Internship Objective 1

Understand and participate in the programming functions of the Presenter's Office

My first goal for my fall internship with the Associated Students of the University of Utah was to really get to know how ASUU programmed for students. I hoped to compare and contrast ASUU's programming efforts, coordinated by the Presenter's Office, to my experience advising the Student Activities Commission of the Associated

Students of Westminster College.

To fulfill this objective I:

• Attended a variety of Presenter's Office events including Redfest and Poreotics

Redfest is the Presenter's Office large-scale campus concert. This year two groups performed: We are Scientists and Cobra Starship. Tickets were free to students and 'sold out' the day before the event. I got to be a part of many of the processes of this event: I attended meetings with the light and sound vendors, staffed the event and took part in discussions assessing the successes.

"One of the greatest challenges, and large learning experiences of the night was the weather. The threat of wind and lightning almost shut the concert down. It was fascinating to see how the advisors assessed risk differently than the students. It was also great to see how the entire staff successfully collaborated with many different entities to solve problems and make decisions from security to student volunteers to maintenance staff."

• Assessed student attendance data for a Presenter's Office Comedian event

• • The Presenter's Office utilized University of Utah student ID card reader technology to track which students attended their fall comedian Michael Ian Black. Students swiped their student ID when they entered the event and a spreadsheet of demographic information was compiled from this data linked to each student.

    I evaluated and organized this data to better understand the students that attended the event. A few things stood out in the data: more commuter students attended the event than residential students, the majority of students in attendance were students of color and about half were first year students.

    The information from this data is incredibly valuable to the Presenter's Office. If they were to consistently track which students are attending events they can adjust their events to reach more students and various populations. I wrote an executive-summary style proposal to the Presenter's Office outlining the significance of the data and recommending they consistently track attendance of their events with this ID card technology.

    
    

    Check out this video of students from the Presenter's Board talking up Redfest!

•