Reflection

During this last week at my applied studies site I have mixed emotions. I am saddened that it is ending so soon when I believe I have so much more I can learn. However, I haven't felt this is the place for me long term so my heart may have not been in it for awhile. I learned some valuable office skills such as how to utilize Excel and Outlook. I also learned how much I still need to grow in terms of inter-personal relationships. I did not take full advantage of this opportunity and gain as much as possible from the people I worked with. I think being an online student may have caused me to be much more of an independent worker than this job called for. The atmosphere at my site is very much like a community; even like a family and I felt reserved much of the time. In retrospect if I was able to do things over I would involve myself more because the opportunities were there I just chose not to. On the surface it doesn't seem like it was the most positive experience but I learned important things about myself that I need to work on in order to succeed in this industry. The non-profit world is about relationships and communication and if those are my two weakest areas right now then I have my work cut out for me. On the other hand I had the opportunity to work around dedicated, sincere and pasionate people which gives me something to look forward to when I am ready to enter the non-profit business world.

SWOT Analysis

From what I've seen, my applied study site is very successful. Everyone knows their job responsibilities and more importantly everyone seems passionate about "ending educational inequity" so I don't have much to suggest for improvement. The main thing I would suggest is to take advantage of the close relationship they have with ASU and have as many interns as they can work with them. Everyone works over 60 hours a week and I think if there were interns there to take on some of the load it could help avoid burnout. I am choosing to use SWOT analysis to help develop a plan for this organization.

Strengths: good relationships within organization and community, organized, good communication, very flexibile.

Weaknesses: constantly need money from donors, constantly need to maintain relationships with alum and donors, work too many hours.

Opportunities: Pepsi grant, word-of-mouth, new relationships with universities.

Threats: Economy cutting jobs, similar non-profits taking available grants, employee burnout.

By allowing more interns to work for this organization, employees can focus on more urgent tasks and let the interns take care of the less urgent but still important assignments.

Mentor Interview

For this weeks Blog I interviewed my mentor, Wendy. I followed the list of questions Dr. Hirshorn suggested.

• What types of challenges do you face? mainly work/family balance issues

• How do you deal with deadline stress, difficult people, and internal politics?It's actually a really nice group of people so I don't have to deal with difficult people or many internal politics. In terms of deadline stress, I just do whatever it takes to get things done. Also, I do my best to prioritize so the most important things get done when they need to.

• What do you like or dislike about your position? I love the people I work with. I like knowing just about everything going on in the office. I like serving in a role that supports others in the office both practically and strategically. I like thinking through challenging problems with other people on the team and I like working closely with our executive director and the rest of our staff members. The only thing I dislike is the pace of the work. That is, people work too many hours in my opinion. Most people on the leadership team work 60-80 hours a week and a good week is 50-55. We are doing great work, but I don't like that people feel like they have to work so many hours to do their jobs well.

• What do you feel can be done to make work go smoother? I think we need to do a careful analysis of everything we do and see what we can cut out so we can spend more of our time on the most important things.

• How do you feel about working with others? I enjoy working with others and I especially like working with my co-workers and other like minded people who work towards social justice and equity.

• How do you separate the personal from the professional? I try to get home early to be with my son and then I work a few hours in the evenings and on the weekends when my son naps so I can make the most of my time with my son. It's really challenging to balance a more than full time job and a family. It's hard to feel like I am doing both well but I try.

• What is your ideal work environment? I like having good role models and mentors to learn from. I like being busy and I like working with other hard working and motivated people. I like having a certain amount of freedom with what I do.

• How does your personality help or hinder your communication with others or your conflict resolution approach? I think that I’m kind and open-minded. So, that helps my communication.

• How has your education and experience prepared you for your current job? I've had a number of different jobs. I've taken different things from each that have prepared me. The skills I learned in law school and with preparing cases helped a lot as I learned to juggle a lot of things at once.

• After whom do they model your work behavior? Or who do you most respect? I most respect my law school professor who supervised me in court and a judge I worked for.

• Have you ever reached out to mentors and has the mentorship system worked for you? I've never specifically participated in a program where I was mentored, but some of my supervisors have been very good mentors.

A day in the life...

I chose my mentor, Wendy, to be the subject of this week’s blog because she always seems busy and is kind of a liaison for of the different departments. However, this day seemed pretty calm and simply started with a 9:00 AM CFAT (Cross Functional Affairs Team) meeting. Today the meeting was about AmeriCorps requirements and planning how to update the corps member handbook. The meeting only lasted till 10 AM then Wendy answered emails from 10-11 AM. Everyone is ALWAYS on their email. It is their major source of communication. I had never used Outlook till I started this internship and now I’m pretty much a pro. The next hour Wendy researched and summarized information about some Charter school grant proposals for the Executive Director. From 12- 12:30 she was on-call about their federal funding in case there were any questions and then it was lunch time. Like I said this was a pretty casual day but some weeks people are so busy they are in the office till 8 or 9 o’clock. A lot of the staff work from home because so much time is spent researching. I know most of my time had been researching Charter schools, downloading school calendars, and contacting corps members regarding past TFA corps members that still teach at their schools.

E-Portfolio

http://sites.google.com/site/nicoleingallsportfolio/

Future Career Goals

I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to to when I graduated, that is why I was looking forward to this applied study. I figured it would give me some insight as to whether I was headed in the right direction. I love to volunteer and would like to have a career working for a non-profit. However, there are so many different types of non-profits and different careers within each non-profit, I needed to see where I fit in. The organization I am working with this semester is a good one and they have a great mission, to end educational inequity. Everyone is very friendly, and hard workers. They are very organized which doesn't always come naturally to a lot of non-profits. All these are qualities I love but the main reason I don't see myself working there is because they are so removed from the people they help. Their main goal is to recruit the best teachers, train them and be support for them. All these are necessary and admirable things but I want to be "in the field." I would rather not sit at a desk and only crunch numbers or research statistics. I spend a lot of time communicating through Outlook or creating Excel spreadsheets. There was a time in my life when I loved doing all the detail-oriented stuff but it doesn't inspire me as much as directly working with the people that need my help. The technical skills I have learned so far are invaluable, not to mention some basic non-profit things such as the constant, never-ending need for money to stay afloat. I never want to be in an executive or management position of a non-profit because they are endlessly building bridges, schmoozing politicians and asking for money. That is not where my strengths are and I would choose to leave that to the people who are good at that. I have seen the positive effect this organization has and would like to continue working in education or with youth but perhaps in a different capacity then my internship has allowed me so far.

4 Concepts

There are many concepts I've noticed at my Applied Studies site; from diversity to interpersonal communication and cross-functional teams to leadership management. There are many different teams that help this organization run but there is also a team called CFAT which stand for Cross-Functional Affairs Team. This team is comprised of members of all the other teams. Someone from Alumni Affairs, Programming, Development, District Strategy and Operations will come together every other week, discuss and work on projects together. This enables each team to know what is going on on all the other teams and it seems to make the organization run much smoother.

This also ties into the concept of interpersonal communication because this enables the lines of communication to remain open throughout all departments. Not to mention management has one hour meetings with their staff each week to see how their doing and if the staff has any concerns. These meetings are one-on-one which gives the employee more freedom to speak free.

Another concept present is leadership versus management. All those that are in leadership positions are communicative, respectful and lead by example. They are all hard-working with an empathetic attitude. This I find to be key qualities in a leader. They don't simply bark orders and demand to be blindly followed.

This organization also encourages diversity, both in their hiring practices and during corps member recruitment. They have also started a team that focuses on diversity and being sure to educate staff and new corps members because the schools where these teachers are placed tend to be quite diverse and it is essential to make sure the children feel understood and included.

Interdisciplinary vs. Multidisciplinary

So I've been thinking a lot about this weeks question because it's hard to pinpoint multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary on this organization. I came to the conclusion that it operates as both. There is a common goal among the staff and that is to end educational inequity. However, their are multiple departments that work towards this goal such as the Program team that oversees the corps members (teachers) and lends support to the schools when needed. There's the Operations team who's responsible for administrative and financial tasks; maintaing budgets and hiring and training new staff. The Development team deals directly with the donors, all marketing materials and writing grants. The District Strategy team places teachers in schools, creates and maintains relationships within the educational and political community. Finally there's the Alumni Affairs team that works to fully engage previous corps members within their communities. They do this by encouraging and supporting the corps members to enter fields of leadership in schools and politics. So all these departments have their own responsibilities but it is for one common goal. Now there's also CFAT, which stands for Cross-Functional Affairs Team. This team is interdisciplinary because it consists of staff from all the previously mentioned teams. The individuals on this team bring their own perspective from their department into the meetings that take place twice a month. During these meetings staff will focus on "in-depth skill building in the competencies as well as ongoing analysis of each member’s mindset, work values, and time applications". I asked my mentor, Wendy, why she thought CFAT was needed and she said, because of the quick growth of the organization in our region over the past 3-4 years there is a greater need for teams to be able to better coordinate their efforts. As far as the organizational structure I believe it to be hierarchical because each department does have a manager and the organization does have an Executive Director, so it is a pyramid stucture.

Hi my name is...

Hello all! My name is Nicole Ingalls and I'm getting my BIS in Organizational Studies. It's an online degree that focuses on multiple perspectives of an organization. I always had a hard time focusing on one area because so many different things interest me so this degree has given me the ability to look at how businesses operate from various points of view. I am doing my applied study at an organization called Teach for America, a non-profit that aims to end educational inequity. What I'm hoping to learn academically is how to integrate what I've learned from school into the workplace and personally I would like to see, first hand, where my strengths lie. I feel like I have certain assumptions about what may strengths and weaknesses may be but being in that environment will really put that to the test. So far it has been a slow start though. I have been learning a bit about the organization and each person's responsibilities. I work directly with the Manager of Operations, and we have begun talks of an office audit that will determine what the staff does during their time in the office. After graduation I would like to find a job with a non-profit. I am hopeful that the skills I acquire from this applied study will give me the confidence I need when I apply for my first job. I haven't done enough work at the site yet to know if this is the work I would like to do when I graduate however I do like the organization and what they stand for. Believing in an organization's mission is very important for me.