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HONORS SELF- DESIGNED PROPOSAL

Complete this proposal prior to your experiences start date and upload it in the UHP Database (https://
webapps.uc.edu/uchonorsstudent). Create an experience (Add a new record) in the Tracking Project tab and
upload your proposal document as an attachment. The deadline for submitting proposals is the 5th of each month
(excluding July).
Proposals are intended to be well developed plans for your experience. However, experiences are exploratory in
nature, and we are flexible with changes throughout the experience. If your experience changes after receiving
approval on your proposal, contact your honors advisor to verify the changes still satisfy the requirements of an
honors experience.

Basic Information
Full Name:

Abigail Grace Tompkins

Title of Project:

Third Man Records Internship

Thematic Area(s):

Creativity and Leadership

Expected Start Date:

1/9/17

Expected End Date:

4/17/17

GUIDELINES
1. Proposal submission timeline: Proposals should be submitted at least one month prior to the expected
start date of the experience. International experiences require at least two months notice. Contact your
honors advisor immediately for any exceptions.
2. Proposal length: While the quality of the proposal is most important, strong proposals are typically 3-4
pages single-spaced.
3. Proposal format: Please maintain the proposal format (e.g. headers, layout)
4. Time commitment: Experiences should consist of at least 75-90 hours of preparation, execution, and
reflection. This is approximately equivalent to the commitment of honors seminars and pre-approved
experiences.

REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL

All self-designed international travel experiences require two months notice and must be at least one week in
length. You will need to provide a detailed itinerary (dates, locations and activities). If participating in
independent travel (not with UC faculty, staff or student group), you must also fill out a Worldwide: Honors
Experience application via UC International.
Additionally, the Student Travel Policy restricts UC-sponsored travel to countries under a U.S. Department of
State Travel Warning. Those who wish to visit a country with a travel warning must seek an exemption through

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UC International. Students traveling without a faculty or staff leader must individually request an exemption.
We cannot allow you to count this travel as an honors experience nor can we give you a grant without an
approved exemption.

1. Abstract
Briefly describe the experience. What makes this experience personally meaningful? What goals do you have for this
experience? What is your timeline for this experience?
*If you are proposing an international experience, provide an itinerary.
**If you are developing this experience from an existing opportunity (class with a study tour, campus organization, co-op,
etc.) that is not already an honors seminar or pre-approved experience, how will you differentiate your experience from
what is already required of other students?
The experience I am proposing is an internship for the company Third Man Records in Nashville, Tennessee. This
experience is very meaningful to me because it is an employment opportunity at my dream company: I would love to one
day be hired full-time as an employee at TMR. Music is my greatest passion in life. With this internship, I am taking steps
towards achieving my significant career goals within the music industry. I will be able to learn various skills applicable to
my creative career goals at, in my opinion, one of the best run companies in the music industry. I am also very passionate
about TMR because it was founded by my favorite working musician, Jack White. For years, I have followed his music
and awed at his creative and technical abilities. Working under his influence will be life changing for me. With his
company, my professional experience will be altered immensely. Whites unique perspective as a business leader will
offer so much for me to learn considering he has worked in nearly every field in the music industry, including
performance and production.
My goals for this experience include expanding my network in the music industry, learning effective marketing
techniques for artists and their music, and implementing technical, strategic methods for promoting and producing music.
Expanding my network will mean meeting professionals in the workplace and various events sponsored by TMR and
informing them of my educational endeavors and career goals. I will learn various marketing techniques as I will be
implementing them as part of my job description, and I will also gain a broader knowledge of music production as I will
be in an environment where it is conducted.
My timeline is fairly straightforward as I have no specific events scheduled yet regarding my employment at
TMR: I will move to Nashville January 2nd, one week before my internship begins. On January 9th, I will officially start
my employment. The internship will end on April 17th and I will move back to Cincinnati on April 20th.

Advisor Feedback
Must Include:

Required Revisions:

Effective:

Brief description of the experience

Personal connection to the experience
Identified goals for the experience
Timeline from start to finish
*Itinerary (international experiences only)
**Explanation of differentiated experience
from what is required of other students

2. Experience Advisor
Identify an experience advisor and provide their contact information. Explain why you chose this person and how you
plan to utilize your advisor for this experience.

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Note: Advisor(s) should have knowledge or expertise in an area related to the experience. Honors advisors, undergraduate
students, and family members cannot be experience advisors.
My experience advisor will be the Assistant Director of Career Services for the Lindner College of Business,
Angie Lucas. I chose Angie because she has been vital in coordinating the details of my employment with TMR as well as
implementing the transition between taking classes on the UC campus and moving a semester to Nashville. I will utilize
her with regards to my professional techniques during the internship, for example, the proper way to present myself as a
business professional in the workplace. She will also be useful in helping me communicate the value of the experience I
gained from this internship to future employers.
Her contact information is as follows:
Angie Lucas: Assistant Director, Career Services
E-mail:
lucasac@ucmail.uc.edu
Office:
607 Carl H. Lindner Hall
Phone:
513-556-5741
Fax:
513-556-4891

Advisor Feedback
Must Include:

Required Revisions:

Effective:

Experience advisor name and contact

information
Description of why advisor was selected
Specific plans to engage with advisor

3. Connection to Learning Outcomes

List 3 learning outcomes from any thematic area(s). Provide specific activities you plan to engage in to help you make
progress towards the chosen learning outcomes. Describe how you expect each activity to help your progress. Include an
estimated time commitment for those activities.
1. Creativity: Discover new techniques to gain knowledge, consider options, make new connections, and ask questions.
I plan to observe the work of employees above me to gain knowledge on how they approach various marketing
situations. Sitting in on their executive meetings, I can take notes on what questions they ask and what methods they use
to help address a markets need. Their unique perspectives on how to solve these problems will be beneficial for me to
learn as I can apply this knowledge to marketing challenges assigned to me in the future, possibly during my tenure as an
intern at TMR. This will give me an understanding of how TMR wants their employees to think and thus will make me a
better candidate for a job there in the future. It will also make me a better candidate in general for marketing positions as I
will have a practical application already under my belt of using critical thinking to solve market issues.
2. Creativity: Explore a new creative competency/medium or seek new ways to engage an existing competency/medium.
The environment of TMR offers numerous opportunities for me to explore new creative mediums. The Nashville
storefront I would be working in holds a record store, label office and distribution center, photo studio, and live concert

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venue. Being exposed to these multiple mediums, I will learn a lot about their operations and will be able to apply them to
my tactics used in marketing. For example, the concert venue is the worlds only live venue with direct-to-acetate
recording capabilities. This means that TMR can record a concert happening live onto a vinyl record. This creative
medium for selling music would be a perfect thing to communicate in a marketing campaign as it is only possible at TMR.
Finding the unique value in the company is vital towards giving it a sustainable competitive advantage, something I can
look for in other companies in the future when I am hired as a full-time employee to develop the strongest marketing
campaign.
3. Leadership: Develop strategies to identify and respond to challenges and obstacles.
This outcome perfectly describes my job description as a marketer for TMR. I will have to develop strategies to
best appeal to certain markets. The goal of marketing in TMR is to communicate the value of shopping at a TMR store.
The challenge is getting people to walk in the door to buy music. As a marketer, it will be my job to develop strategies to
make this happen. The knowledge I will gain by observing other executive marketers at TMR will aid me in this, as well
as being in the creative and diverse environment of production at TMR.

Advisor Feedback
Must Include:

Required Revisions:

Effective:

3 learning outcomes explicitly identified

from any thematic area(s)
Examples of activities and explanation of
how each will assist the progress towards
the chosen learning outcome
Estimated time commitment for each
activity

4. Academic Resources Connected to the Learning Outcomes

List 1-2 academic resources you plan to use to enhance your understanding of the learning outcomes. Explain how each
resource connects to your learning outcome(s) and helps you execute your experience. Please include the title and author/
creator for each resource.
Note: Academic resources are professional works that can be used to assist your understanding of the topic. Some
examples are books, documentaries, videos, or research journals.
Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail by Mike King
This book was written to teach the most effective marketing strategies available to musicians, keeping in mind the
important changes and opportunities the digital age has brought to music marketing. This will be especially relevant to my
work at TMR since they sell music primarily in the form of vinyl records and not electronically. The book will certainly
teach me new methods in addressing challenges in marketing, perhaps giving me insight on how to communicate the
value in buying records at a more expensive price than buying the same music digitally for a lower price. The book
specifically addresses distributing music on electronic mediums like iTunes and Rhapsody, giving me knowledge on new
mediums I have never worked through with marketing. All the new knowledge I will gain from this book will give me
many different strategies for responding to marketing challenges and will make me a better candidate for marketing jobs
in the future as well.

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Advisor Feedback
Must Include:

Required Revisions:

Effective:

1-2 academic resources connected to the

learning outcomes
Title and author of each resource
Description of how resources will help
make progress towards learning outcomes
and execution of experience

5. On-going Reflection
The on-going reflection should help you process the experience and progress toward your chosen learning outcomes.
Describe your method for reflecting throughout the experience. Indicate specific reflection questions/topics you plan to
use to guide your reflective process.
Note: A variety of methods can be used for on-going reflection. Some examples are videos, drawings, blogs, songs, and
journals. Reflection topics to consider include your ideas/insights about the experience, connection to other areas of
involvement, and your progress towards the learning outcomes.
At the end of every work week, I will update my blog with details about what projects I am currently working on,
as well as any concerts Ive been to at the TMR venue and any artists I have met. This will help me keep track of what I
have learned and will be beneficial to reference if I want to do networking in the future. Some topics I would address are:
- Marketing projects
- Artists
- Concerts
- New mediums
Some questions I could ask myself to guide my reflection process could be:
- How can I use the marketing tactics implemented by TMR in jobs in the future?
- What skills did I use to solve problems today?
- Did I learn anything new today?
- What mediums did you use to learn or address problems today?
- Who did you learn from today?
- What further knowledge can I seek to supplement what I am learning here?

Advisor Feedback
Must Include:

Required Revisions:

Effective:

Method for ongoing reflection

Reflection questions/topics clearly
specified

6. Sharing Your Learning

Describe how you plan to actively share what youve taken away from this experience with a targeted audience. Explain
why you chose this specific audience.

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To share my experiences from working at TMR, I will host a concert where I perform and cover songs by all the artists I
worked for. I will invite all the local musicians I know, their management as well. This is an appropriate audience because
I will be able to share my stories with friend who are interested and also with potential clients of mine in the future. To
supplement each song, I will write a paragraph describing my marketing efforts for that artist on my blog. The
performance will be a fun way to celebrate my passion for music, specifically my passion for the artists signed with TMR,
and reflect on everything I learned while I was there.

Advisor Feedback
Must Include:

Required Revisions:

Effective:

At least one method to actively share takeaways/learning from the experience

A specific audience and why the audience
was selected

7. Budget (if applicable)

Provide an itemized budget and indicate your source for cost information.
*If you are engaged in an unpaid internship or research, please indicate the number of weeks and hours per week you
plan to participate.
The cost information below is for the city of Nashville, TN and comes from numbeo.com. This will be a baseline for my
expenses in a semester living in Nashville.
Consumer Price Index (Excl.Rent):
66.36
Rent Index:
40.19
Groceries Index:
61.91
(full link http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=United+States&city=Nashville%2C+TN)
Based off of these numbers, in a months time I will budget $50.00 for rent and $70.00 for groceries. I will be working 15
weeks for TMR and will work 40 hours a week.
Being an employee for TMR, I will be obligated to attend concerts for the various artists signed by TMR. I estimate that I
will need $300 to cover the costs of tickets to the various concerts over the course of four months.
This means that my my total costs for living in Nashville and participating in my duties as an intern will be $780.

Advisor Feedback

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Notes:
Detailed budget of expenditures with
sources to justify budget estimates
*Indicates the number of hours per week
and number of weeks of participation

Required Revisions:

Effective:

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THEMATIC AREA LEARNING OUTCOMES

Learning Outcomes for the Community Engagement Thematic Area:
By engaging in this thematic area, you will make progress towards learning how to

Identify and differentiate multiple ways to contribute towards the development or achievement of the communitys
goals.
Develop a thorough understanding of the world view, beliefs, experiences, self-consciousness, or history of
community members through collaboration.
Articulate the purpose of service on a social issue or public policy and how service mutually enhances individual
growth and the common good.
Explain how education, advocacy, mobilization, or public policy can influence social issues and transform
communities.

Learning Outcomes for the Creativity Thematic Area:

By engaging in this thematic area, you will make progress towards learning how to

Discover new techniques to gain knowledge, consider options, make new connections, and ask questions.

Explore a new creative competency/medium or seek new ways to engage an existing competency/medium.

Understand and optimize the use of people, technology, physical resources or community in a creative process.

Articulate the broader significance of a creative project and the value of its contributions.

Learning Outcomes for the Global Studies Thematic Area:

By engaging in this thematic area, you will make progress towards learning how to

Develop practical travel skills that promote safe, stimulating, and productive travel throughout your life.

Summarize the interconnectedness of geography, history, cultural traits and world issues.

Articulate the interdependence of professional fields to address current and impending global issues such as
technology, the environment, human rights, or politics.

Demonstrate an understanding of cultural diversity by acknowledging the impact of their own identity and the
experience of social norms, customs, or beliefs that are different from their own.

Demonstrate a sense of empathy, respect, and appreciation for others to build meaningful cross-cultural
collaborations toward mutual growth and prosperity.

Learning Outcomes for the Leadership Thematic Area:

By engaging in this thematic area, you will make progress towards learning how to

Formulate and manage a shared vision and develop goals towards its achievement.

Motivate and collaborate effectively with others towards completion of shared projects or goals.

Develop strategies to identify and respond to challenges and obstacles.

Identify personal strengths and areas of growth and evaluate opportunities to maximize skills and abilities.

Synthesize the current trends related to a specific issue or field and evaluate how thought-leaders are currently
addressing them.

Learning Outcomes for the Research Thematic Area:

By engaging in this thematic area, you will make progress towards learning how to

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Demonstrate the ability to locate, interpret, and critically evaluate primary sources appropriate to field.
Identify and apply appropriate methods to collect and organize data for analysis.
Analyze and interpret the meaning of results.
Produce dissemination appropriate to the field in order to share the results or impact of the research.
Articulate the broader significance of the research project and its relationship to other fields, research and ideas.