December 2016

Hope Howard
howardh2@seattleu.edu

Dear Hope,

This letter serves to verify that you completed 300 hours at Cornish College of the Arts as the
Orientation Program Intern. During the site visit held on August 15, 2016, we discussed the learning
outcomes and professional competencies that you demonstrated throughout the internship experience.

You are one of the most outstanding young professionals I have had the privilege to work with over the
last 12 years of my professional career. Rather than perform as an unpaid intern for the orientation
program at Cornish College of the Arts, you acted as I would expect an Assistant Director of a program to
perform their duties and responsibilities; even this statement I feel is an over-simplification of the role
that you took on at our institution at a critical time of transition for our students and for our
professional team.

You began your internship in the spring semester of 2016, playing an active role in the hiring and
selection of our orientation leader team. You created the curriculum for both the 1-day spring
orientation leader training and the 3-day leader training immediately before the start of the orientation
program. You planned the Cornish Gives Back (service learning component) of the orientation program,
expanding it in such a way that virtually all of our 200+ incoming students were able to participate. (In
the past, we only had the capacity to involve 40-60 of our incoming students as an optional activity.) You
helped us achieve the goal of creating cost-savings while also decreasing our environmental footprint by
implementing the use of the app Sched for our orientation program schedule. You developed an
orientation session for parents that focused on speaking with their students about substance abuse,
giving you an opportunity to apply what you have learned through your graduate assistant position at
Seattle University in the office of Wellness and Health Promotion.

When I was promoted mid-way through your internship and given additional responsibilities in the
housing & residence life area of our institution, you took on additional planning responsibilities for the
orientation program. When a member of the housing & residence life gave notice and left the institution
immediately before the start of the Resident Assistant and Orientation Leader fall semester training
sessions, you took on an even larger chunk of administrative responsibility and made sure that our
orientation program did not suffer as a result of my increasingly-divided attention.
More importantly, Hope, you led by example and gained the respect of our entire orientation leader
team. You became a vital member of our campus community, despite the short duration of your time
with us and have had a lasting impact on our program and our students.

Respectfully Submitted,

Brittany D Henderson
Associate Dean of Student Life
Cornish College of the Arts