Many VanCougs experience community engagement with work from real clients
WSU Vancouver’s 2016-2021 strategic plan includes five goals. The fifth goal states, “establish and maintain mutually beneficial community outreach, research, financial and civic engagement partnerships.”
This goal is meant to not only increase community engagement with the campus, but offer students real-world experience in the community while studying to help them find local career offers post-graduation.
This emphasis of hands on experience has led to many partnerships with WSU Vancouver and local companies that allow students to face real-world situations and tackle real-world problems.
Clinical assistant professor Mike Berger focuses on creating opportunities for his students to build working relationships with outside clients.
In his environmental life and sustainability class, students have a choice between writing a paper or working within the community.
“The students get some real-world experience, they get to interact with someone in the community that they may develop a relationship with and that may turn into an internship or potentially a job opportunity,” Berger said.
Berger believes that this relationship is beneficial to both the student and the client. The client works with the students and in doing so, they get a direct look at the variety of talent on campus that may be their future employees.
Students not only get community connections and experience in their field, but are also provided with valuable work students can add to their portfolio and may be implemented by clients.
Holly Slocum, a senior digital technology and culture major, has done a few client-based assignments while at WSU Vancouver. She explained that one of the reasons clients are so eager to allow students to take on projects is because of the preparation level students receive while enrolled at WSU Vancouver.
“We really stand out against students who have just been focused on a degree, who have done nothing but textbook work and never actually worked with a client,” Slocum said.
Slocum said that it is common for local organizations to hold off on recruitment-hiring until after that years’ graduating class has finished, anticipating that a recent graduate may fill the role they are looking for.
Recent business administration and finance graduate, Shelby McGuffey, was a part of last year’s Business Growth MAP project, — the senior project for business and administration majors.
McGuffey’s group worked with Slumberkins, a Vancouver-based company aimed at encouraging social and emotional skills for parents and children. According to WSU Vancouver’s press release, the team developed a “product line profitability model, a marketing budget solver and three executive dashboards.”
McGuffey explained, after being placed with your team of WSU Vancouver business majors, you are then connected with a local business leader within the community who acts as a mentor throughout the project.
“This mentor acts as a line of communication between the students and the local business they are consulting with, as well as a wealth of knowledge and experience for the students to draw from,” he said.
McGuffey said that this project helped him learn adaptability, think outside the educational structure and understand the importance of mentorship.
Slocum, who works at an on-campus research lab, believes WSU Vancouver’s undergraduate students are given opportunities that normally only graduate students get.
She recently collaborated with other students within her major and was able to get a book published on electronic literature.
“The fact that undergraduates are doing academic research work that is getting published, those are opportunities that are not given to undergraduate students at many other institutions,” Slocum said.
Real-world client work is the kind of experience Berger hopes more students can be a part of. “I think it really broadens their perspective,” Berger said. “I want students to be able to follow what is important to them.”
Brody Voge is a junior at WSU Vancouver studying strategic communications.