Kara Cummings does marketing for the School of Business. So she works with University Marketing, but also outside of University Marketing. I’ll explain..

Mainly when it comes to creative things and marketing materials you usually have to go through the Creative Department of University Marketing, buuuuttttt when you need something quickly they’re a little busy.. Talking to Kara she says that if it’s something that’s going out internally, within Stetson/your department, then it’s okay to not have them make it and you do it. If it’s something that’s going out to the public it’s better to get their approval first.

One of the most important things when working with somebody else is you have to be organized. Kara uses a project management program called Asana. It helps you to organize your projects and the steps you need to make to complete the project.

So when you are working with Creative it’s best practice to tell them what you need at least 6 weeks before you absolutely need it. You should also give them a specific date and a reason why you need it by that date. If you need it sooner than 6 weeks it’s best to give them a few different dates instead of just one.

The Creative Department isn’t super difficult to work with, which is something I definitely thought at one point. They are just EXTREMELY busy. After working with Brittany Strozo for just one day, I was overwhelmed with the amount of things she has to do in just one day.

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Talking to Kara I got some insight as to what I can do for the department of Continuing Education and Outreach since we’re also on the outside of University Marketing.

Throughout the summer I’ve been helping the Continuing Education and Outreach Graduate Assistant, Salman Mujtaba, revamp the department’s website: adding photos, switching layouts, updating information, etc.

As part of my meetings with University Marketing, I spent a day with Jordan Foley. Jordan is one of the web editors for Stetson, and he’s constantly working on projects. Diving into Web Garage, the system Stetson uses for making webpages, I learned that Stetson’s website is HUGE! I know websites have a lot of pages but MY GOODNESS I never knew it could be that many!

Anyways, to help relieve Jordan, I helped him with Stetson’s Faculty Web pages. So each faculty member has their own web page with information they submit to Web Services. I went through the forms and added any new information to the pages.

There were quite a few pages that didn’t exist because the forms were for new faculty members, so it didn’t take as long as I thought it would.

Currently Stetson is changing the layout for these faculty web pages. Instead of having everything just layed out and you have to scroll through a lot of things, the pages will now feature accordians. It looks a lot cleaner and that’s ultimately the goal for Stetson’s site. They want things to look clean and easy to navigate.

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Helping Jordan with this project I realized how much work being a Web Editor is. It’s a lot of double checking information, making sure the formatting is correct, checking links, checking code, etc. It’s a lot and while it’s cool to be a part of, I can tell that it’s not something for me. So props to anybody that loves coding and is passionate about coding, like I WISH. I’ll stick to using the visual editor in Web Garage and call Web Services if I need help.

Thanks friends.

I’ve come to find that a lot of my days with The Office of University Marketing involve researching and assisting with various projects.

Janie Graziani is the Assistant Vice President of Marketing/Media Relations. The day I went to work with her she sent me an email that morning about a project I could help her with.

Dr. Libby’s office had received a call about possibly participating in the “Where We Stand Project” with the Committee for Citizen Awareness. Neither of us had ever heard about this project or committee, so as soon as I got there she gave me the lowdown and I got to researching.

It turns out, the Committee for Citizen Awareness produces educational videos about the government and distributes them to public schools free of charge. The “Where We Stand Project” specifically talks about the health in our nation. According to research done by the National Institutes of Health, it seems that people who go to college and receive higher education tend to have better health than those that don’t.

The reason they reached out to Dr. Libby is because they want her to talk about Stetson and help promote this idea of going to college. One of the concerns Janie had was how much it would cost the school, because normally things like this cost upwards of $10,000. However, this project would only cost a total of $7,000 over the span of two years ($3,500 per year), and we would have full copyright to our portion of the project. A lot of times you don’t get the rights to your footage, so this information was a pleasant surprise.

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I never knew that people called and asked President Libby to be a part of projects like this, so helping research and gather information was fun. I feel like a lot with Digital Arts, it’s important to research any project you are a part of to make sure that you want your name associated with it. Yes a job is a job, but you could also be putting your reputation on the line.

Going forward I’ll remember to know fully what I am a part of and make sure that I’m not compromising my own beliefs and values just for a check.

I’ve never really been someone who is good at writing. I stumble over my words, I can never get my point across, and I more often than not, lose track of my story. This summer, I had the opportunity to work with Cory Lancaster for a day and ask her some questions about stories and other aspects of journalism.

Cory Lancaster is the woman behind Stetson Today. She doesn’t write all of the stories herself, but she does have a say in the who/what/when/where for each post.

On my day with Cory, she had me look through the home page and see what stood out to me. I gave her some input as to what stories I would most likely click, as well as suggestions for changing titles/descriptions. I didn’t think she would actually go and change any of the titles or descriptions, BUT SHE DID! It was the coolest feeling in the world to think that my input was not only valid, but also useful!

Later I was able to assist Cory in fabricating an e-mail message into a story about the speaker for Values Day.  We took the text from the e-mail, rearranged it to sound more like an article, added some hyperlinks and photos, named it, then posted it. The entire time I felt like I was a part of something so important. It wasn’t just a school project, THIS WAS THE REAL WORLD!

I learned from Cory that when writing a story it’s important to keep things in chronological order and have a clear idea of what you are trying to say. It’s not hard to write a story, because most of the time the story writes itself. You just might need to add a few transition sentences.

This was my last week interning for the museum. Summer camp had ended the week before, and there were no scheduled groups to tour this week. Reason being because we dedicated this week to cleaning up the museum. The aftermath of camp takes a heavy toll on the museum, and while it wasn’t closed to the public, the kid’s wing would’ve been harder for guests to enjoy since we temporarily move exhibits to clean the floors. Besides basic sweeping, vacuuming, and moping, we had to remove all the toys and school supplies that were used for camp and move them all to the second floor of the wing, where it has storage and supply rooms.

When we were done cleaning each day, I finally finished working on the coloring book. Below are two pages within the book that are part of a single illustration:

The rest of the coloring book is composed of single-page drawings and puzzles, such as a word search.

As I mentioned last week, our last project was to create fake money for the pizza restaurant in the kid’s wing. While I finished up the line art in the coloring book, Ariana drew the dollar bills and scanned them for me. Afterwards, I simply reused the drawings we had already completed for coloring book and placed them as the faces on the dollar bills. We didn’t have time to draw new faces, so we decided to be resourceful with the drawings we already had, especially since they were already digitalized. Below is the finished product:

Overall, I had an enjoyable time working with the museum. Besides all the cool things we made for the education department, working there was fun because we worked with a great staff, and they were easy to get along with. Additionally, it was nice to able to work with Ariana, which made the whole adjustment easier. Though it was an unpaid internship, it was a good and meaningful experience nonetheless.

And as an fyi, MOAS will need more interns for the fall. If interested for more information about the internships offered, please check out this link.

This week marks the end of my internship at the Musuem of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach and it consisted of wrapping up our final projects and restoring the classrooms to their normality. After eight weeks of at least 45 kids (ages 4 to 12) on any given day, the rooms were in desperate need of a clean up.

We started organizing and cleaning the downstairs classroom since this weekend it would be used for a birthday party. Computers were taken down and unused art supplies was taken up to the mezzanine.
In the area that the 4 to 6 year old class was being held, the museum normally has a variety of a exhibits. During the time of the summer camps they were all moved into the main Children’s Musuem area. This of course made the area far more crowded so it’s nice to have more space that allows guests more area to explore the exhibits. All the furniture and material that was used was moved out either into storage or the upstairs supply closet.

Once the clean up process in the Children’s Musuem was completed we move to clean our area in the education department office. All the project that we completed over the course of the internship were done in this area so we had certainly amassed material in there.

In terms of projects that needed to be finalized, we had to finalized the coloring book for the Prehistory of Florida, the creation of fake money and some final fossil cast touch ups. For the coloring book, Thanya was combing our parts into a final and polished file. The fake money, was a last minute project that would be used in the Children’s Musuem in the pizza making exhibit. The fake notes would integrate aspects of the Musuem such as the Prehistory exhibit. These notes I drew up and then gave to Thanya so she could digitally render them. The last bit of touch ups I did on a cast I was working on last week that they want to now use in a exhibit instead of department outreaches.

Overall, my internship with the education department was extremely insightful and a nice addition to my musuem experience. As I mentioned in the beginning of these posts I really wanted to get an understanding for how educational aspects and programs get incorporated into musuems and other art institution. I certainly got the chance to see the planning and prepping that goes in the running of a camp and how essential it is to the increasing of community engagement for musuems.

On July 27th I spoke with Madison Creech about her collaborative project, ANTIBODIES, with FEELD.

On August 10th I met with Tonya, and she provided me with a few more things to post about.  I also scheduled a post for the 28th Annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition to post soon after classes start, which includes dates and deadlines and summarizes the general requirements. I also have a few posts featuring the upcoming panel discussions and lectures relating to the Fall exhibitions. I still need featured images for a few of these, however.

Intermittently I have been helping Jennifer Sorese at Studio Bleu in New Symyrna in exchange for studio time to work on my own projects.  It’s been a really positive experience reconnecting with my past AP 3D Studio Art teacher, and enlightening to hear an outside ceramicist’s perspective on Stetson’s art program. Similar to what I and others have brought up, ceramics students and the ceramics studio desperately need an overhaul and introduction of preventative safety measures, concerning the inhalation of clay and glaze dust.

I still have yet to reach out to Dr. Katz, Matt Roberts,  Dan Gunderson, Dengke Chen, or Krista Franco. This is in part due to my own nervousness, but I do intend to reach out to them within the following week and a half preceding the end of this internship so I can obtain information and insights to make a few more posts.

The next web intern can pick up where I left off concerning my drafted and unfinished posts that focus on past seniors and especially future events in the Hand Art Center. Tonya Curran expressed great interest in continuing to keep in touch with CREA interns, and to promote the website to new and current students in the Creative Arts Department as a resource.

Between final dress rehearsal and the opening of the show most of what I had to do was paperwork. We had some miscommunication and timing issues with props during this week and from a suggestion of my supervisor, I created a few pieces of detailed paperwork showing where things should be at what time and what time I wanted this started and completed by before the show each night. I created three different pieces of paperwork, each having basically the same information but formatted differently to help at different times before, during, and after the show.

The props tracking list (see sample below) details what page the prop starts its track, what the name of the prop is, where it starts, who picks it up, where it ends, and whether or not that prop has any more tracking after.

The props location list breaks down where each prop should be at the top of the show. For bags the list includes the contents of each bag and for items with multiples it includes how many of each item there are. This is also the list that I use at the top of the show to check the props to make sure everything is where it needs to be.

The props pre-show and post-show list has a detailed time breakdown of each task that needed to be completed and what time I expected that task to begin by. This was probably the most helpful piece of props paperwork because it allowed me to know what was supposed to be happening at specific times so that I would know right away if we were ahead or behind schedule. This also ensured that everything was in place and had been checked by the time I had actors onstage for fight call.

With the addition of these three pieces of paperwork, my pre-show process was a lot smoother and I could more confidently check in with other departments and continue with my pre-show duties and not have to constantly check in with props to make sure everything was getting done in a timely manner.

The first half of this week is tech week! Tech week for Whipping Man goes from sunday to wednesday, starting with load-in on sunday. Load-in is when the set and electrics are moved into the space, in our case the space is The Aviary! On this day I was in the shop back on campus helping get the props caught up so that we would have them for our spacing rehearsal on tuesday. I worked on a few different props on sunday, mostly making props look like they were old and worn, such as taking glass bottles and painting them to make them look dusty and dirty. Monday morning I was over at the Aviary with cast, director, and artistic director to do video interviews for marketing videos. Once the interviews were over the cast was dismissed until the evening when they came back and we did a spacing rehearsal with the cast actually on the platforms for the first time. Our spacing rehearsal ended up turning into a run through so we ended up going through the entire show. On tuesday we had a short rehearsal in the early afternoon working the “fight call scenes” and a few other heavier blocking areas. There were two fight call scenes in the show, the first being the amputation, and the second being the scene where Simon is physically threatening and hitting John. Tuesday night we did a cue to cue where we skipped through the show jumping from cue to cue, working out the timing for lighting and sound cues. Wednesday afternoon we did a tech run followed by the final dress rehearsal in the evening. After final dress we ran through all of the scene transitions to make sure everything that happened during the transitions was running as quickly and smoothly as possible.

WM TECH SCHEDULE

This was the second and last week of Whipping Man rehearsals before we were to move into The Aviary. We started monday’s rehearsal by breaking down and working in depth on the amputation scene (the end of act 1 scene 1) and when that felt comfortable with it we ran the entirety of act 1 scene 1. After running this scene and taking notes on trouble spots we went back and worked those trouble spots until they ran smoothly. After dinner break we moved onto act 1 scenes 2 and 3 and worked through those. On tuesday we finished our work with act 1 scene 3 and then did a full run of act 1. Wednesday morning we had an interview with the local newspaper, which turned into our production being the front page article of the paper (article link at bottom of page). After the interview we went straight into rehearsing act 2 scene 1 which is Caleb’s letter. The tricky part of the letter was that there is an underscore for the letter so it had to be timed correctly so that the pauses and movements of the underscore matched up with the reading (sound cloud file at bottom of page). We then moved on to act 2 scene 2 and focused a lot on the very end of the scene, seeing as this was the final moment of the show. When we finished with this we did a full run of act 2. Thursday and friday we jumped around quite a bit running each act and working the trouble spots, both days ending with a run of the act that we worked on that day. Saturday we did a full run through of the show and invited the designers and crew members of the show to watch and make any notes of questions or concerns they had regarding things they noticed that would possibly need to be changed before or during tech week. This was also the only time that the crew members working backstage would be able to sit down and watch the show since they would not be able to watch it from their backstage positions.

Newspaper article: http://www.newsadvance.com/the_burg/features/uncomfortable-truths-endstation-theatre-company-ends-season-with-the-whipping/article_7135b08b-7816-5431-84ff-1bd73bc1b917.html

Sound cloud files (letter underscore):