Reflections on Summer

Summer is over, but my job definitely isn't.

I've been reappointed to work for the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition in the fall.  I think this speaks volumes about the work I was able to get done and how dedication and hard work can pay off in the long run.  The last part of my official summer internship was preparing and presenting at the Farm Progress Show, which truly tested my abilities during the first week of school.     

           The Farm Progress Show is an event put on every year in the Midwest which brings together farmers, educational groups, manufactures, seed dealers and more.  The Farm Progress Show is the oldest and largest outdoor agricultural equipment exhibition in the United States with more than 500 exhibitors.  In the course of the three day event, it is estimated that over 150,000 people will attend to see the latest advancements in agricultural technology. This event rotates between Illinois and Iowa every year.

The University of Illinois has a large display at the event which always showcases the College of ACES.  At this year’s event, Processing at Illinois and the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition were invited to share with farmers what happens after they take their crops to the elevator.  Processing at Illinois had an extrusion machine on-site that converted brown rice into a brown rice puff/snack.  While it was on a much smaller scale than major food companies, it gave visitors a chance to see the extrusion process in action.  This process is the same process used to make pastas, Cheetos, breakfast cereals and more.

My job at this event was to create presentations that would loop at the display, create promotional literature, get a supply list organized and purchased, and plan the overall display.  I worked with many people in the department to get the job done and had to take several trips around the Champaign Urbana area to complete tasks.  In addition, I was present at the farm progress show for the duration of two days.  At the booth, I met with industry representatives, gave high school students a lesson in food processing and shared my knowledge with those who were curious about food processing.           I'm really glad to have had the experiences I did during my summer internship.  I'm also eager to see what the coming months bring for me, and I can't wait to take these experiences into my career in Ag Education.

my journey to banking industry and HR

I am really happy to get a chance to work in NYC! My internship was with Bank of Communications. It is a Chinese bank, where the headquarter is in China. Where I was working was right near to Wall Street. When I went to work around 9am and left work around 5pm every day, I always thought if a billionaire just walked next to me. I wanted to ask the billionaire how they become very successful in the world financial center! It was a pity that I did not ask them about those questions. But, I will definitely come back NYC for many other reasons.

As the summer intern, my main project was to create the training program, which was for two groups of leaders(students) from mainland of China and they were coming to USA to acquire some banking training. It was my responsibility to create the training program that will help those leaders to bring something new and different back to China. I was also implementing the training programs with them, which was a mixture of lessons and travelling. Upon completion of a week's training,  4 group leaders will write summaries and reports to a big leader in the class. Upon completion of the whole training, each leader will share his/her USA experience to their colleagues.

The main purpose of this training program is to let the leaders from mainland of China to learn about the financial systems, how to operate properly in US, how to be an international banker and how to comply with the rules about regulatory needs here as well as other human resources related rules and regulations.

My supervisor and some other leaders in New York branch have some connections to different elites in the the business fields. what I did for this training program was to write formal business emails to those elites and ask them to give lectures to our students(leaders).

My first step was to discuss with my supervisor regarding to which company or organization would give us lectures. After my supervisor presented our talk to the general manager of our branch, we revised our plan again. Then I started to write formal business email to invite different elites. This was not an easy task. I initially write a sample email and then fill in the names and titles. However, my supervisor said I need to customize the email to different leaders. After we completed the name lists, we need to make sure that all the lectures were scheduled into consecutive 3 weeks since those students were only in USA for a short period.

To be honest, designing the training program for the business leaders was a challenging task for me. Because I am not a business major and I am not familiar with banking industry. I am glad that I learned some training and development skills last semester to help me design the program. The skills I learned about how to write a lesson plan also helped me to make the training plan.

Besides designing the classes and trainings for leaders from mainland of China, my supervisor, another coordinator from NY branch and I also discussed about how to help them quickly adapt the English language environment and how to make their USA trip unique. I think we were very considerate about their visit because we even discussed about which restaurant to go and which landmark they are going to visit. What we want to do is to let those leaders satisfy their USA business trip.

This is the first page of the training program that my supervisor and I co-designed.

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP gave us a lecture on July 9, 2013 and this is the welcome board.

After the lecture with HSBC, I took a picture with this cute wall paint.

My NYC journey (two)

I have to say that I was reluctant to go to NYC for my internship three months ago because I want to stay in Champaign and I do enjoy the relax and beautiful country life. After a plenty of drastic talking with my parents, I decided to go to NYC for the internship. I am glad that I went to NYC. I not only learned lots of banking industry information but also dealt with lots of people problems. I think those experiences helped me to apply HR master.

At the first day of my internship, my supervisor didn't directly tell me what projects or tasks that I have to complete this summer. She firstly asked me what I wanted to achieve after the internship. Then we talked about why I want to do HR and some of her experiences in HR fields. Because lots of tasks that I worked was very confidential, I just share what could be shared.

My first couple of weeks were dealing with the files. I filed the job descriptions and evaluation forms from 2008- 2013. After that, my supervisor asked me to read administration department handbook and employee handbook. She just wanted me to have a better idea about the bank. While I was working on the files, I was a little bored because it's just boring to work on the filing and documentation. I talked about this to my supervisor and I realized that every entry level HR professional works on the administrative tasks. You have to work on it first to have a better idea about other HR work.  After doing filing for a while, I asked to do the project as I mentioned in my first blog.

This is my office. I know it's a mess! But that's what a professional HR need to do- Filing and documentation. 

In order to have better idea of the employee, my boss gave this handbook to me and ask me to read. 

This is the certificate I got from BoCom.

As my internship comes to an end, I was able to sit down with my supervisor Dr. Dave Pike and my fellow scout David Fulton and discuss the major things that have affected crops over the summer months. Overall, there was great weather in the early season that helped get the crops started strong and kept off the weeds and insects. Towards the end of the season, most corn and soybeans could have used more rain as we have had a dry late summer into early fall. These dry conditions can causes many diseases such as rust and septoria. Overall however, the growing season was a great success to most farmers and high yields in corn and soybeans will be predicted in most parts of Central Illinois.

A Summer Full of 4-H Projects

Leadership is one of the many project areas 4-H members can participate in.

In addition to my Horticulture projects, I got to work on many 4-H projects this summer.  In fact, my first day on the job I started to plan for a cooking Special Interest, or SPIN, club.  I worked with the kids at the Hoopeston Teen Reach Center in Hoopeston, IL.  This is an after school program that provides daily activities for the youth of Hoopeston over the summer.  The SPIN club took place over six weeks and the kids got to make things like rice krispie treats, salsa, and apple crisp.  The kids really seemed to like working in the kitchen and one boy told me, "I've never really thought of cooking as a manly thing until today."  It was really great to see how excited they were about cooking.

I also got to go to the Champaign, Iroquois, and Vermilion County Fairs to assist with general project entries and judging.  I got to serve as a fill-in electricity judge at the Vermilion County Fair and was the superintendent and grade recorder for aerospace projects in Champaign and Iroquois Counties.  It was really fun to assist with a project area that I was not very familiar with.

Randy McDaniel, owner of Slot & Wing Hobbies in Champaign, judging aerospace projects.

I was a 4-H member growing up, but since I have worked for Extension I have learned so much more about 4-H.  It was really eye opening to see all of the behind the scenes work that happens to prepare the all of the livestock and general project shows.  It was a great experience and I am lucky to have been a part of it.

As the Summer Comes to an End...

For most of my summer, I spent my days wondering the fields of central Illinois looking for some of the smallest problems in the world! In other words, I was a field scout for Agriculture INformation Research Services, or AIRS throughout the summer. Most of my days were spent scouting for pests like insects, weeds, and diseases that will all affect the yield of the growing crop. I was also able to work with my farmers to see what they needed throughout the summer such as insects and diseases they could not identify themselves.





 To the Left: A few "ears" that I had found in one of my corn fields. These ears are looking good and pollinating nicely.
Below: Me standing in front of one of my scouted bean fields. It was a great day to be outside!

As the final weeks of the internship come to an end, me and my fellow 

scout David Fulton will be doing more and more checks for insects and

diseases that will effecting the final yields in the fields. We will also be 

filling out yield checks so that the farmer's know what to be looking for

during harvest.