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Student Health Outreach & Promotions (SHOP) is an active unit
of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) campus. It serves
the student population by providing health information regarding
Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD), Sexual Health and Wellness, through
various services, workshops, and peer education so that students
can make safer and more informed decisions.
As part of the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Internship Program
(CUIP), Edgar Nuñez worked as the Outreach Coordinator for
SHOP. Whether through collaborating with other campus units or student
organizations, conducting workshops and trainings, or developing
outreach programs, Edgar worked actively to bring SHOP’s information
to the whole campus community. Considering that Edgar had previously
worked as a Resident Assistant for Crown College, a tour guide for
UCSC and had also previously volunteered for SHOP as a safer sex
peer educator, he was in good condition to utilize his networking
skills and knowledge of the campus to strategically disseminate
health information and promote SHOP to increase its visibility.
As soon as the school year had started, Edgar had begun working
on projects that helped SHOP spread its wealth of information. For
example, SHOP was continuing to roll out its “Just Say Gnome:
Party Small” Campaign, and part of this was to go around the
Santa Cruz community to have ‘Knock & Talks’ with
fellow residents. This was an effort to create better relationships
between families situated in the surrounding neighborhood with student
houses, as well as to raise awareness and lower the impact of the
“College Effect” – the first six week period of
fall quarter where students are statistically more likely to binge
drink. The Knock & Talks were followed up by Edgar creating
an on-campus “Dude, Where is my Gnome?” Scavenger Hunt.
Using his creativity and knowledge of campus resources, Edgar was
able to bring the Scavenger hunt to the various Residential Colleges
and the on-campus students of UCSC in a fun, informative manner.
The remainder of the year followed this project-based style as Edgar
continued to be a pro-active outreach coordinator regarding students’
health, with SHOP and Acquire, a UCSC acapella group, working together
to mutual promote each other in Acquirefest, and bringing SHOP to
the Rocky Horror Picture Show being examples of other collaborative
projects.
Aside from projects, Edgar understood that making SHOP information
more accessible was important, especially in this technologically
savvy generation. Therefore, Edgar utilized the popular social networking
website, Facebook, to create a profile for SHOP. Knowing that students
were very receptive to the “Just Say Gnome” Campaign,
‘Gnomus Partisminimis’ was chosen as the name of the
profile. Along with providing basic contact information, this profile
allowed all the SHOP interns to create event postings and send messages
regarding important information to the online UCSC community.
Through Edgar’s experience as Outreach Coordinator, he learned
that plenty of time is necessary to allow projects to come together
properly. Checking in with all invested parties, as well as his
supervisors, and allowing processing time for orders and requests
were more out of Edgar’s control than he had estimated. In
addition, this year allowed him to continue building multi-cultural
competency while strengthening his presentation and communication
skills. The Leadership and Institution class taken in conjunction
with the internship allowed a space for Edgar to continue building
leadership skills by becoming more aware of the different work styles
and by presenting a more thorough understanding of the workings
of the institution, namely UCSC.
Edgar is graduating from UCSC with a degree in Mathematics in the
spring of 2007. He plans to travel to Europe and get a sense of
how the different cultures there treat health promotion. Afterwards,
Edgar plans on studying to become a Registered Nurse so that he
can continue informing people of their health in a more direct manner.
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