Shreya Venkatesh

Hello, people of the world!!!

I am Shreya Venkatesh and I welcome you to my senior project blog! If you can't tell already, I'm very excited to share this experience with you.

Before I begin, I should probably tell you a little about myself. I am currently a senior at BASIS Scottsdale who is over-enthusiastic about everything. Academically, I love science, math, literature, and chocolate. Aside from that, however, I watch a lot of kids' shows like Max & Ruby or My Little Pony. But because I must sound like a mature adult so that you take this blog (and my research) seriously, I will focus on the fact that I participate in riveting discussions about Sherlock and Doctor Who. I also read many interesting books of great literary merit.

But enough about me. On to the reason you are actually here! First off, a shout-out to my amazing college counselor Ms. Michelle Conner and my very awesome faculty advisor Mr. Dana Johnson.

(Insert drum roll)

For my senior project, I will be interning at the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The overarching goal of the organization is to encourage and foster business, pushing for free-market policies to allow business to prosper in Arizona. To achieve this goal, the Chamber works, for instance, to decrease heavy regulation on businesses in various sectors of the industry.

Though I am not sure what exactly my work will be during my internship yet, the research question I am currently focusing on involves society's perceptions of lobbyists. If you've ever taken a government class, you know the textbooks don't exactly glorify lobbyists. However, lobbyists are an instrumental part of the legislative system and without them, there are many policies that may not have been enacted at all. Through my research, I hope to understand the role of the lobbyist in government and business, venturing to find out the truth (does society truly hold this negative a view of lobbyists?) and begin transforming negative perceptions of lobbying.

I promise to blog about everything I learn at the Chamber, which will surely encompass all sorts of delightfully interesting things. If you are confused about what is going on and why you are here, there are links to the right that can give you more information about what senior projects are and what my research involves specifically.

Thank you for being here for my very first post! There's more to come in February, so stay tuned. I hope my excited rambling and my (endearing?) quirks don't scare you away.

The Sad, Sad Goodbye

Hello for the last time (so sad, I know)

Yesterday I gave my final presentation and finished the whole senior project experience. I can't believe I'm really done!

It was really fun putting myself out of my comfort zone and doing something I might not have ever tried were it not for this senior project, so thank you BASIS, my onsite mentor Mr. Hamer, and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce for giving me that opportunity!

Thank you so much again to my college counselor Ms. Conner. You're the best and your hair looks awesome all the time and thank you for everything!

Of course, thank you so so much to Mr. Johnson, my amazing, very knowledgeable, inspirational faculty adviser. I loved working with you this entire year and I'll never forget all the conversations we've had. Thank you for guiding me throughout the process and I'm sure you'll continue to inspire and amaze many more students!

And finally, thank you to all of you for following the blog! I've attached my PowerPoint presentation here if you want to see it. It's super fun.

Well, have a good life. Farewell!

PS: Thank you parents for driving me every day to and from my senior project because I don't have a driver's license yet *cry cry cry*

This is The End (Almost)

Hello all you wonderful people!

I can't believe I'm almost done. I completed my internship at the Arizona Chamber of Commerce this week. And left with a cookie! I like cookies. Especially ones with chocolate. Yay! Seriously, though, I really enjoyed my internship; being able to learn from and work with all the nice people at the Chamber has been so awesome and fun and I learned so many new things and now I am sad.

And now here comes the thank you train! Are you ready? No? Oh, well.

Thank you so much to the Chamber and my mentor and all the people at the Chamber! I had so much fun pretending to be an adult and learning new things. And thank you so much to the SRP committee and my faculty adviser and to the two awesome BASIS college counselors. Also, a very big thank you to you, the people who read the blog. You are great.

You may applaud enthusiastically now.

But at least this isn't the last you'll be hearing from me! Yet. I have one more post to go before the grand goodbye (which will be oh so tearful and you will all miss my witty commentary and hilarious posts so very much, I know).

Quite honestly, I didn't do too much this week since it was more of a wrapping-up week, but I did get all my survey results in! Much fun was had analyzing survey responses and comparing them against different demographics! Much fun I tell you! I was also able to get a draft of my senior project presentation to my faculty adviser. So, really, it was a sad week, but it was a pretty productive one too. Especially considering the most productive part of the week: rewatching The Hunchback of Notre Dame (aka the best movie ever) like 40 times. Ah, yes. A very fun week. I mean sad. A very sad, indulging-in-Disney-movies kind of week.

In terms of the work I did at the Chamber, I did some research on education technology in Arizona this week. Apparently, a lot of Arizona classrooms use smart boards! Who knew?

...ok, it was probably just me that didn't know. But still! Also, the use of technology in education has increased overall in the nation. How cool! Yay! We are awesome!

But that was about it, really.

I hope you liked learning with me throughout my internship and this senior project process. I've loved sharing everything with you and it's all been very fun. I'm sorry if I frightened you with the bad (though arguably very good) jokes and all my overexcitement.

Just kidding! I'm not sorry at all. I'm sure you enjoyed all of that. Right? Right?? Anyways, all of that aside, have a really great weekend and farewell!

Because I'm All About That Education

Hello, lovely people! I hope you had a great week and you're ready to jump into another fun post. If you're not quite ready yet, I have something for you! Are you ready? It's a very awesome, very entertaining meme. Have fun.

Ah, grumpy cat. Still so funny and wonderful and ME.

But anyways. This week I was able to read a couple of interesting articles through the Chamber on Tuesday. One of them continued the discussion on initiative reform and used the recent marijuana bill to support its view. The article talked about how the fight over marijuana legislation proved that Arizona needs initiative reform. It addressed concerns about how some people thought that the "reforms would disenfranchise the undereducated" (Fowler). However, it dispelled that claim, saying that those who wanted to legalize marijuana last year advocated for their position by giving voters pages and pages of legal jargon rather than actual pros and cons of marijuana. Another issue the article pointed out was that when legislators make a mistake in a bill, they can always go back and fix it. However, under the Voter Protection Act, an initiative that voters have put together is practically untouchable, making changes impossible.

A lot of education made its way into this week as well. For instance, the public affairs meeting this week talked initially about education budget priorities. One of the big topics was results-based funding for schools. So far, we've seen that pumping money into bad schools isn't really working. Instead, in Arizona, we've decided to fund schools so we can better them through the growth of good schools rather than that of bad ones. This funding also helps to accelerate the number of students going to good schools.

It's also a good teacher retention strategy. Research shows that teachers are more likely to stay at schools where they believe they can make a difference and improve education for their students. Even if the pay is relatively low, teachers tend to stay at low-poverty high-performing schools more than at well-funded average-or-worse-performing schools.

One way to judge which schools get more funding and which ones don't is through the current definition of a successful school. Though we have the A through F letter grades for a school and we're giving the most funding to "A" schools, people acknowledge that the grading scale (which uses AzMERIT test scores) is pretty outdated. However, currently, this is the most efficient measure of performance that we have and that is what determines how much funding a school gets, if at all.

So, anyways, like I said, interesting stuff! Or at least it was interesting to me...

But I hope you liked learning about it too! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. You're all amazing and I'll see you next week for another post!

Sources:

Fowler, Sheila Polk and Merilee. "Our Turn: Marijuana fight proves why Arizona needs ballot initiative reform." Azcentral. The Arizona Republic, 04 Apr. 2017. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.

Nearing the End

Week 8?!?! Already? How is this even real? Why? So little time! Merp.

In all seriousness though (sort of...kind of...eh, not really), how did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

For those of you unfamiliar with the LEGEND that is Dr. Seuss (for shame), he's the one who said that. Isn't he great? But really! I can't believe we're at Week 8 and I'll really have to face saying goodbye to my dearest internship and all you lovely people in only a couple of weeks!

But for now, I'll just tell you what I did this week.

I got to help another Chamber intern from ASU with a pretty big project this week. One of the employees at the Chamber works extensively with education and she asked us on Tuesday to gather information supporting Arizona's education system and with relevant statistics and ranking information. Every year, she releases a sort of flyer to businesses looking to move to Arizona or recruitment offices for businesses looking for a place to relocate or start up. For those new businesses, one big aspect factoring into where they will situate themselves is making sure they satisfy the needs of most of their employees. This includes a good place for their employees' children to go to school and generally be educated. So, this week, we worked on marketing Arizona so that it looks particularly appealing to these businesses looking to move here because one of the goals of the Chamber is to attract good business into the state.

My job was to mostly gather headlines about Arizona education that we could put on the flyer. For instance, I found a bunch of headlines like "Arizona high school graduation rate improvement among best in nation" or "AZ Ranks in Top Five Nationwide for Charter Schools" (GO BASIS!) or "AZ WEEK: Excellence in Classroom Amid Challenges." Besides that, I looked for statistics that backed up the headlines and all the research as well. For instance (and most of these are 2015 statistics since the 2016 ones aren't out yet), Arizona had 77.4% of its public high school students graduating on time, with Santa Cruz County having the highest graduation rate at 88.4% in the state. Moreover, Arizona has seen a lot of improvement, a trend the rest of the nation mirrors as well. The high school graduation rate for Arizona rose from 75.1% in 2013 to 77.4% in 2015 alone. So yay!

Source: mapazdashboard.arizona.edu

Besides high schools, I looked at the Maricopa County community colleges for good information too. For the MCC, I found headlines such as "SIX MARICOPA COMMUNITY COLLEGES NAMED AMONG TOP IN THE NATION" and "Community colleges see rise in 6-year graduation rate." In terms of statistics I found, MCC saw a 37% increase in student transfers from the community colleges to Arizona public universities. This demonstrated a trend of improvement, success, and advancement in higher education at Arizona's community colleges.

Besides all the fun research work I did this week, I also got to act like an adult (for once)! Ignore the stuff in the parentheses. That's just my brain being mean to me. Another awesome Chamber person asked me to call the DC congressional offices of ten different members of Congress to ask them the names of their environmental issues legislative assistants. I was way more excited than I should have been about this as I eagerly called each of them and proudly said "HI! (Imagine a hyper-excited, possibly screechy voice) this is Shreya calling from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce" and I am doing important adult things! It was really great.

Ahem. Moving on.

I haven't gotten feedback on my surveys from my faculty adviser yet, but once that happens, my surveys will be getting out to their target audiences! Much fun! When I made the surveys, I really concentrated on making sure I sounded as objective as possible in wording the questions and the stories I will present to the participants so I don't influence their responses in any way. I also did my best to find stories on varied topics that have a mix of both negatively and positively viewed work that lobbyists have done so that I can really see what people think of lobbying from a truly objective perspective. Hopefully, I can find some interesting information to share with you guys. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but there isn't a lot of research about societal perceptions surrounding lobbying (other than that they're pretty bad), so the surveys I'm conducting will be one of the first original pieces of research in that area. Yay student contributions!

Thank you again for staying with me until this point and reading all my posts! I will see you guys again next week! Have an awesome, fun-filled weekend! And don't hurt yourself (fall) walking down the stairs. Seriously. You don't want that to happen. It's not pretty.

Reading! Learning! Fun!

Hello! I hope you all had a wonderful week.

This week was pretty interesting for me. I got the chance to read through a bunch of articles on topics that are important to the Chamber. And I took notes on them so I can share them with you! Fun! No, really, it is fun. I'm not being sarcastic or anything. Accept that it is fun!

All right, so, one area that's very important to the Chamber is education. Governor Doug Ducey has always supported the idea of rewarding high-performing schools and the Chamber agrees with this initiative. One article I read concerned the governor's budget plan for fiscal 2018. Extra money from last year's Proposition 123 added to his budget and increased it to $9.8 billion. One interesting aspect of the budget that has garnered both support and criticism is its slow phase-in. Many of the changes the budget contends occur at a slow enough rate that the full impact of the budget is diluted over the next few years.

One specific area that I read about in an article this week discussed how the Governor's Office has rolled out a program that will allow K-12 district schools and charter schools to apply for and subsequently receive extra funds. Called the Public School Credit Enhancement Program, it helps these schools "get lower interest rates on construction projects to expand successful schools or build new ones" (Rau). The application process will apparently rely heavily on how financially stable these schools are.

In the article I read, the writer asserted that this program will benefit charter schools the most. Moreover, the lower interest rate could help schools expand the existing school, build a new school, expand other school programs, and so on.

Another area that's important to the Chamber is NAFTA. An article I read this week discussed how updating NAFTA would be a good option that would benefit Canada, Mexico, and the United States since it would enhance North America's competitiveness in the global market through an increased focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. One of the updates the article proposed was increased protection of intellectual property, which has been a problem we've had to tackle as technology has advanced. Going with this advancement in technology, the article identified that some areas that would benefit from a NAFTA revision would be agriculture and energy. The writer also warned against altering NAFTA while also imposing tariffs on Mexico since doing that could affect Canada negatively too.

Anyways, that's pretty much what I did/learned about this week. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll get to them in the comments! Thanks for reading and have an awesome weekend! I'll see you all next week for another post.

Sources:

Hansen, Ronald J., Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, and Mary Jo Pitzl. "Arizona budget: Gov. Doug Ducey pitches small steps toward big education goals." Azcentral. The Arizona Republic, 13 Jan. 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.

Martinez, Arturo, and Carol Guensburg. "SXSW Panelists: Updating NAFTA Could Aid All 3 Signatories." VOA. VOA, 15 Mar. 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.

Rau, Alia Beard. "Gov. Doug Ducey releases plan to shrink wait lists at high-performing schools." Azcentral. The Arizona Republic, 18 Mar. 2017. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.

I Was Productive

Hello again! I remember saying that I would put up funny jokes (or just something entertaining) at the beginning of my posts from now on, so here goes:

I know I've had too many memes of this cat, but I just can't get enough of him! Nice grumpy cat.

Anyways, like I said, I was pretty productive this week, if I do say so myself. I updated some lists for the Chamber again on Tuesday. It was more exciting than usual because my computer spontaneously shut down three times when I was updating all those lists/groups/rosters/etc. Oh, did I say exciting? I meant annoying. Silly computer.

Apart from that, a super awesome Chamber person asked me to gather video clips about voter fraud and paid petitioning this week. It was pretty cool learning a bunch of information about voting and initiative reform doing this. Courtesy of Google, "an initiative (also known as a popular or citizens' initiative) is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can force a public vote." I think I've mentioned this before, but voter initiative reform has been a popular topic in Arizona, what with some voter fraud we've been seeing recently.

I believe the Chamber discussed some bills involved with preventing voter fraud at recent meetings as well. One such bill that's been proposed makes major changes with how signatures are collected for initiatives so that voter fraud can be prevented and signatures are less likely to be challenged (since some of the problem lies in voters including fake signatures in their petitions). Another bill that's been proposed is one that ensures that signatures are collected from each legislative district instead of statewide. This was proposed in an effort to prevent voters from outside the state from petitioning in Arizona.

In regards to my research, I actually managed to finish my surveys! Yay! And even while I was sick? I deserve a brownie or multicolored balloons or something. I just need to send them to my faculty adviser for a read-through to make sure I didn't mess anything up and then I can distribute them to my sample population. I have two surveys currently: one for you, the amazing public, which I will try to distribute to as many people as possible, and one for lobbyists and elected officials. It's going to be interesting to see what the results of the survey are. Once I publish the survey intended for the general public, I'll include it in a post next week so you all can take it too. I'm very excited.

Anyways, I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see you next week!