The College Park City-University Partnership noted the success of the first official year of its university student internship program in its annual report released last week.
The internship continues to play an important role in getting the partnership’s initiatives out to the public, said Valerie Woodall, the partnership’s program associate. The report noted that the internship program allows the partnership to “grow and expand” its community profile.
The internship focuses on Web content, specifically a weekly e-newsletter that began last semester and reaches about 1,500 people, Woodall said.
“It doesn’t really matter if we do all of this work and nobody knows about it,” Woodall said. “It’s a really great opportunity for students, and most of them are better at social media than us.”
The partnership is a nonprofit organization sponsored by this university and the City of College Park. The organization promotes economic growth through development and housing initiatives that appeal to the interests of the city and this university.
Established in 1998, the partnership began expanding its social media outreach when its executive director, Eric Olson, took over in 2014, Woodall said. Olson said the internship focuses on making the partnership’s Web presence more interactive.
The internship program officially began last semester. Ori Gutin, a university alumnus who graduated in December, interned with the partnership in the fall, focusing on sustainability and jump-starting the partnership’s social media outreach as well as starting the weekly e-newsletter.
Gutin said he managed the partnership’s Facebook page, and because of his strong connection to the student body, he introduced people whom the partnership hadn’t been able to reach before.
“I think mostly through my personal connections and being connected to a lot of groups on campus, we were able to expand the social media presence,” he said. “I gained a really acute awareness of what was going on in College Park.”
Gutin said students at this university are a major base that the partnership should appeal to on social media.
The partnership also began a collaboration with an organization-focused communications class at this university last semester, COMM424: Communication in Complex Organizations. In the class, students apply what they learn in lectures and give suggestions regarding the partnership’s organizational structures, said Lindsey Anderson, the professor of the class.
Anderson said last semester students in her class created a potential layout for the partnership to use as its annual report. Students suggested content for the report, such as using information about new construction and development projects in College Park.
“They’re getting a much richer learning experience in the sense that they can see these concepts that we talk about in class exemplified by the members of CPCUP,” Anderson said.
These concepts include organizational structures students learn in textbooks that are then applied to real-life situations within the partnership, Anderson said.
Woodall said students come up with ideas that make the partnership’s website more interactive. She said students make “dynamic, interesting, content that can be pushed out through social media so that we can continue the university district vision.”
Last semester, students created sample recruitment fliers for the internship program, Anderson said, and reached out to the communications internship coordinator so the partnership internship could be advertised on the Listserv.
The class provides the partnership with deliverables, such as infographics and fliers, as well as suggestions for its social media presence. Anderson said her students may provide a communication report that shows how communication flows within the partnership.
“Students have really enjoyed working with the group,” Anderson said. “They feel really invested in College Park. … They like giving back to this organization that’s committed to building a partnership between the campus and the community.”
