Although an achieved live performance pianist, rising Penn sophomore Teresa Xie isn’t always playing the ivories at the Settlement Music School for the duration of her summertime internship, however as an alternative getting to know approximately advertising and marketing song for the Philadelphia nonprofit.
“I desired to get returned into tune and I desired to look if advertising would be truly what I concept it would be,” Xie, from Chicago, says. “I think it’s cool to be working in a nonprofit. A settlement isn’t a big employer, so I get to actually be on the advertising and marketing crew. I suppose the revel in has certainly helped me see the nitty gritty side of advertising and marketing, I’ve found out I’m maximum fascinated branding and improvement, now not a lot making brochures.”
Xie, a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, is thinking about the mixed philosophy, politics, and economics fundamental with minors in client psychology of cinema research. Also a journalist and photographer, she was offered the internship thru the [email protected] software, which offers a stipend.
Photography and video initiatives to showcase students and instructors on the college at the internet site are a huge part of her work during the three-day-a-week internship. She took images on the annual assembly of the board of administrators and has been helping on video shoots at locations around Philadelphia. Although usually operating with the marketing group, this month she can additionally help the fundraising group.
“My favorite a part of my work is absolutely going around and interviewing people and putting in cameras due to the fact I love photography and media and I hate sitting down,” she says. “I like going to specific locations in Philly and meeting new humans. It’s a completely enticing enjoy.”
She also conducts studies for advertising in external media retailers, comparing print and online alternatives, to promote the college’s open homes, performances, and lessons. She has additionally been updating website content, which includes teacher biographies.
The faculty, founded in 1908, offers to school in tune, dance, and the innovative arts. It is one of the oldest and biggest community faculties of the arts in the kingdom, with greater than two hundred instructors in six branches serving greater than 5,000 students a yr. “I suppose it’s miles a certainly welcoming, circle of relatives-oriented area for college kids to get engaged in song after faculty from a young age,” Xie says.
Highlights
One of the most interesting video initiatives she has labored on this summer season became a profile of a trainer who performs the vibraphone, she says. The video is an educational on a way to improvise and get the tune on the web page. “That became cool. We went to his house and set up lights and cameras,” says Xie. “It’s a fun manner to promote the school’s jazz classes.”
She additionally controlled two video shoots of rising university freshman who have been students at Settlement about their reports with a nearby collaborative and how that has shaped their musical careers.
Another shoot she liked become for Settlement’s new Rhythm ‘n Brews program for adults who want to learn to play drums.
Office view
The marketing department is currently installed in the school’s track library. “I see outside a window into the Settlement car parking zone on one side, and rows and rows of tune on the other,” Xie says.
Impressions made
Megan Looby, the school’s director of advertising and public relations, says Xie has been “tremendous” to work with.
“In communications, we’re just a -person team, so it’s been first-rate to have her to brainstorm ideas and conduct marketplace studies tasks,” Looby says. “She turned into appealing to us within the interview method because she is inquisitive about so a number of the matters we do right here, consisting of images, video, writing, advertising, the creative aspect.”
Penn connection
Xie performed the piano, beginning at five years old and on thru high faculty, peaking her junior 12 months while she performed in Carnegie Hall after winning the American Protégé international opposition. Focusing on a classical repertoire, she additionally achieved with a chamber institution.
“Since going to university, I actually have no longer been capable of exercise or play so busy with different things,” she says. “Music is in my existence, but in a special manner.”
At Penn, she is a tune beat reporter for thirty-fourth Street Magazine, which is a part of the scholar-run Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper, writing articles every week, which includes album opinions and profiles of recent artists.
And she teaches as a part of the student-run After School Arts at Penn program thru the Platt Student Performing Arts House. Once per week throughout the faculty year she volunteers to educate Philadelphia public college simple students on the piano.
“I actually cherished it. I liked that the youngsters were excited to play each week,” she says. “Even though quite a few them didn’t have the means to exercise, I ought to see them enhancing. The enthusiasm that children showed to do track after college was great.”
Her interest in marketing changed into sparked on a field journey to Condé Nast and Estée Lauder with the MUSE Penn advertising and marketing club. “I virtually cherished being at the one’s agencies and seeing what they produce,” she says.
She also is a photographer for The Walk, Penn’s student-run editorial style mag. And she is the marketing director of the educational affairs department of the International Affairs Association.
Outside the internship
Living with pals in a sublet close to Penn, Xie has been exploring the metropolis’s neighborhoods and taking bartending lessons. “I desired to take benefit of that and cross into customer service in restaurant bartending enterprise,” she says. “I think getting out and assembly human beings is right to do.”
