involved and reaching the ASU student population.  We plan to make visits to other shopping centers throughout Tempe and Phoenix in the coming weeks, so I look forward to that. In our vendor outreach efforts so far we have a lot of committed vendors and have generated just over $50,000 in sponsorships!

Three Day Weekend!

It was a very productive day after a three day weekend! Last week I started working on a flyer to publicize the opportunities ASU has for vendors to get involved, but I finalized it today! I am happy with the way it turned out. It outlines the main Welcome Zone event, and lists the benefits of participating. It also explains a statistic from the National Retail Federation, that the average college student's family will spend just over 600 dollars during the "back to college" time of year. This comes from new electronics, clothes and other apparel, furnishings, school supplies, and necessities. For the ASU student population that adds up to more than 8 million dollars of retail sales. One of the messages we try to get across to vendors is that we want to try to capture as much of these retail sales locally as we can. After I finalized the flyer I put some vendor packets together that included a generic marketing piece that ASU uses that has stats on the student population, the flyer I created, and the business card of my supervisor. Friday, my supervisor and I plan to go the Tempe Marketplace and start distributing these packets by talking to managers of different vendors. We will eventually get to multiple areas around each of the four campuses.

Also today, I visited the Polytechnic campus. This was my last campus visit...and probably the most interesting! The campus is definitely not a traditional college campus, because it was actually an old military base that was converted into an ASU campus. There is a lot of construction projects happening, but currently it still has a military base feel. All the original military-base housing is still on site and is now considered university housing that students live in. They hope to preserve some of the buildings so that the historical value of the old base can live on.

For the rest of the week I have some more vendor meetings with Wal-Mart and Swift Charities and will continue reasearch on vendors in the area.

Camelback Mountain

Over the weekend I ventured out to Camelback Mountain, it was awesome and a great experience! It is only about a 20 minute drive from where I live on campus, something fun to do and it's close! I have never really hiked before, and of course I chose to take the difficult path. It was full of boulders and steep pathways to climb up...luckily it had railings to assist you in your hike. The day was very hot, so I chose not to push myself and I made it about 1 mile on the path. Not making it all the way up, I am definitely going back, but on a cooler day! This was one of my first adventures out into the area, more to come I hope!
Here are some pictures of the day:

This is how the path started!

Then I had to get myself up this...

This was part of the path.

NICE view of downtown Phoenix!

First Week Done!

My first week of my Internship is done! Things went great! I have three vendor meetings under my belt, some flyer drafts made, and good contact lists started for possible new vendors.

ASU has four different campuses, I work/live at the Tempe campus...which is there largest campus. Today I toured the Downtown Phoenix campus and the West Phoenix campus. Going to downtown Phoenix was a neat experience, the campus is small...but is in the middle of downtown, so it seems big! The campus itself is home to the Journalism and Nursing programs and only has one residence hall. The West campus is on the outskirts of Phoenix and has a small-town atmosphere to it. On Tuesday I am going to tour the last campus called Polytechnic.

In the coming week, a flyer will be distributed to vendors around town publicizing the opportunities they have to be involved in ASU Fall Welcome, more meetings are setup, and my supervisor and I will be going around to different vendors talking to managment to see if we can spark some more interest.

ASU Strategic Initiatives

As I mentioned before, I'm working on Strategic Initiatives in the Housing Department and after a few days of working...here is a little more about what that means. The week before the first day of classes for ASU is called "Fall Welcome", during this week they try to give local vendors as much exposure to students as possible. With this exposure comes some revenue for the university. They have set up many opportunities for vendors to be apart of, all with different costs associated with them. Vendors are not able to sell any of their products or services on campus, but can hand out promotional items, brochures, flyers, free samples, and have great access to a lot of students for publicity! Some options that vendors have include the following:

• Welcome Zone- this happens on move-in day and is the first thing that students will go through during the orientation process. They have it in Wells Fargo Arena and students walk through and see all the vendor booths and displays. There is different size spaces that vendors can "rent out" each with a different cost. After students get done they get keys for their residence hall and are free to go check-in.
• Welcome ePacket- this is an electronic magazine that is sent to all on-campus residents. Vendors can pay a fee to put an advertisment in the magazine.
• Sun Devil Fast Pass- vendors can pay to get their logo printed on a lanyard or card holder that all residents get with their keys.
• Other opportunities include being a part of the welcome kits that get placed in all the resident's rooms before opening, direct mailings that can be distributed to resident's mailboxes, in-kind donations, and participating in other events throughout the week.

ASU offers packages for vendors who want to do a combination of these opportunities. A lot of what I am doing is getting a hold of different vendors to see if they are interested. If they are, a meeting is usually set up to negotiate the details and plans are finalized.

I have already had two meetings shadowing my supervisor Rebecca, but could be doing meetings on my own soon. Also, I am designing a postcard and flyer that we plan to distribute to some local vendors around Tempe and Phoenix. The last few days have been great, and I am sure things will continue to get better as we get busier!

I'm an Official ASU Employee!

This is my office that I get to work in during the internship! It is kind of looking bare now...but i'll get it looking nice!

This is posted outside my office! I enjoyed seeing the Northwest logo...made me feel at home!

All employees wear gold on Fridays. Looks like I'm ready!



First Day!

I met up with my supervisor Rebecca at 10AM this morning! She is the Coordinator of Sustainability and Strategic Initiatives for University Housing. As she is busy with sustainability efforts at ASU, I will be taking over most of the strategic initiatives side of her position. My major project for the summer is helping organize the freshman move-in day "Welcome Zone" where many different vendors will come in advertising their businesses. If vendors choose to be a part of the process then they get the chance to advertise to more than 13,000 students and their friends/family who are helping them move into the halls.

ACUHO-I Internship!

I started the process of applying for internships through ACUHO-I in January, and now I am writing from Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona! I am the Business Development Intern for a 9 week period ending July 22nd. This opportunity interested me the most because I can connect it to my major of Business Management/Marketing and it explores an area of Student Affairs, which I want to pursue after I graduate.

So this is my attempt at a blog. My hope is to keep track of the many different experiences I will have during my time in Tempe. Using a nickname that Mike Miller gave me, I give you...Thunder Takes Tempe!