The great part about this vision is that the University of Utah is an awesome, awesome school. It's all here. It needs to be gathered in a cohesive way and you can walk in and find out about what you want to know. That way you don't have to run from one building to the next to the next to the next trying to find all these answers. I'm the kind of student and type of person that I'll put my foot in any door that I need to put it in to find out what I need to do to do my best. But there are many, many people who are not like that. They don't want to go ask questions. Some fear to ask questions, some don't know how to ask questions. And that's what leadership is. It's not just about one type of student that has the privileges of knowing someone in the Hinckley Institute of Politics that can hook them up with a great internship.
This is about every kind of student that comes to this school. We're all on an equal playing field, technically, in a lot of ways we don't have the same opportunities. But they are available. It's just a matter of finding them. And they're here at the school. We just need to put it into place where we can direct students where to go.
Say you want an internship with a great marketing firm or a newspaper, and you didn't know where to go, and you're a freshman, and you're scared out of your mind and you don't know what to do. And you have all these questions. And if there's a list of 30 different places. The best part is that as we connect with businesses and the community and organizations that want to get students into their organizations for internships, these businesses and organizations are going to be all over this. I know of businesses that would do anything to get a student intern, but they don't know how to get a student either.
It's about connecting real life experience and preparation for the real world with students here. It's all here in place. It's all here. We want to be the ultimate facilitator when it comes to student information.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Joh Bowers on "The Hub"
Graham Anderson on "The Hub"
'Your one stop center for student related information and resources'. The idea behind it is students have, the main reason a lot of students come to the U is to help prepare for a vocation in the future. Some people are here for graduate school, which is also vocational. Our campus has a lot of resources for that, and they are underutilized. The career center, the Hinckley Institute's intern program, academic advising in some areas is not used as well in relation with the Graduate Guarantee. There needs to be more emphasis put in that part as well. What we're going to do is within ASUU we want to have a committee and a board within ASUU that will run an information center which we're referring to as The Hub.
A student can walk into ASUU and ask 'how do I get involved with Greek Row?', 'How do I get a scholarship from my college?' 'How do I get involved with service activities around campus?' 'Where do I get a sweet internship?' 'What do I need to do to apply to graduate school?' We're not saying we're going to have that information, but we can say to them 'here's where to go on campus to find these things'. A lot of students know where to go for this information. The example I use is that I'm a Chinese major. If I wanted to try and get a scholarship for my department, I don't know who I'd go talk to. I really don't. And it would be awesome if we had a facilitator on campus that could point students in the direction that we needs to go. Not necessarily that we've got all the information, but we know where to obtain that information.