Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Tech Defender's Data Migration

Matt
Major: Computer Science Tech Defenders recently switched to a new instance of their cloud storage. One of my main tasks was to migrate this data. I pulled it from their Net Suite instance, and then built a new Postgres database with Google Cloud SQL to move their data to. After the data was moved, I built a front end with R-Shiny so that the other employees could easily access the old data.

MBA Coaching Experience

Brooke
Major: Sport Management I coached the 6th grade blue team, pictured above, for about 4 months. I then moved to coaching the 6th UA future team and a 9th/10th regional team which I will be with throughout the summer. Coaching consist of running multiple practices a week and traveling for tournaments on the weekend. I also gained a lot of experience in being a site manager at our location when we would host tournaments.

EGR Intern Experience

Nathan
Major: Sport Management Throughout my time working at East I have had the opportunity to work at basketball games, soccer games, and lacrosse games where I have been involved in the event set up, take down, and supervision. Day-to-day responsibilities include working on social media graphics, assisting the athletic director with facility maintenance, and learning the daily operations involved in running an athletic department.

Event Intern

Charles
Major: Communications I was put in charge of establishing social media posts, communicating with clients and guests at events, and planning and hosting my own community gingerbread decorating event. I also was in charge of creating guidelines for all future event assistants.

Assistant Middle School Athletic Coordinator

Scott
Major: Sport Management The main project this semester has been a proposal for an overhaul of the entire athletic system in GRPS Middle School Athletics. We are attempting to have our middle schools join a conference and introduce a more competitive format to help prepare our students for high school athletics. Aside from this task I have done scheduling for several sports as well as assisted in a walk through at Van Andel arena and surrounding area for this fall's turkey trot. Additionally, I have done game operations, setting up and breaking down events, as well as officiating.

Internship Experince

ryan
Major: Sport Management While at my internship, I spent a lot of time recruiting players for future years. I also spent time working on a volleyball camp/event that will occur in the summer for high school volleyball players to attend. Lastly, I spent time helping out with day to day tasks like organizing practices, tournaments, etc.

Whitecaps Intern

Megan
Major: Sport Management As Reading Club Intern, it was my job to plan this season's Reading Club program. My main task was connecting with local schools to enroll them in our Reading Club program, where students who read a certain amount of time in the month of March are eligible to receive two free Whitecaps tickets. I handle individual Reading Club ticket redemption, and I also work with many schools to organize large group outings for schools who wished to use their Reading Club tickets in this manner. As this position falls into the Ticket Sales department, I am also involved in advance individual and group ticket sales, as well as working in the box office on game days to facilitate walk-up ticket sales.

Intern at Woodland

Jonathan
Major: Sport Management During the internship I was tasked with set up and tear down of daily sports events, phone calls for the different leagues we hosted, creating schedules and being apart of the brainstorming process for new ideas for potential growth during SWOT analysis development. As well as taking inventory for the building and other day to day tasks that arose.

GVSU Sports Marketing and Fan Development

Joanna
Major: Sport Management As a member of this crew, one of my main tasks was controlling the music on game days at Volleyball, Football, Soccer, and Men's and Women's Basketball. I was also responsible for setting up Softball's music for the year. Other tasks involved going to local businesses and handing out schedule cards to showcase what is happening on campus. As a part of the marketing team, we were in charge of carrying out in-game promotions, setting up sponsorship tables, and game-day activities for fans.

Compliance Intern

Gabe
Major: Sport Management I was able to validate prospective student-athlete scholarship tenders and assist with student-athlete eligibility checks. Projects I assisted with were the Indoor Track Conference Championship, updating Championship Manuals, and planning media days.

Ticket Operations

Nick
Major: Sport Management Provide customer service for complaints, sales, or unique situations, sell single game tickets, assist in game operations, and setup suites/premium seats before the game.

Muskegon Lumberjacks

Keigan
Major: Sport Management I tagged along with the head equipment manager and helped up set up the room for practices and gamedays, helped repair player's equipment, took inventory of apparel and equipment, and helped with doing the laundry of the athletes and coaches.

GVSU Marketing and Fan Development

Brian
Major: Sport Management For just about every sport, as an intern staff, we did very similar tasks including stadium music, game operations, video and scoreboard operations, camera operations, and much more. Football season was pretty wild and hectic, but it was fun the whole time. Most games started at 7 pm, but we interns and other staff had to be there at noon to set everything up for tailgating, tickets, t-shirt giveaways, and communicate with sponsors. Most games had over 10,000 in attendance, and a big factor in that is student attendance as our student tickets are free. During the game, we have to run different promotions at different times of the game that are clearly outlined in the script we get hours before. These promotions include operating the t-shirt cannon and shooting it into the crowd, finding students to do games on the field during media timeouts, playing certain music, and whatever else we needed to do to make the event more than just a football game. This year we broke our attendance record for a home football game with over 17,000 at our football stadium to watch us play our West Michigan Rival Ferris State, who was ranked #1 at the time and we were #5

Game Operations

Maggie
Major: Sport Management In the Grand Valley athletic department I worked on various tasks. My day looked different every time I was interning. Some days I would work at one of the sporting events. I often set up and tore down for the basketball games. I also did track and field set up and tear down. That involved moving all of the equipment in the right place and making sure everything was ready for the meet. For the basketball games I would do various tasks. Some days I would make sure the refs got to the game on time, or sometimes I would walk the team to the locker room. Every week I would go into the office to take care of various tasks. I would be in charge of doing facility checks and putting in maintenance orders if anything needed to be fixed. I made sure that all of the packages in the field house got delivered to the right owner. I would take photos at different games and manuals that student workers use for various sporting events. Those manuals were the reference point that the workers would use.

SportsQuest Intern

Nathan
Major: Sport Management I have helped hold numerous baseball/softball tournaments and showcases. Provided insight for Sports Quest members on activities unique to the complex. Helped clean and manage the facility on a daily basis. Have provided pitching knowledge to various athletes through lessons and practices.

Athletic Director Intern

Lucas
Major: Sport Management At Lakeshore I learned how to run a successful High School athletic event. I was given many tasks that varied from day to day. I got the opportunity to work in the office to learn the daily roles and tasks that an Athletic Director would encounter. Each day I was presented with a new assignment that would help me learn the different roles you would be doing or giving as an Athletic Director.

A great company to work for

Stephanie
Major: Statistics I was able to work with department heads to contribute statistical analysis and interpretation to a manuscript that was published this year. I also worked on many contracted studies by analyzing and validating the data.

Manufacturing Safety Internship

Sam
Major: Occupational Safety & Health Management As an interning safety specialist, I handle day-to-day safety initiatives such as incident investigation for loss and no-loss type incidents, the creation of corrective actions, and work with shop team members to identify areas of concern. I have also led the development and implementation of new programs within the facility such as voluntary respirator and hearing conservation programs. My main project during the summer was to create

Special Collections Processing

Andrea
Major: English I began with transcribing and scanning letters from World War II. Later on, I tracked down papers for a researchers who was interested in speeches. Lastly, I helped process the materials of Mike McDonnell, donated to the university just before my internship began.

Athletic Intern

austin
Major: Sport Management I was in charge of game set up, media relations, game tear down, overseeing the ticketing operation, I helped with field maintenance, and they just started a new football conference so some of the tasks I had included growing that as well.

Athletic Director Internship

Andrew
Major: Sport Management At my time at Forest Hills Northern, I was involved in many activities and projects. I went to every football game to help with management and operations, and learned what it takes to put on a successful event. In the office, I entered in data from past All-State athletes and championship teams into the schools new touchboard. There were hundreds of entries, so that kept me very busy. I got to experience conference meetings, phone calls, and other daily things an Athletic Director does on a normal day.

Sportsquest Family Center Intern

Christian
Major: Sport Management Throughout the internship, some of the tasks have included social media, marketing, creating training plans, cleaning and organizing the facility, and event planning and preparation.

Athletics Department Intern

Mitchell
Major: Sport Management Tasks/Projects include creating sports schedules, digital work on the grchristianeagles website, event supervision, facility work including: preparation, inspection, and operation. With a lot of odd jobs falling inbetween.

Van Andel Arena Ticket Sales

Emma
Major: Sport Management Day of show or event, you would come in count your cash drawer and log into their sales system. Once doors open you will be helping with customer services issues and ticket pick ups.

Event Coordinator

Emma
Major: Sport Management Day to day task included cleaning and restocking the club house, answering the phones, checking in people for tee-times and organizing the golf carts. On weekends there were more outings therefore you had to help set up and take down the outing, make sure everyone is playing a at a smooth pace.