Internship Overview
The Perry Honors College at ODU is dedicated to providing an enriched academic experience for high achieving students. The Mellon Foundation's mission focuses on supporting cultural, educational, and scholarly initiatives.
Within this internship, I am the Communicatons/ Media Relations Intern. I have designed graphics for social media, newsletters, and other promotional content using Canva and Adobe Creative Suite.
My tasks and expectations include developing engaging content for various social media platforms, including newsletters and assisting in promoting events and programs.
My Colleagues and collaborators include my two supervisors Dr. Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani and Dr. Shuntay Z. Tarver, as well as graduate assistant Emily Hill who helped me with my E-portfolio.
The projects I worked on were working towards the goal of creating awareness to the honors college, so that students are aware of the benefits they could be receiving when receiving a higher education.
Work-Based Learning Projects
The first project pictured was to introduce the new staff of the honors college. Dr. Tarver and I decided this would be a good project to work on because of the concern that most student's don't know the staff of the deparment they interact with daily. The second project pictured aims to welcome incoming honors students into their Living Learning Community. We want students to feel appreciated, welcomed, and aware of the party. I've made many flyers over the course of this internship, but I think these two showcase the goals we are trying to reach the most.
With every project I received, I have made them all myself. I used the website Canva mainly to create these flyers. Other contributions I have made include researching and coming up with other ideas for content in order to promote the honors college.
From working on these projects, I learned that making bright and welcoming flyers can further help us reach our goal of educating students about the honors college.
Reflect on how these experiences connect to your academic training and professional development. These experiences connect to my academic training and professional development because I
Related Experiences
While working in the internship, I created a brochure for the Messages Project, an initiative created to connect children with their incarcerated parents through video messages. I also created a newsletter for the Inside Books Project that showcases art and poetry from people incarcerated in Texas.
Internship Reflection
Thanks to Dr. Tarver, I will be continuing my internship with the honors college during the upcoming fall semester.
How will you apply what you've learned? With my hands-on experience, I will continue to manage and grow the Perry Honors College’s presence on social media platforms.
During this internship, I have used my creative expression, researching, and project mangement skills to create dynamic content.
The only goal that was unmet was that there wasn't enough time within my summer internship to get as much content made but hopefully during the fall we will get a lot more accomplished.
This internship has helped me deepen my understanding of my field by giving me the opportunity to refine my abilities in public relations, create a network within the Honors College, and gain experience working for a higher education institution.