Program Improvements

I truly believe that the program was well organized and that all participating members met their expectations. However, every operation can always make improvements. My suggestions for the group would be to establish clear roles between group members in the beginning stages of the project. As mentioned in a previous post, after a few weeks of research I found that some of our content sections had overlap. I personally found it difficult to combine the similar content sections and believe we could have saved timed if we chose to each focus on different subsections of the piece. Our mentor helped us to redefine the purpose of our paper but was learning exactly how to write this type of opinion snapshot at the same time. At one point the group attended an educational session from an employee at BlackRock that specialized in creating unique viewpoints documents like the ones we were attempting to complete. I found this discussion to be very helpful as it gave us a better sense of the expected approach and formatting of the projects.

As a leadership major my mentor assigned me the role of group leader assuming that I understood what it meant to assume this position. While Jepson is not designed to turn students into leaders, the school often has this effect given that students learn about human behavior and how various groups of people interact with each other. With this knowledge, I was able to devise a strategy to oversee my group’s progress. I took it upon myself to continuously checked up on my team members to make sure we understood our roles. While some students dedicated more time towards collecting sources and data, others searched for missing content and edited. I was careful not to overstep boundaries but rather enforced the advancement of the project.  The mentors had never been a part of a program like this before and were open to any suggestions. My suggestions to them included comments regarding the division of work and additional group meetings. The flexibility of both students and mentors allowed us to make improvements throughout the program.