internship – The Concordian

The CSU hired a marketing intern to work within a six-week contract to create a strategic marketing plan that would outline the different aspects of communication available for use with their large undergraduate student body.

Originally the communications coordinator was in charge of creating a marketing plan, but as VP Finance, Scott Carr informed The Concordian,

“The reality was that there was already too much to do and with this came a load of questions as to how to move forward. I am someone who believes that having a plan that is clear, consistent, and well thought out is the key to success and I wanted to take that approach with the CSU’s marketing.”

With this issue at hand, Carr suggested the idea of hiring a marketing intern. Interviews were conducted in early December by Carr and VP Student Life, Katrina Caruso. The student selected was third year marketing major, Adrian Mahon.

Carr explains that marketing is a really important aspect that has lacked emphasis at both the CSU and Concordia University as a whole and that communicating with over 35,000 undergraduate students is no simple task.

“The CSU throws multiple events, speaker series, campaigns, provide services and so much more; but what use are they if no one knows they exist? Too many times people have no idea what the CSU does, yet they are the ones funding the activities; they are the ones that it is all for. It is of course not just the CSU that has this problem, even the university’s communication with its students has much room to grow; marketing isn’t as easy as people believe. It isn’t about the small group of students who know about the CSU, it is about making sure that we answer the needs of as many students as we can. It is because of the entire student body that the CSU exists—it better be doing everything it possibly can to help them,” explained Carr.

The six-week contract will wrap up at the end of January and Carr looks forward to reviewing it with the rest of the CSU executive team. Carr believes the report will establish an objective perspective to CSU executives concerning their audience; Concordia’s undergraduate students, which will be used to realize CSU’s strengths and more significantly, their weaknesses.

Marketing intern, Mahon explained to The Concordian that his main task is to help the CSU evaluate and manage its marketing strategy and determine ways that it can better serve the undergraduate student body at Concordia. With his 25 hour per week, six-week time cap, Mahon stated that,

“It is always nice to have more time to work on projects, especially large ones such as this. That being said, I feel that I am able to fulfill my obligations under the current time constraints.”

With such a large number of undergraduate students to reach, Mahon suggests that there be someone to work with the CSU regularly.

“Ideally it would be nice to have someone continuously working with the CSU on a part time or full time basis to help them with their marketing, in reaching students. However, there are always financial constraints that must be considered. This decision will be part of my recommendations in the marketing report.”

“This communication is an important aspect to being able to uncover the needs and challenges of undergraduate students so that the CSU can better serve them in the future” said Mahon.

Upon entering university, you usually want to make the most out of your university experience. A big part of that experience is developing your personal skills and being exposed to different cultures. There are different organizations at Concordia that could help you do just that.

AIESEC is one of those organizations. It is a global student-run, non-profit organization aimed at developing leadership skills through international exchange and internship programs or local leadership programs.

“AIESEC provides a lot of opportunities for students to develop their leadership by getting them to do hands-on activities, so it’s not just by listening. We try to empower our members so they can actually have their own project and gain experience while doing it,” said Naomi Ko, AIESEC’s incoming VP of information and communication management.

In order to fully understand the AIESEC experience, there is no better way than to dive into a real story of a Concordia student. Meet Curtis Deschambault, who is currently holding a year-long AIESEC position in Austria.

Deschambault joined AIESEC upon entering Concordia in 2007 in order to indulge in the university experience and to travel around. After attending the AIESEC information session, he realized that the organization offered him both of those experiences and he eagerly jumped at the opportunity to take part. He started going to conferences which helped him learn more about the organization.

“It was a really good chance for me to expand on things that I have not really looked at in my life, like how to manage my skills, how to motivate people and how to implement real life projects,” said Deschambault. “It was a challenge at the beginning but I definitely grew quite a bit from it.”

Last December, Deschambault decided to apply to go to Austria in order to work for the AIESEC national team. His role is to coordinate their two internship programs on a national level and to expand AIESEC’s volunteer abroad program in Austria. In addition to that, he works on making partnerships between Austria and other AIESEC countries.

As for living in a foreign country, Deschambault found it to be a comfortable and easy transition. He says Austria is a privileged country, with a very good standard of living and minimal homelessness. The language barrier didn’t seem to affect him negatively either. The international language in AIESEC is English, which facilitated his communication with others. He describes people in Austria as supportive and understanding of his linguistic obstacles.

Deschambault is currently surrounded by seven nationalities in the AIESEC team in Austria, including Egyptian and Hungarian.

“It’s a diverse cultural experience for me, so it’s really interesting. I’m really enjoying it a lot and learning cultural leadership as well. I’m experiencing how different cultures interpret leadership,” said Deschambault.

The AIESEC experience, although enriching in many ways, does not come without a few challenges. Deschambault was recently in Kenya for an international leadership conference with about 600 delegates from AIESEC’s 110 member countries. He said that he found it was sometimes overwhelming to have to deal with so many different cultures in the same place. However, he did have the chance to talk with people from different countries about world and leadership issues.

One of the biggest advantages that AIESEC provided Deschambault was being able to travel across the world. So far, he has travelled to 12 countries, allowing him to visit four out of the seven continents. Deschambault says that he never imagined that he would be able to travel this much.

Given all of his experiences so far with AIESEC, Deschambault says his time with the program has been worth the minor challenges. “It was definitely an eye-opening experience. It was probably the best decision I made when I entered university.”

For more information, visit www.aiesec.ca/concordia.