Well, even though it's the end of June, I'm finally feeling settled in Winston-Salem! It's been a while since I've written but we've been busy trying to get projects started before it gets to late in the summer! I'm excited to share with you a little of what we are working on, and of course, some of the lessons I've learned along the way.
Projects, Projects, and more Projects! :)
After the conference and the leadership team meeting, Laurel and I had a good direction on some of the projects we wanted to get accomplished this summer. One of these included organizing the Leadership Team Google Drive in order to make transitions smoother between elected LT members. I sifted my way through lots of documents, manuals, forms, and publications but everything was consolidated and place in the correct folder. Additionally, I created job description documents for each of the leadership team positions, deriving each from the HECMA Bylaws. I have encouraged each of the LT members to look over their job description and see what needs to be changed or added. We hope to have these updated before the end of the summer.
Another project I worked on was coordinating the CEU (Continuing Education Units) Certificates for conference attendees. Each attendee was given 10.5 CEUs or 16.5 CEUs (those who attended pre-con) for the conference. I learned a lot about MailMerge during this process! It took over 15 hours between me & 2 other LT members to figure out this entire process, but we got it done!
The biggest project of the summer is the Annual Report, which is shared with the membership at the end of each July. Each LT member will complete a report which will be compiled together, along with the strategic plan, association updates, and another announcements from the HECMA president. I'm currently working to build a template for this to be filled in during early July to ensure this gets sent out to our membership ASAP.
A Wake Forest Update
Yes, I am still doing a part-time internship with Wake Forest's Care Team. I've started with reviewing many documents and forms they use within the office. I have begun to read over the hospitalization form which they share with students to help them transition out of a hospitalization and back into academic life at Wake. I've also been assisting Annie in creating a referral form for staff, faculty, and peers to utilize if they feel a need to refer a student to the CARETeam. This process has involved using the HECMA library to identify other school's language and wording on these forms, as well as exploring the creation of this form on the Maxient software. This has been a little different, as I am used to using Simplicity/Advocate at UGA. However, many institutions use Maxient so I know it will be helpful to now understand this software too.
I've spent a good amount of time meeting the individuals in the office and having meetings with Annie about the history and culture of the CARETeam office. It's always interesting to learn about an office which is so different than what you are used to! I'm looking forward to continuing this experience for the remainder of the summer.
Overall, it's been a great few weeks following HECMA! We still have many projects to finish up in the next few weeks and I have much more to explore in Winston-Salem!