Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The first week of my Public Health summer internship was different than many other
interns. This week was mostly full of confusion and frustration due to not have a stable
communication between my site coordinator and me. One week and a few days before the start
date, I reached out to my site coordinator twice, in hopes of getting some information about my
duties. I did not hear from my coordinator until Tuesday, saying that we will have a meeting on
Wednesday with all interns. During our meeting, the interns were offered another opportunity to
work with CORE (COVID-19 Relief Efforts). I found this opportunity fascinating, considering
this pandemic is a crucial aspect of Public Health. Several other interns were also interested in
working with CORE. Our site coordinator told us he would get back to us with our duties by the
next day. Unfortunately, we did not hear from him with our duties. We finally heard from Sam
Archbold, who works with the CORE Response. Sam will have a meeting with each of us on the
phone regarding our assignments. I am looking forward to working with CORE Response and
Thankfully, the other interns and I have created a group text so that we can all be in
contact regarding our internship. It is nice to have a coworker bond even though we are doing an
internship virtually. Also, this lack of communication that I experienced has taught me that
things do not always run smoothly in the professional world. It is also important to understand
that our coordinators are doing their own job on top of also overseeing us interns. Even though I
was frustrated with the lack of communication, I took into consideration that my coordinator has
been extremely busy with the COVID-19 relief efforts. Although we had a rough first week, I am
Internship Week 2
Things have been going really slow this week. Communication has been a difficulty for
me and all the CORE interns this week, just as last week. Early Wednesday morning we were
told that we would be receiving a call from our new site coordinator in a specific field in CORE.
These fields include operations, logistics and communications. Attached to this email from one
of our site coordinators, Sam Archbold, were two manuals and pamphlets to read and analyze.
These two documents were lengthy and took some time to read, but were very informative. One
of these documents was the Site Manager Manual. This manual consisted of a checklist of daily
operations, assistant checklists, site layouts, new volunteer flow charts, and faq sheets. The other
document was about community organization and local government partnerships. As a new
intern with CORE, these documents were very informative. Since we are not on site, these
manuals gave us an idea on how things run while out on the field.
We did not hear from our newly assigned coordinators until Friday. I unfortunately
missed the call I received from my new coordinator. She sent a very informative email to Sohpie
and I who will be working closely with this new coordinator. This email consisted of a list of
things she wants us to send her such as our resume, availability, interests and what we want to
get out of this internship. She also attached a document for us to fill out about our goals and how
we plan to accomplish and measure them. I wrote goals, which are to build confidence while
working professionally and making community partnerships, and secondly to learn effective
health promotion and education strategies. I really enjoyed completing this assignment because it
makes me analyze what I really want to get out of interning with CORE. I would like to look
back on the assignment at the end of my internship to see what I have accomplished. I emailed
my site coordinator back with all this information, but have not heard back. Although things
have been running slowly, I think that we are finally starting to get the ball rolling. I am excited
Week 3 Journal
My workload picked up this week since we finally got in contact with our site
coordinator. I have been placed in CORE’s Communications Team along with Sophie Hale,
another GCSU Public Health intern. It has been really helpful having a coworker to
communicate with about our assignments. Earlier this week we had our first meeting with Teni-
Ola where she discussed all the potential assignments that she has for us as of right now. She
explained almost all factors and why certain jobs need to be done. Teni-Ola stressed that things
are rapidly changing everyday, so to keep in mind that assignments may appear even when we
do not expect them. She also explained the softwares that we will be using, SmartSheet and
SalesForce. These two are CRMs, that manage elements of all the organizations that a business is
partnering with. This makes it easier for businesses to manage and organize all their contacts,
access information, and even get updates on when there needs to be orders made. Teni-Ola
mentioned how this CRM system creates healthier relationships with organizations because it
After our meeting, I still had some confusion about what exactly she wanted Sophie and I
to do. So we reached out to Teni-Ola who was more than happy to meet with us again to clear
things out. This made me feel more comfortable about reaching out if I have any questions. She
explained more clearly that what we had to do was basically just organizing the contacts for the
list of partnerships. After this is completed, we can move onto the CRM systems. This has been a
lengthy and tedious duty, since there are so many businesses around Atlanta. We had to organize
the contacts for non-profit organizations, local businesses, universities and schools, and media
outlets. We have a follow up meeting with Teni-Ola on Tuesday, where we will be getting an
Week 4 Journal
Week 4 of my internship with CORE has been similar to last week. Communication and
my workload is still a bit slow. We only had one meeting with Teni-Ola this week because the
CEO of CORE was in Atlanta so she was very busy with that. Some of the duties this week
consisted of continuing to finish flushing out the contacts, learning how to use the CRM
Smartsheet, and reviewing any media that CORE has been mentioned in. Teni-Ola also had us
search for CORE in several national and local media outlets. Having positive publicity in the
media is important to the communications team so that our partnerships and the community can
see the work the organization is doing. It is also crucial for spreading health awareness about the
Finding contact information and organizing it is much more time consuming that I
thought it would be. The majority of work I did this week was finishing up the several lists of
Atlanta organizations and partnership on Google Sheets. Monday was also devoted to learning
how to use the CRM Smartsheet. There were several videos that I had to watch and take notes
on. I now have an account, so I played around on this site to learn how to work with it. I have
never really been great at working with technology, so learning this CRM system was a little
difficult. As my time with CORE continues, I believe that the more I use it, the more I will learn
about it. On Friday, Sophie and I met up at a local coffee shop to do our work together and learn
about the CRM system. This is when we ended up having a phone call with Teni-Ola so that we
am very worried that this will affect my progress in this class. I am hopeful that things will get
better, but still feeling stressed out. Although I have faced these issues, I am trying to remain
Week 5 Journal
This week was definitely much busier than the past weeks. I am overwhelmingly behind
on my hours due to the 2 week delay on starting and miscommunication with my coordinators.
This week gave me hope for more busy weeks. Everyday I made sure to make some time to
watch tutorial videos for Smartsheet, Mailchimp and Excel. This helps me gain more knowledge
Monday was full of organizing and finishing up our Smartsheet documents. This is very
tedious work that requires great focus to make sure that there are no errors. Tuesday was the
longest day of the week and was full of multiple different tasks. I started the morning searching
for CORE in the media as well as social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and
Instagram. We then had a check-in meeting where Teni-Ola gave us an overview of everything
last week and what we will do this week. She also explained the importance of reading up about
CORE online because the city of Atlanta posted about our testing sites, but did not give us
recognition or credit. The post from Atlanta made it seem as if the city was operating the testing
site, not CORE. I found this really interesting and made me more aware of issues like this. I
spent the rest of the hours finishing up work for Mailchimp, inspecting social media and
Smartsheet duties.
On Wednesday, Teni-Ola and I had a much needed one on one meeting about my goals.
Teni-Ola had us fill out a goal form when we first started, but we never got to actually talking
about them. My two goals were to learn effective health promotion strategies and methods and to
gain confidence and skills when working with communicating with people not in person. Teni-
Ola mentioned that since she does not have the capacity to learn these effective promotional
methods, that it would be a really great idea for CORE for me to do a lot of research on them,
take notes, and present these ideas to her. I suggested that I could research promotional materials
from past epidemics/ pandemics, and see if we could learn from them. Also, communicating in
person comes very naturally to me, but over the phone makes me very nervous. Teni-Ola, who is
specialized in communications said that this is definitely something that she can help me with.
We will be beginning to make phone calls to organizations very soon, so she is helping us create
a script, and we will be doing role playing with that. She also suggested that I can do some
research on communication when asking for partnerships or fundraising. This research will be
On Thursday and Friday, we had two meetings with Teni-Ola for our progress on the
Smartsheet documents. It also consisted of a lot of research and organizing. One article that I
have read is Organizational change - key to capacity building and effective health promotion by
Sue Heward, Cheryl Hutchins and Helen Keleher. I also made sure to get some research this
weekend. Excited to learn and get some more hours in this upcoming week.
Week 6 Journal
Week six was a productive week for me. On Monday I started my day with doing some
more research on health promotion until we had our scheduled check in meeting with Teni-Ola.
After our meeting, I had some editing to the contact sheets to do. We had to distinguish and
record the relationship CORE had certain contacts and organizations. This is important to record
so that we can keep track of what certain partnerships have done with us, or what organizations
we need to follow up with. For example, certain organizations were given flyers and posters to
give out and promote, but they need to be followed up with so they can get up to date
information. Also, Teni-Ola wanted to connect us with someone from CORE who works with the
CDC because Sophie and I both had an interest in health promotion. This meeting was where we
Tuesday, we had a scheduled meeting with Aryn, which I was excited about. Aryn gave
us a game plan on how to go about researching information that we can put on CORE’s
newsletters. It was interesting to get advice on research and communication from someone who
works with the CDC. Aryn sent us many resources and training from the CDC for us to utilize.
One of our assignments was to gather information for a FAQ section on the newsletter. Aryn sent
us a research tool called Social Bearing, which is a searching engine for social media analytics.
Here we can research what the people on social media are asking and talking about on social
media.
On Wednesday I spend a lot of time going through the resources that Aryn sent us. One
of the training I completed was the CDC’s Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC).
After this training, I explored around and found a lesson called “Communication Challenges
Surrounding the COVID-19 Pandemic”. I was able to download the lesson as a presentation and
the PDF slides. I spent the remainder of my time analyzing and then did some routine social
media checks.
Thursday and Friday I continued to go through the documents that Aryn had sent us. We
were supposed to be sent a script sample to help create our own. We still have not received this
but I managed to try creating a rough draft. This was difficult since I do not have anything to
base it on but I think it was a good start. I continued my research into Saturday so I can get some
extra hours. I even found some helpful Youtube videos to expand my research. I am still behind
on my hours, but I am hoping that the CORE intern coordinators decide on a time for all interns
Monday (6/22/2020): 6
Tuesday (6/23/2020): 6
Wednesday (6/24/2020): 7
Thursday (6/25/2020): 7
Friday (6/26/2020): 6
Saturday (6/27/2020): 3
Total Week 7 Hours: 35
Total Overall Hours: 144
Week 7 Journal
This week consisted of continuing assignments from last week and continuing research.
Developing a script to begin reaching out to organizations for partnerships, donations, etc. has
been slow work. We have been waiting on receiving a few documents that will aid us in creating
this. Teni-Ola and some others have been working on an “expectations” document which is
really important for us to have to create an official script. This document will help us see what
CORE needs or wants from certain organizations. This document is not finished yet but we were
given the list that they had so far. We are waiting on receiving an example script or template that
will help us. I have done some research on how to create a script, and so far have a few rough
drafts of what I think would work. Until we receive the finalized expectations document, I will
not create a final draft. Once Sophie and I collaborate and create a draft, Teni-Ola would like to
do some practice runs until we are ready to start making these phone calls.
We did not have our check in meeting until Wednesday because our coordinator was
traveling from D.C. and NYC. Here we discussed what more research we can do for the health
promotion and for the script writing. We also discussed our midterm evaluation. On Monday we
were sent the updated newsletter so we updated the Smartsheet forms with these contacts. I
continued my self guided research and the multiple online training sessions that Aryn sent us last
week. Everyday I also made sure to check up on the social media pages, as well as search for
CORE in any news articles. I also added a few more questions to the FAQ document I have. I
hope next week will bring some new assignments and starting to do our roll call script
conversations.
Monday (6/29/2020): 5 hours
Tuesday (6/30/2020): 5 hours
Wednesday (7/1/2020): 5 hours
Thursday (7/2/2020): 5 hours
Friday (7/3/2020): 5 hours
Sunday (7/5/2020): 1 hour
Total Weekly Hours: 26 hours
Overall Total Hours: 170 hours
Week 8 Journal
This week was slow in productivity and assignments. As I mentioned in my journal last
week, our coordinator has been promoted to teaching people working with CORE in other states
about communications. Since she has been traveling more, there is a slight lack of
communication. I could only get in about 5 hours of work each day because I was not assigned
I began my week just like every other week by reviewing the newsletters and updating
the Smartsheet document with the new testing sites. I continued to check up on the social media
pages to check for any errors or anything that needed to be corrected. I also searched the internet
for CORE’s name mentioned in any news pages or articles. It is really cool to see how much
media coverage CORE is doing and how they are being acknowledged for the great organization
that it is.
I have done has really sparked more of an interest in health communications as a possible career
of mine. Communications has always been something I struggled with, but working alongside
the communications department and seeing what all goes into this realm of work has been very
We finally had our weekly check in meeting on Friday with Teni-Ola and the
communications team. Teni-Ola mentioned how there has been such a large surge in COVID-19
testing that we have to put a pause of creating a script for partnerships. She explained that since
we are so busy with testing in the Atlanta area right now, it does not make much sense to focus
on new partnerships. She also assigned us to create a “legacy document” for our role as interns
for the next group after Sophie and I have completed our internship. CORE will be hiring new
people very soon and I have considered thinking about applying for one of these positions. I
think this could help me continue my interest in health communications and give me some more
Week 9 Journal
Week 9 of my internship was very similar to the last week. Starting the week off looking
into the media pages and the updated newsletter. I updated the Smartsheet document with the
new testing sites for this week just like we do every Monday. I then searched the social media
pages and media outlets for CORE. Since reaching out to new partnerships has been put on a
pause due to the surge in testing, we have not had anything new to work on. We continued with
our contact management work and I did some extra research to add some hours to my days.
At our weekly check in meeting we found out that there have been some issues with
certain testing sites. Since testing has been at an all time high, that means sites are running out of
kits much faster. When the kits run out, the sites have no choice but to close for the day. So this
week some testing sites have had to close earlier than expected or postponed. Teni-Ola also
explained another situation that they got tangled up with due to a lack of communication
between the organization and our department. One of the testing sites did not respond or read an
email from CORE explaining that they would need to postpone the testing site due to a delay in
shipment of kits. Due to the lack of communication, people from the communities still came and
lined up to get tested, but no one was there. This caused issues and even caused the media to
reach out to CORE for a statement on the situation. This made me understand that things will go
wrong, it is just a matter of how you handle it. Not all partnerships will be good or loyal, but all
we can go is move forward and learn how to avoid this from happening again.
Monday (7/13/2020): 5 hours
Tuesday (7/14/2020): 5 hours
Wednesday (7/15/2020): 6 hours
Thursday (7/16/2020): 6 hours
Friday (7/17/2020): 6 hours
Saturday (7/18/2020): 2 hours
Total Weekly Hours: 30
Total Overall Hours: 230
Internship Week 10
I cannot believe that there are only two weeks left of my internship with CORE. I was
worried from the start about hours at the beginning but I am feeling so much better now that I
am caught up. Just like every week, I began my work with checking up on social media pages
and updating the testing site partnerships on Smartsheet. We did not have many changes in sites
this week which was good. We were assigned to continue the contact management that we have
Wednesday we had our weekly check in meeting with the communications team. We
discussed the testing surge and the high number of cases in Georgia right now. Teni-Ola
explained how swamped and busy these sites have been. Each site is now limited to 500 testing
kits. This means that the site has to shut down all 500 are administered, which is always usually
before the original closing time. People come hours before opening and line up to ensure that
they get a test. We also discussed our contact management project, which has been extended to
not only Georgia. Teni-Ola now wants contact information from states with the highest COVID-
19 cases in the Southeast. The deadline for this is this upcoming week, which puts us at a time
crunch.
On Thursday, Sophie and I had a meeting with Aryn to discuss our research. This was a
short check in meeting, but was helpful to update Aryn. After this meeting, we were in another
meeting with Teni-Ola about our goals. We discussed if our goals were met, and if there is
anything else we can do to make sure they are fulfilled. Even though we no longer need the
script for partnerships, Teni-Ola suggested that Sophie and I still create one and rehearse it to the
communications team. This way we get some experience with communicating to organizations
about partnerships, even though the actual presentation of this to companies has been cancelled.
The rest of the week I worked hard on getting these contact sheets complete. I even did a
little bit of work on Saturday because I have a lot of work to do this upcoming week. I am
looking forward to presenting my script to the team but am a little nervous. I hope to receive
Internship Journal 11
On Monday this week we updated the Smartsheet document with the new testing sites for
this week. On Tuesday, we had our mock cold-calling call on Zoom with our communications
team which went better than I expected. Sophie and I created a rough draft for a script and acted
like we were talking to the Cobb County School District. After we presented our script to our
team, each person gave us their critique. I learned a lot from what they said. It is important to
speak clearly and make sure you know what you are talking about. Introducing CORE, what it
stands for, and our mission is also important. We have to explain what CORE provides in a
partnership rather than just saying what is expected of them. Also learned that a lot of people like
to hear that Sean Penn is the founder of CORE, so it is valuable to mention that when seeking
partnerships. After our mock cold-call, Teni-Ola gave up some updates about what is happening
on the testing sites. Sites have continued to be really busy and have very long lines. Next week,
our contact management project is due, then my job with CORE is complete. One last meeting
will take place for Sophie and I to go through the CRM Software and show Teni-Ola all the
updates.
This week just consisted of finishing up our contact management and touching up on the
legacy document. It was a busy week in regards to the course and finishing up project deadlines
that are closely approaching. I can’t believe there is only 1 week left of my time interning with