Working for the CRC: The Ultimate Millennial Experience!
Working for the CRC: The Ultimate Millennial Experience!
Last summer, I had an incredible opportunity to work for the UC Davis Center for Regional Change (CRC) as their web designer. While most of my friends were waitressing, getting coffee for their boss, or filing paperwork all day, I was entrusted to design an entire website on my own. From brainstorming to coding to seeing the site go live – I got to be there through it all!
The site I designed was for the CRC’s project called, Putting Youth on the Map (PYOM). I began work on this site as a project for my spring quarter (2014) undergraduate design class with Professor Glenda Drew of the Department of Design here at UC Davis. In this course we were given the option to try out a project for the CRC, Sesame (an energy group), or create our own project. I chose to work on a project for the CRC because I was excited by the work being done there, and wanted to see it more easily accessible to the public so others could be excited, too. I designed a potential portal page for the PYOM.
Following the conclusion of my design course, members of the CRC were able to review and critique my work, as well as that of my fellow classmates. Shortly thereafter, I was connected with Jonathan London, Nancy Erbstein, and Sergio Cuellar from the CRC. They were impressed by my work, asking me to continue the project and make the site a reality. Over the summer, I returned home to the Pacific Northwest and continued creating the website. So I had the ultimate millennial experience: I was able to work from home, 600 miles away from my job site at UC Davis!
The new PYOM site was launched August 26, 2014. Since then I have been helping design the CRC’s general website, including this blog. I’m excited to continue my work this school year with the CRC. This job has been unique and rewarding. I have been given a lot of responsibility to design and create a website on my own. The people I have had the opportunity to work with at the CRC have lots of innovative ideas, and I have the task of sharing these ideas via the website. This job has been a great opportunity to gain some valuable work experience that will pay off as my graduation date looms near!
Stay tuned for lots of exciting new projects!
by Meghan Jordan, CRC Web Designer
Meghan is a senior double-majoring in Design and Communication at UC Davis. Besides working for the CRC, she is a member of the Division 1 Lacrosse Team and works for UC Davis Athletic Communications. Check out her personal site here.
Image above: Screen shot of the Putting Youth on the Map site which can be found here.