HEALING IN VOLUMES BY HEAL

WELP THIS WAS A VICTORY, by no means was my event a smooth sailing 100% executed… but i learned a bunch and ASHLEY, you and gab ….DOOOO WORK SO THANKS! So testing went well. What I would do for next time… let the list begin (and let me clarify… constructive points i noticed to try and teach me how to plan another event WHEN and WHEN not IF i do ;))

Better market my AIDS Vigil. It was not highly attended. I would have one more person spreading the word through the day about the vigil and giving out ribbons. There was just not enough man power to get the message out.

Organization. We just ran out of time. I have to pull an all nighter to get the cards ready, ribbons, food,etc and I couldn’t be there in the morning to tell my partner about the full plan. Next time I would love to put it on a day where we didn’t have class or have a common denominator of somebody that could fill me in and be there the entire day. Unfortunate my college and I just had school upon school so it wasn’t ideal.

Budget. It was just way more expensive than I intended. I spent $100 of my own money to complete the project. Don’t get me wrong I intended and whole heartedly supported it but for next time I need to overbudget and be realistic rather than thinking thrifty…

Time management about Marketing. It just wasn’t enough. I would have liked more articles in the paper, online. I should have taken time to be more innovative. I guess it was just a last minute issue, which i felt most of these things were.

What went good? 26 of the tests Planned parenthood sent, were taken. Hundreds of condoms were given out. ~25 HIV tests were done and we had a successful 30 minute vigil. I felt that we got people talking  about S-E-X. Something we know people often participate in but frown upon discussing. The bigger picture…. Putting it in the open. People participated, my colleague and I all participated too. I just am happy I got to apply myy class concepts and make it real.

FALALALALALALALA Have a jolly holly merry christmas, or break (whatever region or not holiday you choose to celebrate! I had a wonderful time getting to know all of you. All of you make a wonderful impact on our campus and I felt our week was very special. Good luck in your studies. My take home from this class. Concepts made general sense, I felt like the ways to motivate, different styles and plans are very common sense for me, but learning why we do it really hit home and stuck with me. The reason we need to market, the difference between marketing and promotion…. The reason we need to know how to do a funding request (so we don’t have to scramble 2 days prior to the event ;)).  I learned to always over plan and be ready for mistakes, because they will happen but finding the meat of the presentation–why it functions and focus on it and execute. I need to be more big picture oriented and less task oriented. I learned to work in a cohesive group, hopefully helping me prepare for the differing opinions and ideas in the work force. I learned that not every assignment needs to be lab oriented and structured (SERIOUSLY THANKS FOR RETEACHING ME HOW TO ENJOY WRITING). I learned about a mission and purpose and will take that to future organizations. Being able to apply it was such an amazing opportunity. Thanks AS&F and Aarons Multicultural and the donations of the organizations to make us feel like we are empowering or campus. It was truly an amazing feeling to realize that you could be the change… The change to somebody not having a mental breakdown, educating themselves about disability stereotypes, eating healthy or having access to sexual wellness services….. We were apart of that change (Hear us roar), and we were excited to be apart of it– just like Aaron told us during the first few classes. We are that annoying group of students proud to be A GRIZZLY. WHOMP WHOMP there it is. OVER AND OUT!

CHEKA CHEKA I NEED THIS SEMESTER TO BE OVER

HAHAH…. sorry I am just being honest. And no, it’s not because of this class– but another…. ( you know which one i am talking about  ;).  Also,  because I need a break from the hustle bustle in general. I am feeling 100% burnt out and finding creative ways to be motivated is getting hard. I have never been the type to hand in an assignment late, but here I am feeling guilty. Anyways the one thing holding me together is thinking about the finished product.

Planning an event. I learned recently that I am a Driver. This means that I am task oriented, and set goals. I set deadlines and expect others to follow, sometimes forgetting to check-in and follow up. So planning this event has shown some of these qualities. I realized this early on when I wasn’t communicating clear lines and made certain members frustrated. This put our NACA book to work, learning each others strengths and problem solving when there is conflict. It is so easy to gloss across a page and think “obviously, we want to talk with each other and head everyone’s ideas.” EASIER SAID THAN DONE. I get so excited sometimes, I forget to let others share their excitement and ideas.

I also learned the importance of building an outline, sticking to it. We didn’t start our funding request on time and the pressure to get that done was heavy on my chest. Money is a fundamental part of putting on a huge week long event. I was outright procrastinating my powerpoint and presentation because I knew it would require work, and judging from above you can tell…. this brain is lacking the want to think about anything other than Christmas trees and eggnog right now. Anyways… back on topic, that was probably the best thing I could have done. Setting a timeline and purpose made things so real. I can now explain my vision to others and tell them why I think it is an important event. I think of this powerpoint as a skeleton to the event. Without bones and tendon, you can’t have meat… you can’t have the actual set up.

I als learned the importance of being personable. It was so important to have direct contact with my organizations. I learned that it’s important to take a chance and see what happens. At the end of the day, money is tight… but necessary for my event to work so I have learned to just be as kind as I can and explain why this is an especially important event. That came with synthesizing a purpose. Being a student here, the purpose was an easy point. I thought about how STI’s would affect my life and others on campus and wrote as statement about how it affects overall wellness. Illnesses are life changing and spread quickly… This project could impact, campus wide. I have also felt a sense of philanthropic energy doing this– without my money because I am a broke college kid… (I couldn’t think of the term but the idea of donating time and planning). I feel like it is important to be passionate about an event because it is sometimes thankless, hard and confusing.

Another important thing is committee reports. There are too many days, providing way to many events… but it is important to have a follow up. Setting a time to meet and talk about homework for next meetings, talk about global things such as (marketing, production and promotion hoopla), and ask questions. That is one thing I am learning to do, ask questions if you don’t know… we are a team and more likely than not, if they don’t know the answers they act as a saftey net and can bounce ideas off to you to get you started.

For me with event planning, I need to focus more on the big picture. I get caught up on specific tasks and I am realizing I need to make sure they flow in a cohesive unit and show unity and continuation. I am slightly falling behind on my planning and I am able to synthsize another lesson from NACA about making events. I really took their idea about co-sponsors. It is important to avenue student group. NACA stresses how beneficial cosponsors can be. In my case, that is one thing that has really stuck to me. It’s perfectly ok to ask for help from a group like AHEC, Womens Resource center, Planned Parenthood.

I am really excited about event planning (50%) and (50%) overwhelmed at seeing the product. I think we need to nail down the day flow for next meeting, so we can all see th big picture and relativity. It is apart of my goal and plan setting. I am really excited though, I know this group of students all are passionate about student involvement…This semester is drawing to an end, but I know this event planning has taught me how there are other students on campus that have similar dreams and goals and wants in their life and incorporated that into their day or event. Alright…. it’s 9:39 and my pillow is calling my name. See you in class tomorrow, I will make a conscious effort to not be a tardy fardy from now on.

Funding requests and Fundraising-

What is this to me? A funding request means planning an event from beginning to end. A big part of our funding comes from AS&F. We have broken our funding for 70% into 3 segments, hotel, flight and food. We had to outline what we really wanted and figure out how much we actually qualified. We handed in our event sheet for hotel and were successful in obtaining our funds. That process was building a bill. In that bill we had to have an author and sponsor and fill in purpose, event and objectives. We feel like the ACS conference will help us become better scientist by learning what other student and professionals do for research. The hope is to take some of their projects (especially kid friendly ones) and bring it back to share with students and community members. We also had to calculate the costs on an event sheet. This is important because it only calculates for 70% of total funding.70% came from our events that we participated in homecoming, and volunteering. It is important to show we give back and are compelled to help the ASU and Alamosa community to show that we want to better our persons at this conference and remember the importance of “paying it forward”.

We have 30% of our own funding. To us this looks like many fund raisers. One fundraiser we are looking at it brewing beer. We have a chemistry lab and materials and a professor that knows how to brew. We are going to charge a fee to community members and students. We had to consider things such as waivers to only allow people of age to participate so there is no illegal use going on. This is an example of creating a contract to try and prevent negligence. We are also looking at doing a periodic table of cupcakes. This is to save up for our event and fund the remainder of our trip. Great and excited for this event it means that we can raise some of the 30% of our own funds to go to Dallas.  We are planning on putting out advertisements on campus, talking to students and targeting interested customers by using our FB page. I am really excited to bake, we have started the planning 3 weeks out on who is to make, decorate and sale.

Exec report three – Topics from this class and synthesizing the meaning

AS&F is getting into the swing of things. We are no longer awkwardly staring at eachother. We joke and are able to address real issues. We set up a board to write agenda items on. This is a way for us to communicate when we step out.  And we take time to have one on one with eachothers atleast once a week. I felt like I would get offended by certain things said but the more I get to know the people I work with the more I realize we are on the same team just have different strengths and communication tactics. Our meetings have a loose agenda. I don’t use paper anymore because I feel like the agenda should be fluid and have the ability to change. We have run into a large problem with the constituation. I felt bad because we didn’t prepare an organization, SAAC to answer a question about becoming a club. I take full ownership of not doing our research as an execuative team. We didn’t prepare them and I know they felt attacked. But it was how we handled it that impressed me. We were able to table it to address issues. Right away our chief justice and GA Wright started researching. We have disuccessed different ways to change it. I was really proud that we kept it together and worked together to figure out the best way

To resolve this. Explained earlier in this blog we talked about our mission student to serve different demographics. This incident really touched on our mission to serve students. This involved being ethical which as discussed in class talks about being driven by values and standards which is good and moral in nature. We know we want organizations like SAAC involved but to be ethical we investigated our Constitution. This way we are fair to existing organizations. We also became process-oriented after figuring out the truth. We debated about making them a Senator and club and tried to visualize what that would look like and how we would make an action plan. When I think of meetings I try to encompass the Relational Model. At the last meeting I accidentally interrupted Ben when he was speaking. I apologized because I knew that it was not being inclusive of his ideas and that we just had both become passionate about the issues at hand. It is important to let individuals of the them know that they are self knowing and should believe that their ideas are just as valid as others when presenting.

Thanks Aaron for the extension! We appreciate the second chance and giving us a quick minute to recharge after homecoming.

Homecoming 2013

I am apart of AS&F and a club. I can honestly say I was impressed by this years event. With the exception of a few hickups…. It went wonderfully and I would like to applaud GAB at a successful event.  

Chalk the walk

The organization was poor. I signed in but I was not given instructions on where I could draw and where not to. I was not aware until about 4pm that we all had designated squares. I think it was better then in past years, having it in one location so people rather than down the entire walk way. It was a great thing that they had a center location but I found it just really hard to figure out the instructions to be successful in this event.  I think there needed to be more communication to make this events critical path successful.

The Medicine Show

I really am proud of GAB’s production this year. There commitment to have practice slots on Sunday, really helped increase the success of the performance. One thing I know is reoccurring always is the sound in that theatre or venue. It is just so hard to hear people when they are speaking and I would love to hear better acoustics. I was curious as to why we didn’t use the theater area as a production venue. All in all I feel like event planning they did a great job bringing Loni Love in. I felt that even the confusing productions that lost people, Loni was able to draw them back in and create a distraction. The music was really good and they had us all organized. I liked how they gave us instructions in the beginning. My feedback from that is possibly being more charismatic. I was sitting next to a faculty member and they felt like the tone and words to quiet everyone down was rude. I didn’t really think it made or broke it but I understand that from a public prospective it can come across that way. People were not being quiet but there was yelling and screaming and it just  came across as abrasive.

Loni Love

In class we discussed budget. I know that GAB paid a good penny probably to get somebody so well known. It was obvious she would cost because of her multiple shows she mentioned. That being said, she was hilarious and I know I was impressed. It was a much needed destresser after a long week of homecoming events. She was funny and kept it real and short. The MC, Kay Marie was really funny, got the audience hyped and I feel like when I visualize homecoming that’s what I see… lots of people, with smiles of their faces… especially when I see people I have never seen before.

 

 The Fire

I was able to be of some assistance at the fire so I got a blink of an eye feeling of how stressful event planning can be. I was able to get in contact with athletics to assure their attendance at the bonfire as well as connect with the Basketball team about the food. I felt like it was  a success compared to past years I had attended at the event had been completely shut down. I felt that this was a really good example of targeting different groups because it brought nonathletic and athletes to a non-athletic event. There was good enticement, food and entertainment. The only thing is their agenda crossed over with two athletic events. I received some criticism form the athletic Director that he would love to see athletic support but it was too difficult to get everyone on board when there are school athletic events. He talked about discussing it in the future, so hopefully for future bonfire events they can find a plan so there is no scheduling conflict. This would make even more people free to come participate in homecoming.

Family weekend and The Football Game

They did a great job of incorporating a weekends activity. They had a morning parade. This is the first time I have actively participated and the enthusiasm was amazing. I loved giving out candy. The children seemed so excited about the costumes and candy and the parents seemed interested in how much fun the children had.  The police all did their jobs, directing traffic. I realized that they had a bunch of behind the scenes information, because they had to block the road off. I know this would mean calling the city to get the event reserved and asking for police presence. I also know that this meant that they had to contact clubs to give them the details. One of their venues was to affiliated with AS&F to help set up float building workshops and a warehouse for them to work in. Adams Atoms the club I worked with took full advantage of both and I feel it played a key role in the success of our float. We finally had a space so we could spend lots of time on it rather than last minute throwing it together.  The weekend itself also had family events such as the blow up playgrounds. I liked the weekend events because it had a variety of things for different demographics and allowed families and students to interact and support one event, the football game. This was an entertaining objective, trying to incorporate and bridge the gap between community and school by giving candy and singing and dancing and looking silly.

The Game

I was a candidate for my organization so I got to first hand talk to the GAB staff. They reserved a section for us and told us when they would be needing us on the field. I really appreciated that they took the time to explain it to me because I am very task oriented. They came and picked us up at the time they said they would and made the process simple. The only draw back was the end and how we exited I could tell there was a bunch of “deer in the headlight” looks like where do we go from here. I think they all worked together because I felt like the game was set up in stations, certain members met us at the check in, some ushered us and some walked us on the field. It was a very team oriented follow through and I felt comfortable just following the leader in that case. They did a good job of building the agenda and giving it to students because they used different venues. They gave me a report to AS&F to give to club reps and senators, AS&F Internal made a board in the sub, we put it on Facebook and they put it on portal and on their website. Using social media and word of mouth is a great advertising technique.

One thing I really don’t like about homecoming is the queen and king candidates. I was one this year and talking with other organizations most people were stuck with the job or had to volunteer because nobody else would. I understand that a major reason for this was because of the time commitment. Being at every event is really stressful for students. I found myself frustrated because I am taking 18 credit hours, having to build and make the skit and float and also be in attendance to everything. I felt a surge of frustration from many people about the amount of events. I understand that it is important to put on a variety but having 2-3 things would be optimal instead of 5-6.

MISSION

“GAB is charged with designing and implementing a variety of programs and services that help to create a lively campus environment.”

The critical path of this event was overall a success. The members of GAB were responsible and accountable. I know they took time out of their own evenings to come speak at the AS&F meetings. I know they also took a day of their fall break to make sure that the skits went smoothly. That takes commitment and dedication, both of which I applaud. I felt like all the events covered their mission statement. I saw the students,staff and community come together and do a variety of school related activity’s. I think the elements of Homecoming had been well executed. They had a great program line of activities and they had comedians in. I am not sure how the essentials worked because I am unaware of the budget and staffing, but the audience seemed great. I was told 1200 people attended the fire, which I know from my many years (embarrassed don’t want to talk about it) that this was an improvement.  I felt like the environment and energy and emotion all came hand in hand. The students seemed a bit burnt out by Saturday but I felt like community turnout, Alumni and the students all had smiles on their faces during the events. I can’t wait to attend the homecoming review committee to applaud the successful events and see if there are things to incorporate for future years.  Hopefully we will be able to also discuss the DRIVE or process and try and do some research and develop the event even further with increased communication among clubs and affiliated organizations like AS&F and ASAP (Student life in general).

How AS&F Changes ASU’s World

Mission:

The Associated Students and Faculty promotes a strong community of leadership and communication among students, faculty, and staff. To me this means to incorporate members from a variety of areas. To involve as many demographics, faculties, regardless of gender, religion or age. To be nondiscriminatory and accept all groups related to ASU‘s campus.The senate advocates for student rights and represents  Adams State University by enabling opportunities, development and engagement. This will help incorporate variety and opinions from a large all walks of lives to form a house full of unbiased opinion. The hope is to give students a higher sense of belonging to something that is purposeful and helps Adams State University individuals to better their lives via involvement, events and conferences. It also give ASU related individuals a trusted and reliable place to talk. Reliable means accountable, so it is important to listen respectfully and try and figure out answers. The floor is always a place to address, concerns, comments and bring up anything ASU related.

“It is about the journey not just the destination.” The struggles of a  task oriented individual, accepting bumps on the road. 

09-27-2013

I apologize that my journal entry is going to be long and systematical. I feel the best way to synthesize what I have learned is by skimming the NACA and finding  examples from each chapter that I feel significantly relevant.

The team- has changed over the last few weeks. There was a great deal of storming and uncertainty. I am not going to lie, I had a few break downs, frustrations and anxiety issues.  Since the last meeting we sat down and discussed where we are going. We canceled the agenda and wrote on papers, what a good team means and why we got involved. This really set the tone for the year. I know that we will have many more meetings, but let me tell you, I was so calm and excited after that.  Just physically knowing we all wanted the same things, really helped. There still has been storming and things that frustrated each and every member, but the ability of communication is already improving. This class helps me understand and differentiate different members of each team. I got that I am a task oriented person that always want to get things done but that I need to slow down and try and understand the learning process.

We have had two senate meetings. I have been trying to learn my overall role and have had some mistakes. With that being said in the meetings, I have really noticed us correcting and supporting each other. An example was Laura, my VP of Internal, saw I made a mistake and felt flustered so she picked up and took the next question asked. That meant so much to me, to have somebody understand that I had a weakness but to carry on for me. Miguel, my VP of Finance felt put on the spot at the meeting and people began shooting out budget numbers on the floor. I recognized

One of the other things is turning my own spin on campus and community relations. Margaret from Academic affairs. She built a survey to try and find how students value and prefer summer session courses. This project was not presented by AS&F but it was a way to get more students involved. She contacted me and asked if there was a way to try and spread the word. So at the last meeting I was able to discuss it and try and gather more support. This project is an example of a campus activities survey to try and better serve and warrant more successful students. I really felt proud to be a part of that message, and members of my team helped. David was able to get that on the AS&F site and that is another area where I feel like we are really coming together and communicating.

Late night planning also played a role in the quarterly. David, our program assistant always orders dinner, Pizza and Pop for the Quarterly. I think this affects student buy in because it is a really long meeting. I know I get hANGRY if I am hungry and can’t eat. I feel like this is a good incentive to get people to stay and vote on bills.

From chapter six, I just want to announce that our senate is almost full, which is almost unheard of. To have that many students wanting get to involved makes me feel like it is trending and people do want to be involved in something bigger than themselves. This makes me so proud to be a working member of this organization. I give credit to past teams and current members marketing our program and sharing the benefits of being something bigger than themselves. That being said I know we need to continually find ways to keep this membership strong, and I don’t really know how we could continue to encourage that.. something I hope will be discussed in class sometime.

The way I saw it before, was six individuals all wanting the same thing, but I can already tell we are becoming one member with six opinions and ideas.

 

09-06-2013- AS&F

Tuckman’s stages of group development

The past few weeks has been a very interesting and had a huge learning curve taking on a leadership role for Associated Student and Faculty. My role as AS&F President is to collectively help run AS&F and work with clubs and students around campus to improve their educational and extracurricular experience in collaboration with students, faculty, and staff.  I am still getting a grasp on my own strengths and weaknesses .  My goal is to move the team into the norming and performing stage we as soon as possible.  I need to understand the assets and liabilities available to the team to help us achieve our goal of serving AS&F members. One of my main goals this semester is to figure out what type of leadership qualities we have as a team. We are time crunched!!  It was discussed that it takes about a year for a group to flow and function comfortably. We have started discussing the leadership conference/ retreat we will be taking this year and this will be a tool to learn and evaluate what type of qualities we have and what we need to improve on.

The team is currently in the forming and storming state.  We are still trying to outline who we are. We just had the VP of External Affairs elected so it has been important to give him the tools to succeed.  He is a great asset to our team but we need to first form and establish boundaries, roles and duties. Rather than telling him what he needs to do, I tried to give him the resources and training tools to succeed.  I started by getting him to read his transition binder and catch him up on events his job title is supposed attend.  One of my goals is to incorporate being more of a facilitator rather than a dictator, because it is about building a team environment and having six individuals work collectively, cohesively and share responsibility making it more successful and efficient than one.  I would like to see more outside collaboration. We met as a group a chiles one night, and I feel like we are bonding and learning each other’s personality even by not being at work

 

Dictation vs Facilitation concept

I build an agenda before every meeting and encourage others to add to it. As an overseer I sometimes forget the small details and each member has a unique role that is specialized to their position. They also play a key role in decisions that will be made at their discretion. I also leave the last point as “other concerns” to allow last minute or forgotten action items to be addressed.   We usually categorize things and organize them into groups to try and allow the meeting to flow smoothly and efficiently. My agenda functions to keep us from wasting time and team energy/moral, a topic discussed in class. I have learned that I value the democracy in a group, as I have been a part of groups with suppressors and witnessed firsthand the suppressed become the suppressors. It is important to collectively allow everyone to address their concern and establish goals and work towards action of performing organization goals. Before moving on to an action item, I try and summarize it up and see if there is a collective nod or an opposing voice. I think that sets a team cohesiveness and it is important for outside organizations and members of AS&F  to observe that we all are trying to achieve the same goal. The only issue with a collective open floor occasionally allows us to get off topic. As a future note, I need to be more directive in sending friendly reminders to focus on the agenda at time.

An example of this was when we discussed improvements for the Senate first meeting.  I think we have done a really good job of being critical and realistic of where we are but also preparing for the next meeting. I followed up with opinions and reflection of the first meeting. Both positive and negative feedback was given.  The group was happy with how it went but decided we could improve it for next year. It was agreed that our preparation for the first meeting needs improvement next year. One of the targets and goals to encourage the forthcoming executive is to have a mock trial before so that we are more organized presenting our ideas more clearly and prevent misunderstandings that arose at this year’s meeting. We all agreed to applaud the idea that we successfully ran the first meeting and take note of improvements. This is an example of looking ahead to the reforming point of Tuckmans stages of group development.

Deciding what to Program and Late Night Programming- AS&F Example

One topic discussed on our meeting is Homcoming. We are partnering up with GAB in a co-sponsorship to try and get people involved in on campus events.  Why homecoming? Well homecoming gets many clubs to be involved and show school spirit. It helps us get our school name out into the community and create team morale amongst the school.

Agenda issues that had to be discussed was the event itself and the tools needed such as: materials, funding and space.  The organizational assessment is underway to try and build a better homecoming and set the precedent for future years.

AS&F is working in partnership with GAB to put on this event. This was a new concept discussed in class and it is important because co-sponsorships can help because you have more resources and people to tackle and present an event.  Our bosses work with GAB as well so they are a great extension to help us communicate with co-sponsorships. This is great because they are also administrative support to help make sure things go correctly and smoothly for people involved. In my opinion this is like the“ two eyes are better than one.”  I feel like this will support more students by sharing responsibility. As a co-partnership we are also working with another partner to better the event, particularly in float building. In the past, an area that was always the topic of improvement was the float. By having an outside source educated in float building it is our hope to enhance and provide a positive experience for the community and encourages more people to get involved.

 

 

 

08- 29-2013 MEETING PACIOLI

This week I went to the Pacioli meeting and it was a full house. Participation didn’t just occur on it’s own. Credit is given where it is deserved, and the executive team did an amazing job recruiting and marketing their club. After the meeting I was able to talk to the President and discuss membership interest. He told me there are  ~60 members looking to be involved in Pacioli.

The meeting was great because they targeted people to come by giving them an incentive. They provided Pizza for lunch. This was a smart tool to entice people to come regardless of interest. The pizza half sold the idea and their presentation gets the other half credit for such large numbers. There is a possibility that not everyone will join and some people only came for the pizza but it did encourage students to get involved. As a club on campus, one of the major goals is to give an opportunity for students to participated in areas of interest. This was a great tool.

Once the Pizza hype settled the executive  handed out an agenda.  The agenda helped facilitate a direction and allowed officers to describe the club.They used Roberts Rules, which was very effective in helping time manage and prevent officers from getting side tracked. I enjoyed seeing formality because it set the standard and let prospective members know that they are serious about their goals and mission.

First was introducing themselves. It is unclear who played what role except for the President who stood at the podium and facilitated the Powerpoint and meeting. Next on the agenda was a unique icebreaker. A big plastic blue ball was passed around the room. The ball had questions labeled all over it. From “your least favorite celebrity” to ” Pepsi or Coke.” The variability in the questions kept students engaged at fun facts being shared across the room. You said your name, year, major and answered the question your thumb pointed to. This helped establish a relationship between prospective members. Unfortunately they ran out of time so they had to speed up the process and remove the ball. This icebreaker would be a good idea to break the ice in smaller groups as the personalized questions make you feel more important and establishes connection.

The Powerpoint presentation had the club mission statement on it. The mission statement reads: “Pacioli seeks to provide students with the resources, experiences, and connections necessary for them to excel in academics, and in their post-collegiate careers.” This was unique because most organizations I have been apart of forget to tell their members the WHY? The mission statement clearly helps prospects understand the organizational targets. The direction was great and simplified– loved it. The mission statement encompasses the synthesis or what I would refer to as the “meat” of the club. This is a perfect example of a shared vision that shows purpose and direction. The statement was simple but was designed to inspire people that have a passion for business.

Other points mentioned on the agenda helped apply what they are proposing by having on campus events. They encourage Pacioli members to join as a group and participate in Atheletic events on campus. This will help give them a sense of family. One line that I felt a connection was when one of the officers pointed out that it can be a hard transition and going to any college event alone can be scary and intimidating. This made me really buy into the idea that it is important to connect with peers in club settings.

They also talked about skill improvement. They discussed off campus events that they are interested in, particularly visiting Accounting Firms like Ernst and Young. They want to give students a feel of the real business world, outside of school. That is important because it gives people a higher and realistic understanding of a potential career. I know I started out with the aspiration of Pharmacy school, and it wasn’t until I actually job shadowed that I realized my heart was not ready for that. This is a good tool to help evaluate and apply their university school courses for a long term life plan. They also plan on touring schools for potential masters programs, again helping them engage in an experience before they are committed.

Their advisor spoke about a company coming in and doing mock interviews to discover some of Adams State talent. She encouraged Juniors and Seniors to send forward their resumes and get practicing with her and other members to prepare themselves for the real world. This helps build life skills and prepare students for after university.

Pacioli discussed other on campus stuff such as Homecoming and ASU Cares Day. As a person that is involved with many clubs on campus I was thrilled to see the enthusiasm they have to contribute to Adams State. Having clubs active like this will help build moral and hopefully help increase graduation rates.

One thing I would like to see, is the interaction with other groups. I have heard multiple things about them aspiring to be the best club on campus and I love the enthusiasm but it would be nice to see them collaborate with other groups on campus to do events to help target an even larger group of students.

It is clear they still have some housekeeping issues and decision making with a time constraint of an 45 minute meeting. They have to fill a club representative position and with so many people involved they may need to build a larger executive support (but that’s a good thing). They did a good job outlining their goals and semester agenda. They did an overview of what the club is, they applied it by showing that they cared for prospective members and being involved in on campus events such as flash mobs. They also provide a sense of belonging by encouraging group activities. They help students evaluate massive life goals and decisions like career choices and prepare them for the transition. Together with their volunteering, trips, fundraisers and events I know they will be successful and have amazing membership. They successful built the pyramid of description, application, evaluation and synthesis. I have high hopes for their organization and can’t wait to see them at campus events!