The following projects demonstrate a variety of skills and experience I have gained throughout my career. I began every one of these without any prior knowledge or training, so I learned along the way and became very resourceful and determined. I am not afraid to tackle new things, no matter how complicated or overwhelming they may seem at first.
Brand Style Guide
This project shows my creative side, and the passion I have for a lifestyle brand I have started. The style guide includes an overview of the brand and target audiences, fonts for headers, subheaders and text, and additional text, four color choices to reflect the brand’s identity and personality, the voice and tone of the brand, social media and online presence identification, the photography style, and contact information.
Brand Brief
This brand brief shows a much more expanded vision of my lifestyle brand including style guide elements from above, along with brand objectives, brand and consumer insights, the organizing idea, a brand audit, the experience space, marketing email and elevator pitch examples, an infographic, and a conclusion and next steps for the brand. This demonstrates my creativity, attention to detail, and my ability to envision a comprehensive project and larger scale plan for overall direction and goals.
Brand Website
This is the first website I have created, which incorporates elements from my style guide and brand brief mentioned above for my own personal lifestyle brand. This will continue to evolve and expand over time. This again demonstrates my creativity and vision, and the ability to tackle a project I have never attempted before, fully acknowledging there is ample opportunity for improvement and growth in this area.
Online Forms and Automation
This project combines my creative and technical skills to improve efficiency and accessibility for Michigan State University (MSU). This is just one example of six new forms and automated flows I have worked closely with our IT department on to create and finalize for the entire MSU campus to utilize. This example shows a visual communications flyer created using Canva for use by any MSU employee or student to report an automobile accident. The flyer contains a QR code that links to a Microsoft Form that I created to replace an outdated PDF form being used by my department. The new Microsoft Form (only accessible to those with an MSU NetID) is then tied to an automated multi-step flow using Microsoft Power Automate that involves a review and approval step by the form submitter’s supervisor, followed by another automated step of the final form data being sent to my unit’s team inbox. Converting my unit’s PDF forms to Microsoft Forms, paired with the Power Automate functionality, has been an intensive, collaborative and educational process.
Online Learning – Course Development and Design
In my current unit at Michigan State University, eleven new online courses were launched in our learning management system (LMS) related to driver safety for those who operate university vehicles. This was a collaborative endeavor between our university’s LMS team and a national external training vendor to ensure all information was accurately inserted and housed in our own MSU LMS including course descriptions, video content, assessments, and completion tracking. An example of one of these courses can be found in the Ability LMS (login with MSU NetID required).
In my previous unit at MSU, I developed several new online courses for research administration. This was a collaborative effort between MSU online education experts to learn the basics for creating an online course from scratch with proper learning objectives, content, and assessments in MSU’s Desire2Learn (D2L) LMS, along with presentation and audio recording from multiple presenters to create video content using a newly created video production plan that I developed. I then used Camtasia to edit and finalize videos, incorporating presentation content and callouts. An example of one of these courses can be found in D2L (login with MSU NetID required).
Branding Initiative
To provide recognition and cohesion of numerous training materials/resources/videos I was in involved with in my previous unit at MSU, I proposed a branding initiative which included a brand mission and newly designed brand logo. Multiple options and a timeline were provided to leadership, and a new logo was chosen and and then incorporated into future materials, which you will notice in the newsletter and training video examples below.
Newsletters
I have coordinated timelines, article collection, design, and listserv communications for multiple newsletters for research administration at MSU. As article content was collected, I designed the newsletters in a template I created, along with inserting photos, system screenshots and hyperlinks, as shown in this example. These newsletters were created simply and resourcefully, using Publisher, with a blank canvas to start, using manual manipulation to create a polished, professional newsletter with the tools available.
Video Projects
The following projects were the first formal videos I have ever filmed and edited, and I had ZERO experience going into these. As previously mentioned, I have had to become very resourceful during my career because of either limited, or lack of, budget funds. Keep in mind that basic equipment and editing software were used, including a Canon t5i camera and Camtasia software. The first example below is a 5-minute recruiting video with the goal of attracting new team members to the research administration field at MSU. The next two videos are an extensive 2-part documentary series on research administration at MSU, highlighting faculty researchers and their important work. I filmed all content for these videos at various campus locations, and the final products were edited entirely with Camtasia (which I fully understand is not the preferred tool to use when doing these style of videos, but we made it work with the tools we had!). The final example is one of several training videos I compiled and edited in Camtasia. After assisting presenters with their audio recordings, I then lined this up with associated PowerPoint slides, other screenshots, and callouts, and added introduction and conclusion music and various animation elements.