Apprenticeship Highlight: Katy Flinn, Program Coordinator for Baylor & Beyond LLC

Written by Katy Flinn, HESA 2nd-year student

My undergraduate institution did not have living-learning centers (LLCs), but I was familiar with the idea. Simply put, a living-learning center is a place where students with a common interest live together. This can be anything from engineering to honors to outdoor adventure, and the intention is for programming, faculty involvement, and organic student interaction to extend learning outside of the classroom into the very places students live.

I am the Program Coordinator for the Baylor & Beyond Living-Learning Center, a global-focused LLC formerly known as the Global Community LLC. Our goal is to help students get plugged in at Baylor and to become knowledgeable about all of the resources and opportunities available to them here, but not to limit them to that. We want students to think beyond Baylor in some way, whether that be through service, language, global politics, or any of our other focuses.

I absolutely love this position! For one, it gives me a place to express my passion for language, travel, and other cultures alongside students with similar interests. Furthermore, it is exceptionally multifaceted. Where some apprenticeships are very focused in depth in one area, I am getting an array of experiences, including working closely with Campus Living & Learning, academic affairs, and student activities. See below for some of the highlights.

Advising the leadership council
This is easily one of my favorite things that I do. We have a group of 13 leaders who plan events for the whole community. We did a leadership retreat at the beginning of the semester and meet every week. It’s a great group of students who keep me laughing, and I am honored to walk alongside them as they grow in leadership and make a difference in their community.

Programming
From coordinating large-scale dinners for 260 people, to field trips to a mission trip interest meeting, I get to see all aspects of the planning and executing process. Room reservations, catering, ordering tables and chairs, coordinating student volunteers, and more – I will have no shortage of programming experience walking out of this apprenticeship.

Marketing
I was a journalism and mass communication major, and I did not imagine how much I would put that degree to use in this job. Now, this is not a necessary part of the job, but my supervisor knows that I enjoy it and has allowed me to run with this. I send out a weekly email with highlights for the week, I make posters for our events, and I manage the website.

Recruitment
I had the rare privilege of seeing the community transition from 80 students to 260 students, and we worked hard to get those numbers. I participated in preview days on Baylor’s campus and made pitches in front of hundreds of prospective students and their families. I have given tours of the hall. I went to admissions events in Houston and Austin. We sent targeted e-mails to students who we thought would be a good fit for our community.

ResLife
ResLife, or as Baylor calls it, Campus Living & Learning, is my first love in higher education. I have been able to bring aspects that I enjoy about it into this position. For one, I had the opportunity to read applications and place students in housing assignments in the hall. But what I love the most about ResLife is the opportunity to get to know students on a deeper level and “do life” alongside them. Every Tuesday and Wednesday I spend two hours in the hall having “Tea Time with Katy,” in which I sit and talk to students and hear about their lives. Some of my favorite moments of the week and my job happen during those tea times. I also have shared meals with students, ran the Baylor Line with students, and even camped out at the stadium with students to get on ESPN’s College Gameday.

Faculty
Our LLC is sponsored through the Modern Languages and Cultures Department, and I have gotten to know many faculty members. I work closely with two of them, and have had interactions with dozens of others. Not everyone gets to work with faculty, but it is a privilege to delve deeper into this side of campus life. We work with faculty to bridge the gap between classroom learning and extracurricular learning.

These are just some of the things my job entails. No week ever looks the same in my position, but I love it. I have had many incredible opportunities over the last year and a half as a program coordinator. My supervisor has allowed me to tailor my own experience and allowed me to focus on the aspects of the job that I wanted to grow in. She has also been supportive of my new ideas and helped design the experience that I wanted, as well as pushed me to try new things (like keeping the budget). I am incredibly thankful for such a well-rounded experience!

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Written by Katy Flinn, 2nd-year HESA student