Behind the Scenes: Health Sciences Media Team

James Sherpa: Coming up on Bronco Tales, and like they’re yeah, you’re the one that does that, you’re there, and I’m like, oh yeah, I’m a part of something bigger, and it’s really fun to do that. And that’s why I love making this kind of creative stuff. 

Welcome to Bronco Tales with the College of Health Sciences. My name is James Serpa, and I’m joined by Courtney Peterson and Calvin Doerr. We are all part of the student communications team, but unique for us we’re all also graduating. So, I don’t want to say this is our last hurrah, but that’s sort of the point of this podcast is to talk about our experience as students diving into the College of Health Sciences. Some of us are a part of it, studying, some of us this was our first time learning about any of it. So, I guess we should start by talking about what we do. Courtney, what’s your job? What’s your role that you’re about to be finished with? 

Courtney Peterson: So, I’m a graphic designer with the college communications team, and that encompasses a lot of things from supporting the website to designing T-shirts and all sorts of good fun stuff–lots of flyers, things like that. What do you do, James? 

James Sherpa: Oh, what do I do? I do audiovisual stuff. That’s my official title on my resume. And so. I am like the podcast is the audio side, and then visual is doing photography and like videos–all the little testimonial Instagram videos I’m usually involved with. And when I’m not or the person who’s posting them.

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, my name is Calvin, and I run the social media. I also work at the front desk. So I’ve been doing the front desk longer, but I picked up social media about two years ago. So, I post the content that James creates.

James Sherpa: Yeah, I feel like the first thing I wanted to ask, also because I don’t think I’ve heard this story from you, Calvin, is how you got started working at the front desk and working on all this stuff? 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, well, I first started because I was looking for jobs on Handshake, and I knew I wanted to work on campus. And I saw a job in the College of Health Sciences because I’m a kinesiology major, I was like this would be really interesting. I can get involved with the college, so I applied. I had an interview, it went well, and thankfully, I accepted the position to work at the front desk. After about a year, I started picking up more tasks. I started writing articles about BroncoFit activities like golf, kayaking, and that kind of stuff. Then, their last social media manager left, and they said, hey is this something you want to do. And so I took that job as well, so I’ve been working on those ever since. 

James Sherpa: Okay, that’s–I mean, how long has it been then? 

Calvin Doerr: I started in August 2021. So, almost three years this August. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, there we go. It’s just a year and a half for me. So, it feels like you’ve been here the whole time. I have just been like, okay, yeah, that’s Calvin. He knows everything. 

Calvin Doerr: Well, I don’t know about that, but how’d you find the job? 

James Sherpa: I was also–Handshake, cause that’s where all the jobs are, but I worked at the Honors College. And I was doing like the student tours and stuff, when people would come to the normal campus tour and then afterwards stop by the college to learn about the Honors College. But they were estimating the pre-COVID numbers and got like, two people coming in. 

Calvin Doerr: Oh no.

James Sherpa: Like over a whole semester of doing these twice a week. And so they were like, okay, we need to rethink this. And, I’m pretty sure they hired someone full-time for like front desk stuff. So it was like, hey, your position’s no longer. And I’m like, ah. And so out of–I would have said out of spite, but they also said, oh yeah, feel free to use your time at the front desk when you’re not busy, apply for other jobs, get something. So that’s how I ended up finding this. And I’m now–I love video, and I’ve gotten super into photography. And so that’s what I get to do. That’s my actual job, that’s awesome. How did you find? 

Courtney Peterson: So mine was a little, uh… 

James Sherpa: I think yours was sort of-

Courtney Peterson: Non-traditional. 

James Sherpa: Yeah. 

Courtney Peterson: A friend of mine is an intern for BroncoFit, and he had sort of let the class know that the College of Health Sciences was kind of looking and kind of thinking about maybe opening up a graphic design internship. And so I had emailed Danya, and we kind of had started communicating. But then the internship that I was currently at became unavailable to me very abruptly.

And the creative director got a job, actually, here on campus. She’s really awesome and still a good mentor, but my internship credit was tied to having a graphic designer as my direct supervisor. And so all of a sudden, I had to find a new job in like 48 hours. I needed to have all the paperwork signed.

And so, I like cold-called Dayna and was like, hey, I know we’ve had like two emails, but like this is what’s going on. So we did a phone interview essentially, and she kind of talked to her people, and they were so good and so patient with me. And it was able to come together really quickly, and I was able to stay on track and keep my credits and all of that stuff that was really necessary. And I’m like so grateful that it all just fell together really, really well. 

James Sherpa: That’s awesome. That’s, yeah, because I know you just sort of popped up. Yeah, I just showed up. Here’s this opportunity, and I was like, oh, awesome. Cool, because my graphic design experience in all of my projects is like, oh, this needs a graphic. I guess I’ll make it. But I was never focused on that. So, finally having someone in that role, it was like eye-opening, so many opportunities for stuff that we were doing. 

Courtney Peterson: I think that’s something that’s really great about the communications team, is that everybody has different skills and that we learned so much from each other. We collaborated on a video together, and it was really great to get to learn like the way that you work and have that process, that collaboration was–I learned a ton through that.

Calvin Doerr: And, I’ve appreciated your graphic design for social media as well because I was just using Canva before. And I’m not great at it, but it really helps to have everyone in a position to get the job done. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, I feel like you’ve got that Canva experience. I’m seeing you use all the tools.

I’m like, okay, I’ve got to keep track of this because otherwise I’m going to sit and stare at Photoshop for hours and just, oh yeah. 

How, I guess, you’re sort of in a different spot because you’ve come into this job already being part of the college as a student. But like, I guess then I’ll turn to you. And how was it adjusting to being like, okay, health sciences, this is what this is, and like diving into the world of it all and so abruptly. 

Courtney Peterson: It was interesting. My life before this, I’m a non-traditional student. I was a massage therapist for 17 years, and I have a good friend who went through the kinesiology program. So anatomy, kinesiology, that’s pretty familiar. That wasn’t a big deal. But the rad sci, the respiratory care, and all of the other stuff, that was really a learning curve. And learning terminology. There were some words–like grammatical things that I just didn’t know that we had to learn. 

And another thing that was really interesting to me, we started working with social work, trying to kind of develop some graphics and some things that would work well for them. And there were things that I didn’t know that they were like, you can’t use this particular icon because it has negative connotations professionally for us. So there were a lot of things like that; it was a huge learning experience for me.

That there are just things like professionally that we don’t know on the outside, and that was really cool. How about you? What did you learn? 

Calvin Doerr: I was just gonna say the acronyms were a big learning curve to start; there are so many acronyms in academia as it is. So that was a big–

Courtney Peterson: And learning, like, the branches of the college, right? Like, how everything kind of fits together. That was a huge learning curve, and for sure, all the acronyms. 

Calvin Doerr: Sorry, James. 

James Sherpa: I know I was, I had like SPPH EOHS video draft one, and I’m like just writing out all these acronyms, going I think I know what that means. Yeah, did you feel like you had a little bit of a head start because you were already in Kinese, or is–I mean, it’s such a broad college. Like, do you have a lot of learning to do, too? 

Calvin Doerr: I always feel like there’s more learning to do. Luckily enough, I am in kinesiology, and I think it benefited me to be constantly surrounded by faculty members all around the college. Because, then, I go to events, and I knew who people were, and then they ended up becoming my professor. So, it was nice to have my job integrated with my studies here. I really liked that. I don’t think I had a great head start because I entered during COVID. So, it wasn’t like I had a great understanding of how the college worked to begin like when I first got here. I didn’t feel like I interacted with anyone the first year or so on campus. And you may have felt the same way because you came in during that time as well, right? 

James Sherpa: Yeah, I did, and it felt like even just at this job, so much of it has been making up for lost–like oh all these photos we’re not using them anymore because everyone has masks on and we want to see everyone’s full face. And it’s like, okay, that’s great, but now we’ve got to retake all this stuff, and it’s just making up for that. And then also, like, I barely knew anything about Boise State. I had the honors college as a bit as a little bit of like okay here’s how all the employee portal stuff works for having a job but…yeah just dive right into it. 

Calvin Doerr: It was a unique experience to come during COVID, and what time did you get to school? 

Courtney Peterson: So, I’m a nontraditional student, so I’ve been studying for seven years, but I’ve only been taking one class at a time. And then I only started on campus–like it was before COVID, I started on campus, and then COVID actually opened up opportunities for me, right, like I was able to take some classes remotely that I wouldn’t have had the ability to come on campus with because of my kids. So, COVID actually worked in my favor academically, but I’ve only been like a full load on campus for the last three years.

Calvin Doerr: Okay, nice. 

Courtney Peterson: So, here’s a question. So, how has your internship like supported you academically? Has it been an asset to your academic studies? 

Calvin Doerr: James, you wanna go first? 

James Sherpa: I’ve used some of the stuff–I was in a documentary photography class where we had a new project every week, and it was an insane timeline and turnaround. And, I learned a lot. It was fun working on the projects, but figuring out what the project was not fun. But some of the–at least one of the times that I got the opportunity to be like, okay, here’s something for work. It aligns with this project. I’m going to use it. And so that was directly for my academics, but then also just like–I’m a marketing student. And so all of this is marketing-related. 

Courtney Peterson: Yeah, for sure. 

James Sherpa: And, I get to use a lot of that. And so much of this is also–I have this like base of knowledge built up around video, but when it comes to actually sharing that, I have to be like, okay, if I’m having other people do this podcast and record, I need to teach them, here’s how you plug in the microphone into the recorder. Here’s how you set it all up. Here’s how far you should be from the microphone when you talk, and here’s what you set the gain at, like each step. I had to go back and rethink.

And now, working on other marketing projects like my capstone class, where we’re basically consulting for a client, is okay, I have to go through all those steps again and re-explain all the basic stuff that I know, that’s both creative and business and in just plain words to someone. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, and that’s a really challenging skill to simplify your words, especially when you’re at this level in school, where you know all of the correct terminology. It’s like, okay, can you explain it to a fifth grader? That’s something that I’ve had to deal with as well. And I think this job helped in that.

I think this job contributed to my academics because I met so many people. And I just had a lot of support from everyone in the dean’s office here, as well as other professors whom I saw at retirement parties, at luncheons, all of that stuff. Everyone’s been super supportive and has given me opportunities. Like, even this fall, we had Bronco Welcome—nice, your shirt. Yeah, we had Bronco Welcome. And it was there, where a professor came up to me and was like, hey, would you like to do research with me this summer? So, that was really cool to get to…like connect my job to my studies just because I was there. And, I think that’s what this job really helps with is it keeps you in the loop for the College of Health Sciences. And that’s really important. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed getting to keep in the loop. Even if I’m not a part of the college academics-wise, I now feel like I know so much. It’s like a second college for me. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, your second home. 

Courtney Peterson: Yeah. Absolutely, I agree. It’s been really cool to learn more about the college, and for me, a cool benefit is that I didn’t realize so much how, like, every different college kind of has its own flavor. And, I think that’s something that we’re able to see here, where we support so many different units, and I really enjoyed that.

One way that the internship has supported me academically is getting used to–I think what you were saying, James, that we’d like to have the knowledge but then learning how to apply it in a real-world situation and working interdisciplinary that’s really what the real world is, right? It’s taking your skills and learning how to apply them for whatever use case scenario and having a lot of opportunities to do that. They gave us a lot of latitude. And, I think that’s really great, and I really appreciate that Danya was like, what do you want to learn, what skill do you want to grow, and then she helped support us in learning that. I really appreciated that.

Calvin Doerr: Do you guys think that in future jobs you’d like to apply for something similar, where you might not know everything about it? But you can use your skills to help the company and also learn more. Do you think that would be something you wanna do in the future because of this job? 

Courtney Peterson: Sure. 

James Sherpa: Yeah.

Courtney Peterson: It is something that I’m doing right now, and it scares me, to be honest. Like the company that I’m moving into isn’t what I thought it would be, but it’s going to be really great. And, I think some of the skills learned here and that like sometimes you just kind of have to get into it and figure it out, and that’s scary, right? Like things that are unknown are scary, and also I think it’s going to be a really cool opportunity. I’m glad that we’ve kind of had that space to learn here, so that we can move forward and do it again. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, that’s true. 

James Sherpa: I get a lot more confidence now because I’ve jumped into something completely unrelated and been like oh, I can do this, I got this. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, that’s a good point. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, but there are also a lot of challenges that come along with this. I feel like health science specifically–I don’t know if either of you can jump in on this, but there are certain challenges that come up that are health science specific, maybe not only to this college or this field, but that make communicating things so much harder.

Because it’s a lot of, okay, how do you explain this like you’d explain it to a fifth grader, or this is great, but visually, we can’t capture that. How do we capture that for a story? All of that has been so interesting. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, I know we struggle with that, and like social work, although they’re doing so many like great things in the community, it can be hard to capture that. And I remember running into kind of a speed bump with that and trying to figure out how to take photos of that one, particularly. And also like nursing, you can’t take photos of them engaging with actual patients, because of HIPAA and stuff like that. So yeah, I get what you’re saying there. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, it’s where the lab comes in, though, all the simulation stuff for like respiratory care, and like did some sonography stuff with students. They’re all working on this stuff in the lab, and they’re practicing with other students, and it’s like, okay. This is perfect. We can capture this really well, and it’s a controlled environment. It’s great. But then it’s like, all right, go out and capture someone doing social work. Here’s a clipboard, sit in that chair, and pretend to be engaged in the conversation.

It’s a whole thing, and also, these aren’t communications professionals. I think healthcare in general is something where you have to be a communicator, and realistically, like I took a sales class. And so much of that sales class was like everyone’s doing sales. Your doctor is selling you on what you should do. They can’t force you to take some treatment, but they’re selling you. This is the best thing, and they’re just explaining it to you and convincing you to do a certain thing. And it’s like, yeah, it’s all sales, and it’s all like–realistically, sales is also just part of communication, and it’s all communication. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah.

James Sherpa: But that then makes it so that–you know, these skills are important and so many people have it but also some people just don’t really want to or don’t want to–or have to sort of be coaxed out of like, okay you know you can be great on camera or you can tell this story in a way that other people will resonate with. But it’s our job, actually, to make that happen.

Courtney Peterson: Yeah. And I think another challenge that we find, especially in health care, is we’ve seen this with social work and also with the school of public and population health, is that, like some of the things that they deal with are heavy and hard. And we don’t ever want to capture somebody who is being vulnerable, right? We never want to take advantage of another person’s difficult thing, right? So much of mental health is heavy and hard. And that there’s a line there, right? Where you need to respect the humanity of people and capture the work that they do in a way that honors who they are as humans and doesn’t degrade or isn’t problematic. 

And I think another issue that we have being in Boise is like bringing diversity in visually because what we have access to are like white boys, right? What we have access to, this is what we have access to. This is what’s easiest to do right now. And so it’s kind of a challenge to get the diversity that we really would like to have.

Not because it’s not out there, but because sometimes you’re running on such a tight schedule that you just kind of work with what you have in the room right now. And so I think that’s something that has been in the mix that we’ve kind of been trying to figure out how to increase that, right? How do we increase that diversity? How do we continue, like adequately communicating what we’re trying to achieve? 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, that’s a good point. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, it’s so interesting because I didn’t really think a lot about those challenges. I just thought about, okay, I’m gonna be told to go record this video, and I’m gonna do it. And, that’s gonna be my job, but obviously it’s so much more. But the thing that I really like about working within the university is that everything feels so much more long-term. Even just like projects I’ve worked on, okay, what are we doing next week? What’s happening?

But we just had our big last team meeting with the new incoming student communications team, and it was like, okay, the next six months, what’s the plan? Summer and then after that, and then all the way up to the end of 2024, what’s the plan? And, I like being able to think that far forward and actually like to get planning. Sometimes I wish things would move faster. Sometimes I wish I could just grab a camera and a microphone and be like, all right, you talk to this camera. But there’s a reason we try to do everything the right way. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, and it feels–as you mentioned, it feels cool to be a part of like the history of Boise State. Especially when we’re thinking so long-term, like some of the photos you take will be used here for 10-20 years, even. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, you’re gonna be sitting there in the little room smiling at the person on the bed, and that’s gonna be everywhere.  

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, yeah. I’ve done a lot of model shoots for the College of Health Sciences, and I look forward to seeing those come up all around. It’s really nice to be a part of that history and building a–I think something that you’ve worked on in particular is building a wealth of photos of all of our colleges, all of our departments. And, so it’s cool to say, like oh I contributed to that. We’ve been building something really strong. And as a social media manager, it’s like, okay, we need to post about social work, I need a social work photo right now. It’s great when we have a backlog of photos, and I don’t have to reuse the same ones from 10-20 years ago, so yeah, I really appreciate that. 

Courtney Peterson: Something else I really have been very pleasantly surprised about in the internship. I think academia feels so removed, right? Like your professors feel so important. And then the dean’s office, it feels very, very important. So, I never really had the expectation that, like the dean that like anyone important would have any interest in talking to me, right? Like that, I would just work with the team, I’d work with Danya, and like everyone has been so open and so welcoming and genuinely want to know what you have to say, and like they care. That surprised me in a really good way.

James Sherpa: Yeah.

Courtney Peterson: I just think that we–there’s sort of a reputation in academia of things kind of just being a little bit elitist, and that was not my experience here at all. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, I feel like this office in particular is really fun. Like we have birthday parties, all of that stuff. And like you said, everyone cares how you’re doing. They’ll ask you how your day is before they ask you about how your work is. So I think that’s really important and special here in the College of Health Sciences. It might be like that elsewhere, but we do. 

Courtney Peterson: But it’s great here. 

Calvin Doerr: Yeah, yeah, it is really nice here. And like you said, I think my communication skills with members of faculty and like the dean, have really helped because it’s like, okay, I’m in these communications at a high level. So I can continue to talk to people like them professionally and personally, even though they may be above us as students. 

Courtney Peterson: And maybe help humanize them, right, like it maybe is not a scary to talk to your professors. That’s something I’ve noticed too, that like it’s not as scary for me to approach my professors now that I’m recognizing they’re all human, right?

James Sherpa: Yeah, now that I’ve seen all of the outtakes of them on the recordings. Before we wrap things up, I want to throw out, does anyone have any interesting stories of your time or a project or anything, before we bring this podcast to a close? 

Calvin Doerr: I need to think about it. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, we might we might do a little pause, play some thinking music right now. Sorry, that’s more editing for Sam behind the camera. 

Calvin Doerr: I don’t know. I’m just thinking, the first thing that comes to mind is like our Bronco Giving Day campaign. That’s a lot of work for everyone. And I just remember making some huge Excel spreadsheets with posts coming out every 30 minutes. Like, we wanna get people involved, we wanna get everyone involved in Bronco Giving Day. So that’s been like a big haul and a big part of our work, and a lot of planning goes into it.

I think one of my fondest memories, though, is the Carl and Jean Gross lecture series. I’m not sure, I don’t think you were here for that, but we brought in Dr. Jim Yong Kim, and he was like an incredible speaker. He used to work at the World Bank. He was like the president of the World Bank, and he came and spoke. And because I was working in this office, I got to meet him, talk to him, and like go behind the scenes at the Morrison Center. And he gave a fantastic speech, but that was another thing where he was humanized by the experience, and I got to shake his hand, take a photo, and so that was a really cool experience.

It showed me what the power of bringing people to campus can do, and I think it got a lot of people excited about healthcare. That was like my favorite event that we did for the College of Health Sciences. 

Courtney Peterson: Yeah, I can’t think of anything funny, but my favorite event was when I got to go be the photographer for the Communities for Youth, the program that the School of Public and Population Health does. And it was a cause that was near and dear to my heart. And the Communities for Youth initiative focuses on upstream prevention for mental health, particularly with our youth. They had such a great–there were so many people there. There were so many people actively involved and invested in this that it just was a really powerful experience for me as a mother to see and to experience that. And I was really grateful to kind of have the opportunity to just sort of observe that event. It was really a cool experience that I wouldn’t have had any other way. 

James Sherpa: Yeah. 

Courtney Peterson: I’m sorry. 

James Sherpa: It’s the alarm. Why isn’t it… 

Courtney Peterson: Yeah, I can’t get it to stop, you guys. I’m not swearing at you, I’m sorry. 

James Sherpa: Wow, that was strange. The touchscreen didn’t even work. Yeah, I feel like one of my favorite things to do, or like favorite things in general, is the like recognition. I think we just leave all this in, we just go for it. It’s funnier this way.

One of my favorite things is like working on the podcast like this and the editing. And just again how personal it can be and how like people that I don’t really know, but they’ll be like oh I’ve heard your voice. Or people that will know me and be like oh I’ve heard your voice say coming up on Bronco Tales and like they’re yeah, you’re the one that does that, you’re there, and I’m like, oh yeah, I’m a part of something bigger, and it’s really fun to do that.

And that’s why I love making this kind of creative stuff. In general, it’s just because you come out with the tangible product, and it’s community building. It’s awesome–we should use that for the intro just where I say coming up on Bronco Tales and then go into the whole thing, we don’t even need the intro bit…okay either way. 

Calvin Doerr: I was just gonna add that we talked a little bit about the people in the College of Health Sciences, but I just want to say, like I’ve made the best connections with everyone in the College of Health Sciences. I’ve seen you both around campus, and we’ll wave and talk to one another. Everyone in the office is so friendly–one of my best friends was working here when I first started at the front desk, Thomas. So I’ve just made a lot of great connections at the College of Health Sciences and working here in particular has been really fun. 

Courtney Peterson: It’s been a great experience for sure. 

James Sherpa: Yeah, it’s awesome. Well, this was awesome. Thank you, guys, for doing this. We just had this random idea, and we’re like, all right, one more podcast episode to say goodbye. So thank you for listening to Bronco Tales with the College of Health Sciences. I guess this is the last time that my voice will be a part of the edit. But it’s been awesome to be a part of this. It’s been awesome to make something like this. And I think we’re going to make some other awesome stuff. 

I’m pointing behind the camera to Sam, who’s going to be the one taking over sort of editing and is the one producing this. So thank you for helping with that. Thank you two for both being on with me. And thank you to everyone who’s listened and everyone who’s been a part of our great experience here with COHS.