Intern Point Paper: Week Eight

University of Maryland
COMM386: Experiential Learning

Keighley Joyce
November 3, 2014

POINT PAPER: Reviewing Student Scholarship Applications

Subject:
My main project for week eight of my internship was to review the scholarship
applications for the Smart and Sustainable Campus Conference and score the students
based on a set of criteria.
Background:
Each year, the Office of Sustainability hosts the Smart and Sustainable Campus
Conference in Baltimore. Students from around the world apply for scholarships and to
present a project at the conference. Several employees in different departments at the
Office of Sustainability scored the student applications.
Discussion:
During week six, the sustainability associate and my supervisor asked me to review
student scholarship applications for the offices 10th Annual Smart and Sustainable
Campus Conference that will take place in spring 2015.
I had to give the students appropriate scores based on a rubric and their need. During
this process, I had to be very fair in assigning the scores I deemed to be appropriate based
on their effort in the application process and if it seemed like they needed financial help
for attending (how far are they traveling, what is their situation, etc.)
At first, I thought the task would prove to be very difficult because I have never scored
students for a scholarship application, but when reading through the different work, I
could tell who put in a lot of effort and who did not.
I connected this project back to my communications focus because I took note of
applicant writing in their resumes and conference proposalslooking for errors,
carelessness, mistakes and missing information. This helped me hone in on my attention
to detail, which also helped me effectively assign these students scores.
This task taught me that even though I am in the communications and marketing
department, I may be asked to complete tasks that I would not normally complete.