![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/UES_GradReception-033-1.jpg\")
Erin Mellor and UES Director Beth Crews review graduation celebration details.<\/p><\/div>\n
A native of\u00a0Irvine, California, Mellor\u00a0first learned about Furman from her favorite counselor at a summer camp in Texas. She her arrival\u00a0to campus in the fall of 2014, she\u00a0has become a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, Furman\u2019s leadership honor society, and Sigma Tau Delta, an honor society for English majors. The latter honored her\u00a0writing skills at the society\u2019s international convention in 2016.<\/p>\n
The UES internship allowed Mellor\u00a0to apply the skills she had developed through her communication studies and English classes\u00a0as she gained real-world experience through the internship\u2019s duties. She\u00a0interviewed students and faculty for the UES newsletter, The Finish Line,\u00a0<\/em>developed blog posts, created new UES print materials, designed graphics for online content, and\u00a0coordinated UES events.<\/p>\n The annual UES graduation celebration was the largest project that she\u00a0executed and also re-envisioned. Mellor\u00a0redesigned the event\u2019s invitations, orchestrated a new menu with the campus catering service, and coordinated with the Furman Alumni Office as well as a local florist to make the most of the venue, Cherrydale Alumni House. She arranged for\u00a0a professional videographer to film \u201cexit interviews\u201d with all of the graduates in attendance\u2014a first for the UES program.<\/p>\n Coordinating this event gave Mellor her greatest exposure to UES students, and the personal stories she heard that evening made a lasting impression. \u201cIt showed me that my internship was an investment in the Upstate community, not just the Furman community,\u201d she says. \u201cSeeing the ways that doors open with a bachelor\u2019s degree was really incredible, furthering each person\u2019s personal and career goals.\u201d<\/p>\n Mellor\u00a0views her UES internship as part of what makes a Furman education unique\u2014the relationships forged across campus, such as the one she developed with UES Director Beth Crews. \u201cI love Beth and the all work is doing [with UES],\u201d Erin says. \u201cOne of the great things about Furman is building relationships\u00a0with administrators. I\u2019ve appreciated Beth\u2019s willingness to serve as a reference and as a mentor. That relationship has continued even after the internship.\u201d<\/p>\n Erin says her experience with UES prepared her for her subsequent internship last summer in Wellington, New Zealand.\u00a0 Not only was she able to apply the communication skills she had honed during her time\u00a0with UES, but the experience also fostered a new level of confidence gained from working in a real-world setting.<\/p>\n Erin Mellor prepares for a video shoot with the Furman mascot.<\/p><\/div>\n This past fall, Greenville Wordsmith hired Mellor\u00a0as a publishing assistant. The local nonprofit organization uses a refurbished bus as its mobile writing center to teach creative writing to Greenville County students. Again, Mellor\u00a0credits her internship experience with giving her the confidence to become a mentor to the students she visits in her travels with the writing program.<\/p>\n Even with her goals of working for a large multinational company, Mellor’s immediate\u00a0focus is the Greenville community. \u201cIn a lot of my classes, we\u2019re exploring facets of the [local] community,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat I\u2019m learning in the classroom is applicable for this community.\u201d She\u00a0is currently interviewing with several advertising agencies in Greenville. Wherever her future takes her, Mellor’s\u00a0commitment to engaging with the local community will go with her, in no small part because of her experiences as a Furman student.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the fall of 2015, Furman English and communication\u00a0studies\u00a0double major Erin Mellor \u201917 noticed a campus advertisement for an internship with the university\u2019s Undergraduate Evening Studies (UES) program. She\u00a0was drawn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":6514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,51,40,31,58,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-communication-studies","category-continuing-education","category-english","category-internships","category-undergraduate-evening-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/UES_GradReception-014-1.jpg\")