Community Partnerships Coordinator - optiMize

My Contribuitions

moMentum Fellowship 2019 (Inaugural Event)

June 2019, June 2020

• Project Description: The moMentum Fellowship is a year-round social innovation training program for community college students to work on their own self-directed social impact projects. This culminates in a 2-day Fellowship where they come to campus to pitch their project in front of the optiMize community for funding, receive a tour, and connect with resources at the university. The goal is to reward students for their efforts in creating a more just and sustainable world as well as building a bridge between community college and the University of Michigan.

• Roles: Event Coordinator, Host, Logo Designer, Marketing Lead, Community College Liaison

• Summary of work:

  • I designed the moMentum Fellowship logo, and other marketing materials such as resource guides, certificates, and shirts for the event

  • Helped plan and coordinate the 2 days for the students, ensuring they maximized their stay on-campus

  • Assisted in hosting the event and being a facilitator for group discussions such as student panels

aMplify Nights

• Project Description: aMplify Nights are bi-weekly programming for transfer students at the University of Michigan to find and cultivate community, and build awareness of resources available at the university. We built this through good food and programming. 2019 was the first year we ran the program.

• Roles: Marketing/Communications Lead, Curriculum Builder, Event Coordinator, Host

• Avg. Attendance: 60 people

• Summary of Work:

  • Created marketing materials for aMplify including event flyers and spread word about event through networking and email

  • Helped build the curriculum we would use for the programming. Every event had a theme or topic regarding life as a transfer student or a student generally (students panels, housing, commuting, financial aid etc).

  • Collaborated on event structure, what partners from other departments at the university and beyond to bring in and present for the students, communicating with said partners and making sure they have everything they need to be successful for their presentations.

  • Hosted and facilitated aMplify Nights

  • Communicated with students about aMplify Nights and upcoming events via email and word-of-mouth

Other Projects

Mellon Fellowship: Throughout the year, we run a Fellowship for community college transfer students who want to cultivate a supportive community for their fellow transfer student peers. My role was be a mentor to these select individuals. I helped select the 10 Mellon Fellows annually, helping manage donor money allocated for such work from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. I also led meetings with the Mellon Fellows, with the goal of finding and creating ways to help build community within the transfer student community at U-M and build bridges for students at community colleges to U-M.

User research for community website: I conducted interviews with optiMize alumni to understand students motives for using an internal tool (yet to be released) to connect student project groups with mentors in the optiMize community. After gathering information from these 3 interviews I created a user persona for engineers to consider while building the tool. I also created early mockups of info cards to be used on the site.

Bold Futures: I designed certificates for approx. 60 high school students, customized with their own name, for a social innovation summer camp across Washtenaw County, hosted at WCC in August in 2019.

Storytelling Workshops: Traveled to community colleges around Michigan hosting and facilitating visioning and storytelling workshops for students working on social impact projects and wanting to transfer to 4-year institutions.