“All over California people are hiring planners,” said Oviatt, who earned her master’s degree in public administration from CSUB in 2007. “Even when I get planners, we’re like the farm team. They get really good and then go someplace else.”
Oviatt’s interns work as “extra-help” employees for nine months at a time. So far she has hired three interns as full-time planners.
The group of interns Mariscal joined is helping launch the next phases of the county’s general plan update. A general plan is a set of policies, programs and maps that guides a community’s future development.
The interns work on teams assigned to different topic areas such as healthy communities, economic development and water. Day-to-day tasks will include creating power point presentations, scribing and summarizing comments made at workshops, maintaining lists of interested community members and preparing hearing notices.
“Here at the Planning and Natural Resources Department, they are critical,” Oviatt said of the interns. “They are a critical way we are stretching our dollars. And they provide opportunities and growth for people who could be interested in being permanent planners.”
The internship is right up Mariscal’s alley. She chose to study urban planning because it provides a real public service: helping communities develop the infrastructure and services it needs to thrive.
“I wanted to do something that could reach a lot of different members of our community,” she said.
MENTORS BENEFIT, TOO
Greg Wright, a research and development lead for Campbell Soup Company, became a RAMP mentor because he could have benefited from one when he was in school. Wright earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from CSUB.
“All the mistakes I made in college and early in my career I could have prevented with a little guidance,” said Wright, whose job involves managing information systems and other initiatives in the Fresh division of Campbell Soup.
His mentee was Cuiwen Tang, a junior from China who is studying business administration and is interested in starting a company back home that produces healthy, quality food.
Wright started out asking about Tang’s goals and thought of ways he could help her. He talked her through grad school application and testing processes, looked over her resume, encouraged her to read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and connected her with Campbell’s marketing team in Malaysia.
The team taught Tang the six key principles of marketing.
“I was learning this stuff with her,” Wright said.
Using a donation from Campbell Soup (the company matched Wright’s volunteer hours by giving money to the Alumni Association), Tang was able to attend the Bakersfield Women’s Business Conference.
Just by happenstance, Tang met a woman there from her hometown of Guangzhou and they struck up a rapport. Wright told her it’s great to make those kinds of connections because they could lead to professional opportunities like an internship.
Tang, 22, loved the conference, especially learning how to cope with stress: Clear your mind for five to 10 seconds, take deep breaths, and repeat that two or three times.
“When I’m studying for finals, I need this,” she said.
Wright said mentees don’t just benefit from RAMP; mentors do, too.
“A long time ago I told myself, ‘When I get in a position to give back, this is where I am going to make a difference,’” he said. “RAMP created that avenue for me to give back, and I’m grateful. “
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