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The Chancellor’s Undergraduate Internship Program (CUIP) provides
opportunities for students to serve the campus by working in a real-world
leadership setting. One of these opportunities is an internship
as Business Manager of KZSC, a university owned radio station that
serves the Monterey Bay area. For the 2006 - 2007 academic year,
Andrew Boyd was selected to fill this position. During his period
of service, Andrew outlined objectives for the year, met several
of those objectives, and completed other unanticipated projects
that appeared over the course of his term. Undoubtedly, this internship,
coupled with the instruction in the CUIP class, has helped to develop
Andrew’s foundation as an engaging leader who will be better
prepared to enter the business world upon graduation.
The KZSC Business Manager is an integral part of the operation of
the radio station. The Business Manager handles all business transactions
with the public and the university. Additionally, as a member of
the Governing Board, the Business Manager must report the station’s
financial position to the Board. Andrew was selected because he
is an Economics major and also a participant in the UCSC Accounting
program. Also, Andrew has demonstrated an interest in leadership,
as evidenced by his previous experience in student government and
as a youth basketball coach. His experience in student government
was an important aspect of experience that appealed to the selection
committee because he was familiar facilitating the operation of
a campus student government as Chief Financial Officer. This proved
to be an important quality for a Business Manager that would need
to learn the operation of the station in order to effectively handle
financial affairs.
At the beginning of the 2006-2007 term, the CUIP class developed
formal project proposals, and each intern was required to outline
goals determined by the intern and his or her mentor. Andrew’s
goals were to outline an operations manual that detailed all the
reporting and transaction recording procedures. This manual would
be used by future interns. In addition, the Business Manager would
develop an internal method for recording and reporting that utilized
QuickBooks, a commonly used accounting computer program. The purpose
of implementing QuickBooks was to better sync KZSC’s books
with their parent department, Student Media. However, the implementation
of this software was suspended due to issues with the new computer
system that would run QuickBooks. Nevertheless, a Business Manual
was developed, and new demands on the Business Manager appeared.
In developing the Business Manual, Andrew spent the first third
of his internship observing operations and participating in the
annual pledge drive that KZSC holds in order to raise operating
funds. Andrew observed operations by participating in station outreach
and events while also attending and presenting reports to the Governing
Board. This proved to be a good strategy as the work load associated
with the pledge drive was substantial. By taking time to become
familiar with the environment and needs of the governing board,
Andrew was able to gain a better understanding of the operation,
and how it related to income and expense drivers. Andrew’s
proposal allowed time in the second term to implement QuickBooks.
Because this aspect of his proposal was no longer possible, Andrew
shifted his attention into improving the recording and reporting
that KZSC was employing at that time. It turns out that KZSC books
were recording income that would be processed and deposited by the
University. So when pledges would be made, KZSC would record that
as income. As it turned out, there was a substantial disparity between
pledges received, and how much of that income was able to be processed
by the University. This was because credit card pledges where unable
to be processed due to non-sufficient fund balances, or cards that
had expired during the time between when KZSC received the pledges,
and when the campus processed payment. As a result, Andrew developed
a reconciliation procedure that kept track of outstanding pledges.
This process included identifying the pledges that had not been
received, contacting the donors requesting payment, and updating
the income reports to reflect the most up to date receipts. The
Operations Manual was developed in the third quarter with coaching
from his mentor.
In addition to developing a Business Manual that reflected this
new reconciliation process, Andrew worked as a project lead in contacting
and corresponding with vendors for the purchase of a new copy machine.
This proved to be a valuable experience for Andrew because he witnessed
the process that the campus uses when soliciting bids. He also learned
how to avoid purchasing from vendors who were exploiting the process
by charging prices higher than their quote because the university
commits to a vendor. Talking with station officers and staff, Andrew
was able to identify the needs of the station and work one on one
with vendors to identify models that met their needs and budget.
The CUIP course helped Andrew to develop strategies to tackle his
goals for the year as well as get a better sense of how varied personalities
and people with different leadership styles can come together to
meet organizational goals. Andrew will be graduating in the Spring
of 2007 at which time he will begin auditing technology companies
for the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in Silicon Valley.
He is adamant in his opinion that KZSC and CUIP have prepared him
well for this experience, as it will require working closely with
others, working as a member of a larger organization, and communicating
questions and needs in a succinct and professional manner. When
Andrew talks about his 5-year plan, it is clear that his experience
in higher education has made him a lifelong learner. He looks forward
to earning a MBA or finance degree, and one day applying his education
leadership skills to provide worthwhile services to society.
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