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Plano Academy Take Over: Part Two

rbarry
Employee
Employee

Southwest Airlines is passionate about giving back to the communities we serve. We recently teamed up with Plano Academy to provide a unique learning experience for the senior class of Plano Academy High School. In this series, senior student Chancei White shares how an experience at Southwest Airlines provided hands-on experience and real world business understanding!

 

Click here to read Part One.

 

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As my fellow Plano Academy seniors and I continued our learning experience with Southwest Airlines, we spent the majority of the week planning, researching, and pre- designing prototypes. After our seniors took a tour of Southwest, we continued to stay in contact with our department mentors for questions or concerns with our assigned projects. Most teams took time out of their day to schedule follow-up conferences with their mentors by joining Skype calls, or the traditional route ... cell phone conferences, and there are even Teams who had the opportunity to revisit with their mentors in person. I’m sure they all received invaluable feedback. 

 

Meanwhile, my Team was coming up with a solution for our business project. We contacted our mentor and showed her a rough draft of our idea. She was pleased. Although my team and I were nervous, agreeing on a probable solution was the easy part. (Crazy, right?) Now we were really getting the dice rolling!

 

Our week was dedicated to compiling research into a solutions document, so that we will know what will be needed to perform our task. From there we began to problem solve the logistics of our plan. We created graphic design ideas, commercial ideas, and various advertising techniques to improve our design. There were still a few bumps we had to get over, but for the most part, we were working together and collaborating effectively as a good Team should do.

 

I chose a mentor from Visual Communications with the intention of having a challenging problem to research. I hoped that it would also allow me to expand my knowledge and skills of design programs I may have to use in the future. With my expectations having been met so far, I grew more excited to see this project play out successfully. Producing good ideas out of thin air is easy, but to actually follow through and design an entire plan around it, now that’s a whole different ball game. We are taking on this challenge and I hope both mentors and students learn something great throughout the completion of this project.

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