Thank You Student Consultants, for Making C3 Likely

Author: Dr. Craig Engstrom

I've been teaching college students for 14 years.

I've met a lot of excellent students during this time. Few have blown me away like you have. I've asked many students over the year to make me lemonade; but only in a few rare cases have they turned that lemonade into something unique. I can say that, as far as lemonades go, the work products you, the student of CMST 483 (spring 2017), produced as you wrote strategic, tactical, or operational plans is akin to making Mike's Hard Lemonade. In other words, I asked you for lemonade, and you spiked the hell out of it.

Your plans were professional and amazing and they have been amalgamated into a final plan, which will be presented to the entire Dept. of Communication Studies faculty for vote. Future students will one day owe you a great deal of gratitude for laying out the plans for C3, which I hope will provide opportunities for professional development outside of the classroom. You had many excellent opportunities here at SIUC, future student will have even more thanks to you. I hope you'll be among the first advisers in the alumni network. 

Here's a little thank you gift (bullets to add to your resumes--mash/mix as desired):

• Provided full-service consulting and strategic planning services as part of a team contracted by a university's academic unit; developed strategic plan for career and professional development services with many key suggestions adopted by the client.
• Led a team that produced a strategic plan for a large academic unit of a university; effectively delegating tasks and responsibilities, mitigating conflict, communicating among stakeholders, and coordinating workflows.
• Performed every facet of strategic planning process while writing a plan for a career services center for a department at a large university, including brainstorming, auditing content, facilitating focus groups, conducting research, developing SWOTs, sketching operational informational/operational diagrams, communicating with client, pitching, and so on.
• Impressed the hell out of Dr. Craig Engstrom, which is sometimes hard to do.

(For those who don't get the metaphor: lemonade is a metaphor for assignment. Assignments are both sweet and sour.)

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For graduates, here's a little graduation advice courtesy of one of my favorite content producers (entrepreneurship and social media advice), Gary Vanyerchuk.