Barton International Group

The Barton International Group is another group that has been key in my professional development thus far in college. It is a student run consulting enterprise that serves large international firms in Wichita. Over the years The Barton International Group has worked with Spirit Aerosystems and Coleman. My first year in the program the group faced a lot of challenges finding a client due to hard economic times. We ended up taking a trip to the business school in France, and it was an incredible experience I will never forgot. We spent 5 days in Southern France and 3 days in Paris. The culture shock was pretty intense, and I learned some of the French language and traditions.This trip alone justified my involvement in the organization. I kept a journal with all of my memories from the trip, and I am very excited to look back on that someday and laugh.

After that trip, over the summer I became the head of recruitment for the Barton International Group. It was exciting opportunity entering my sophomore year of college, but I did not have much experience within the department. I had been recruited my freshman year, but I did not know much about how the process worked. Maybe the most important thing I got out of this position was my ability to speak in front of a classroom of my peers. I delivered several presentations at the start of the year to classrooms of various levels, and it helped me later in the year when I had to present to the Barton Advisory Board. The Barton Advisory Board was filled with some very successful people, and it was an intimidating meeting that I met with great success. I now feel incredibly comfortable speaking in front of several of my peers.

I also learned about time management and organization through my experience as head of recruitment. Organizing an event for 40 people by yourself is not an easy task, but I met the challenge head on. The day of the event seven potential candidates did not show up which lead to a lot of scrambling on my part. However, no one even seemed to notice all the chaos that was going on in my mind. This along with the position of secretary in Phi Delt helped prepare me for becoming Director of Human Resources within in BIG. This position was created after I finished my time as head of recruitment. It was a position that had absolutely no direction or current state. I am now in the process of creating this position. It is a new challenge and I am working with Dr. Nancy Bereman who is the head of the Management Department in the Barton School of Business. She has been incredibly helpful thus far, and I am very excited to see what becomes of all of her help. My time in BIG has involved a lot of hard work and a lot of personal development. Combining it with my experiences in Phi Delt I have become a much more mature version of myself from a year ago. It excites me for my future within these organizations.