Bryan Kelley: Cullis Wade Depot and Welcome Center- Week 5

Activities:

-Welcomed distinguished guests to a formal President's Luncheon
-Welcomed guests to the University
-Organized guests for tours to the university for the day
-Began revision of Maroon VIP guidebook in earnest
-Communicated with professionals throughout the university
-Conducted historical research on Mississippi State University

Reflection:

This past week has been rather busy both at the Welcome Center as well as at my assistantship site. With Residence Director training beginning on Wednesday, I was only able to get a few hours in at the Welcome Center physically. Regardless of this fact, I was able to get a good amount of work done while I was there. As always, I was able to have some very meaningful interactions with visitors and guests to the university. This has always been one of my favorite parts of the practicum experience because I have the opportunity to not only help answer and questions that people might have about the university, but I also have a moment with these groups and individuals where I can share my passion about what I do for the university and what that looks like for the student. As a part of this process, I have the opportunity to work out some of the logistics of the tour days for potential students. This process involves regular communication with the Admissions and Scholarships Office as well as with the professionals within the Welcome Center.

A unique opportunity which presented itself early in the week was serving at the welcome table for the President's Formal Luncheon for University Retirees. This was a pretty interesting opportunity and I jumped at the ability to participate in the event. As I welcomed retiring faculty and staff in addition to prominent university executives, I got to have several meaningful conversations along the way. Whether the conversation was with a retiring faculty member or with the university's Chief Diversity Officer and Director of the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion. This conversation in particular was rather fulfilling because of work I have done previously with the office.

In addition to this, I began the final revision process of the Maroon VIP handbook in earnest. This has been a rather involved process. This is largely because I am going page by page looking for grammatical and syntax errors. This means reading the book several times over for me. With that being said, it has also been a really enjoyable experience because I have the opportunity to learn so much more about Mississippi State University. There has been a lot of rearranging and reformatting of the book as well through moving information around, inputting pictures, and general formatting for easier readability. One of the larger aspects of the project has been the inclusion of pictures of all of the buildings on campus in order to make the Maroon VIPs more familiar with what each location looks like for tour purposes. This involved communication and collaboration with University Relations to get the pictures and then the actual inclusion of the pictures in the book. Finally, I have also been doing historical research on Mississippi State University alongside all of the other revisions in order to make the information more accurate and interesting.

So overall, it has been a busy and full week. One of the biggest moments I had this week as far as learning moments was the idea of networking and working with other offices across campus. As I welcomed all the guests and administrators to the luncheon, I had the opportunity to build connections with some of them as well as solidifying and growing others that had already been started. The networking aspect of the luncheon was certainly enjoyable. Through working with University Relations, I also had the opportunity to work and collaborate with another office outside of my assistantship and practicum experience this week. These different moments have been wonderful learning experiences. This is largely because they are helping to prepare me for real professional interactions with people and offices after my graduation from the program. According to this weeks reading, both of these things are incredibly important and beneficial to me as a young professional and I could not agree more.