My first publication is official!

I thought that this would be an appropriate opportunity to announce that my first publication is officially available. I received a copy of the textbook that the chapter I co-authored with Prof. Gordon Shockley is available. The book is entitled A Concise Guide to Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Innovation. It is a great resource that provides good oversight of how entrepreneurship in commercial, social, and policy-based applications have deep impact over innovation. It also explains the role of technology, specifically tech-transfer and how it effects innovation. Our contribution is a brief chapter giving some insight into the definition of social entrepreneurship as well as giving some context through examples of real life social entrepreneurs and the work that they do.

When I think back and reflect about the process I distinctly remember how overwhelmed I was. Not at what I was asked to write because I felt relatively comfortable in that aspect but the manner by which I had to write. This was my first publication and at the time I was still a junior, I was asked to contribute to a textbook chapter. Academic writing is a bit more advanced than what I have been accustomed to so I was initially doubtful of what I was going to produce. I remember the exact moment when I found my inspiration and created a framework to base my section of the chapter. I was eating at a Taco Bell and I did my prewriting on a napkin. All in all I feel that my contribution flowed seamlessly with what Prof. Shockley wrote and I was happy with my final result.

The best part is that my Barrett thesis which will be a literature review covering the scholarly journal articles about social entrepreneurship may become my second publication with the help of Prof. Shockley if all goes well. So I wanted to thank Prof. Christopher Hayter for presenting such an awesome opportunity to me. As well as Prof. Gordon Shockley who has really allowed me to develop in this particular area of research.

The Application of Leadership

With my internship leadership is a daily occurrence that comes in many different forms and has been encouraged by those I’ve worked with throughout my time with the project. Leadership has two primary roles that stand out more than others. The biggest leadership role that I took on was in the development and deployment of the curriculum for ASU 101. After that my leadership in the classroom as an instructor of two ASU 101 sections takes a good portion.

My favorite leadership exercise in my internship has to be the experiences I’ve gained doing project management over the design of the curriculum. It has been interesting because it has tested my skills in a completely unique way because it is the first time in a long time that I had to use my management skills for something other than sales quotas or balancing budgets and other various business related operations. What I enjoyed most was the amount of trust that my supervisors gave me throughout my internship.

Insight From My Mentor

I wanted to share a dialog that I was able to have with Prof. Gordon Shockley regarding his career, how he got there, and his advice to me as I endeavor to become a professor. From what I was able to understand becoming a professor was a natural evolution for him he started as and undergrad and then went on to receive an MBA with a nonprofit concentration. After working in the for profit sector he was afforded the opportunity to enter a doctoral program. He seemed to have chosen this career for the level of satisfaction it brought him. I have to agree that academia does bring a high level of satisfaction to my life as opposed to my career in telecom.

Over the time that I’ve known Prof. Shockley his advice to me has always been to focus on the stage of the game that I’m in and no worry so much about what is to come. Honestly, as life has happened and I’ve moved into my senior year I realized that his point was all too true. I found that I needed to focus back on being a student and complete the tasks at hand especially considering how much busier my life got working full time for the university. The other advice he gave me was that although I need to have a discipline that my research focuses on I shouldn’t worry too much about that early on because I will have time in grad school to figure it out.

The reason why I am interested in becoming a professor specifically in social entrepreneurship is because of the amount of satisfaction I get from working in an institute of higher education that is research driven. I’ve had opportunities to teach classes, write a publication, engage in research, and much more. I’m hooked! It provides me a level of work life balance that I’ve never had and I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given. As a result this is something I hope to give forward in the future.

We are almost done!

With every passing week we get closer and closer to graduation. It's hard to explain but I'm almost in a state of disbelief. I think that for most of us college has been a crazy journey and each of us has a unique story to share. For me that story is about unfinished business and basically to stick it to my fifth grade social studies teacher who told me in front of my class that I wasn't cut out for college. I say this because it had a profound effect on me in fact my entire high school experience was based around learning a vocation. It just makes me wonder how often things like that happen in classrooms. I remember after high school becoming an automotive technician and hating it. I love cars as a hobby I've own 30 and absolutely love building and restoring Mustangs. But because it was a hobby I couldn't do it for work. So I got into sales management but after that career burnt me out I was left in a rut, not knowing what I wanted to do. I had a desire for college so I did it but now that I'm almost done I'm in disbelief.

Career Services

I decided that for my career services experience I was going to get my resume updated. I admit that I did so for two reasons. The first reason being that I have very limited access to school resources because of my work schedule. So making it to events or other functions can become tricky. So I decided that it would be acceptable during a lunch break to get my resume reviewed. The second reason is because career services always has the latest updates with regard to resume formatting and I annually update my resume so I took this as an opportunity to see what is trending with top resumes. Overall the experience was beneficial as my format was good but they suggested I bring more emphasis to some of my academic achievements. If you haven't updated your resume in awhile definitely check them out!

My Inability to Balance Life

One of my absolute biggest struggles is finding a good work-life balance. As a student I have to juggle a full time school load including 19 credits. I then work a full time job and teach two classes. Then there is my life at home which gets pretty boring because usually I'm so exhausted I just want to sleep. I find that for the most part it's my fault because I'm a bit overwhelmed in my senior year especially with writing my thesis for Barrett. In fact my only relief is that I'm planning a four day cruise as a graduation gift to myself! I hope grad school is different because I always hear that from people. I suppose it will be different based solely on how much I plan to slow down. But I am curious to hear about how my colleagues find balance in their lives or if we are all just running around frantically.

Getting Students Engaged

One of the challenges that seems to face anyone who teaches a class is student engagement. Now this happens at many different levels and I've yet to find anyone exempt from this. Sometimes when I teach I may have a class that has energetic students who love to participate but there always seems to be one or two hard balls. Other classes I've taught are full of students with dead eyes who refuse to participate. Those two scenarios have seemed to be my experience through college. As a student I like to engage and participate so I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of those students. So perhaps I am throwing the question out there how do you reach those students even when you're giving it all you got because I refuse to believe they're lost causes.