As my first internship approaches its end I feel a profound sense of accomplishment. Over the course of the past 10 weeks or so I have successfully managed to improve several key aspects of TCEDC. First and foremost I have taken the computers from slow and riddled with malware, adware, and other problems to being clean and much faster machines. This was the easy part of my job due to my Information Technology background but it was definitely vital work to improve the work flow for everyone in the office. When I started this internship I was told that working on the computers was a top priority and I believe that I handled it very well and I am quite pleased to call this endeavor successful.
Another large (and still ongoing) process was to create and/or improve and replace all of the documents and signs/notices associated with the Taos Food Center. This was a trickier process due to the fact that there are new regulations that just went into effect for the Taos Food Center. These newer regulations are called Food Safety Modernization act (FSMA) regulations. FSMA went into effect back in 2011 but in 2017 the regulations were changed and updated again. This meant that I (and others in the office) had to learn all the new regulations, make notices and documents concerning them, and make sure that the Taos Food Center tenants knew and followed the rules. I also had to update a few documents that were, shall I say, clumsily written. Due to my background in working in Microsoft Office Word and Excel I made easy work of these documents. The documents included: a new scheduling document, new cleaning logs, new pest control documents, a master list of everyone who has ever attended the FSOP classes, two floor plans of the Taos Food Center, one with all of the equipment labeled and one where the labels were replaced with numbers and a legend, and more.
One of the more challenging projects, which is still ongoing, is the filing of all of TCEDC’s old documents, grant proposals, FSOP class registries, and more. We received a donation of 4 large filing cabinets and we have been slowly but surely filling them.
I greatly enjoyed working for Pati and Terrie, I couldn’t ask for a better team of supervisors. They’ve also enjoyed having me here, so much so that we have decided to start a second internship immediately after this first one. My main project for this second internship will be trying to finish all the filing that needs to be done.
