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!