Month: January 2022

I served as a Social Media Intern in charge of the Instagram/Facebook accounts and creating a
department Discord Server for the Department of Humanities. My internship allowed me to work within the department to reach out to the community, current students, and prospective students. This semester, I worked on professional, casual communication across digital platforms. Using the Discord server I helped set up, I’ve networked with students in my department I hadn’t met yet. The COVID pandemic stressed the importance of these digital spaces. It also allows me to reach out to prospective students within an environment familiar to them.

Creating the Humanities Instagram/Facebook posts involved the new mascot HUgh Manatee,
who promoted humanities-related, on-campus resources. Since I started creating content, I’ve
seen 72 accounts follow the Humanities Instagram account. I also interacted with users on the
social media accounts, from sharing stories from the Graduate Student Government, to
answering questions posed in the comment sections.

Part of my internship included graphic design for content creation. Some design elements are intuitive, while others are ones I learned through experience. For example, I learned how using
as few fonts as possible helps viewers concentrate on information better. Additionally, layout can make a difference as to what information people pick up. Hearing about ideal placing, colors,  formatting, etc. from my mentor and seeing the results helped me understand how each element connects to convey a message.

— Tucker Nielsen, English

What does a typical day look like for an intern writer in the Center for Technology & Training (CTT)? If this is something you wonder about at all, you are in luck because I can tell you all about it. On any given day you will most likely be writing or editing an article project, probably not a huge surprise. Where it starts to get more interesting is when I can organize interviews with professionals relevant to the field I am writing about. I get to ask them questions for my article, and additionally, I consult with subject matter experts (SME) to help fix any issues or inconsistencies with the technical content in my article. Throughout the course of this semester, I have had the opportunity to conduct extensive research on my article topic which is about HFST which stands for high friction surface treatment. This is a technology used for increasing the safety of a road by making it much harder for a vehicle to slip off the road, and most of the time this happens it would be around a sharp turn or because of wet weather conditions. This is just one topic of something an intern writer here in the CTT can expect to work on, and there are many more articles always being written. If you are someone who likes to write as well as talk with experts and learn from them, then working with the CTT is something fit for you.

— Troy Zehnder, STC

During my first year at Michigan Tech, I felt out of touch with the community due to the pandemic and online classes. I had a discussion with my advisor about future possibilities to engage with students as campus opened back up, and she suggested an internship at the Center for Student Mental Health and Well-being. Working as an intern for the Center for Student Mental Health and Well-Being has not only helped me connect with the student body, it also gave me the opportunity to make new friends while making a positive impact on campus. 

The undergraduate team at the center is split up into specific task groups based on people’s individual interests; mine dealt mostly with social media. During my time I have helped create and spread information on our social media pages including study tips, mental scheduling, safety tips, and many more topics. One post I made was for Halloween safety tips, which gained a lot of traction on our platform. The post was even shared by the Keweenaw Peninsula official instagram which reached their thousands of followers! I also wanted to help make sure our team worked well together by hosting a staff-bonding event where we decorated cookies to practice our own well-being. 

A bit outside of the realm of mental health, we were able to volunteer during homecoming week with the cardboard boat races. Hannah, Cat, and I each timed one of the lanes of boats; and since this was my first cardboard boat race, it made the experience super cool since we were right in the middle of the action.

— Emily Bishop, CCM