Tiger Tales is a project that focuses on telling the stories of interesting people, businesses and clubs within the Clemson community. Each Pearce Intern was responsible for interviewing and telling the story of a person of their choosing in the Clemson area. In Fall 2022, Tiger Tales posted 13 stories on the Instagram page (@cutigertales) and 16 stories in Spring 2023. Many interns chose Clemson University students who are doing great things, shedding light on all the amazing things happening on campus. Giving every intern an opportunity to write a story for Tiger Tales allowed for the most variety of pieces the project has had. To wrap up the Fall semester, the project team highlighted everyone who wrote a piece through an Instagram Reel called “The Students Behind the Stories” where everyone described their experience on the project in one word.

Main Street Walhalla is a project that partners with the Main Street program in Walhalla, South Carolina. Main Street programs focus on the revitalization of small towns all over the country and have significantly helped Walhalla grow in the past few years. In Fall 2022, a team of three interns worked together to tell the stories of some small businesses in the area. The interns worked alongside the Main Street program director, taking numerous trips to the small town to meet with local businesses and gain an appreciation for Walhalla. The interns were responsible for reaching out to a few of the local businesses, setting up an interview time and then writing the business owner’s personal story. These stories allow community members to make connections with the owners in their small town, increasing the sense of community. In Spring 2023, interns also helped create a monthly newsletter for the organization to share with its members and attended several community events.

In the 2022-2023 academic year, Pearce Interns helped the three second-grade classes at Central Academy of the Arts publish a book. Each class wrote about their favorite animals, and all students wrote a short story about the topic and drew a picture to go along with their story. Interns visited each class three times to assist the students in the writing process. Interns then compiled the stories and pictures and made them into a physical book using Adobe InDesign. Following the completion of the book, the interns at the Pearce Center also hosted a launch party for the second-grade students to celebrate the first-time authors. The goal of this project is to promote summer literacy by making the students excited to read over their vacation.

In the Habitat for Humanity project, interns worked directly with a client from the Habitat for Humanity Pickens County and focused on storytelling and recovering the organization’s online and social media presence. Team members met weekly with the client to establish and manage attainable deadlines for deliverables. Interns attended and/or volunteered at major off-site events hosted by the organization, such as the annual Homecoming build on Bowman Field, local partnership builds and family home dedications. Interns focused on conducting interviews with the organizations’ key figures and volunteers, writing and editing stories for their monthly newsletter and developing digital graphics for various media, including Instagram, Facebook and e-blasts.

Emerson Rose Heart Foundation works to increase awareness of congenital heart defects and support families with children affected by CHD. The Pearce Interns worked with the executive director and communications director to help manage social media, create promotional materials for events and create a seasonal newsletter for beneficiaries and donors. In Fall 2022, interns created content calendars aimed to achieve the organization’s goals of reaching more CHD families. The end of the fundraising campaign focused on reaching supporters to hit a $50,000 target, which was exceeded during the campaign. The intern team created more than 55 social media posts across three platforms over the course of the semester. Emerson Rose hosted connect events and a golf tournament in the fall, which interns attended to help plan and run the events. Their social media efforts continued into the Spring semester and included assisting the organization with their large Heart Month campaign in February.

For the Fall 2022 semester, interns on the UPIC project team worked on the creation of the yearly UPIC magazine. The interns met with the client at the beginning of the semester to discuss expectations. The client sent a list of potential UPIC mentors, interns and story ideas that the interns used to collect information and schedule interviews. The interns conducted the interviews with the main goal of telling the story of the individual’s experience as a UPIC intern or mentor. The interns also covered events that could be relevant to UPIC, like the Student Wellbeing Panel. The design lead intern used InDesign to create page designs for the magazine pages and created multiple drafts for the title page as requested by the client. In Spring 2023, the design team worked with the UPIC staff to complete the layout of the magazine and prepare it for publication.

For the 2022-2023 academic year, the interns were tasked with raising awareness for BRIEF, a newly-founded nonprofit organization that provides children living in poverty in the Upstate with technology skills. The campaign’s goal was to increase brand awareness to boost donations in the future. To create more attention, the interns created graphics to post on multiple social media platforms, ranging from volunteer spotlights to stories of the students. Some of the interns’ posts led to direct donations! Interns also helped the organization start a monthly newsletter to send to potential donors. Additionally, the interns created donation packets for BRIEF to distribute and better showcase the direct impact of donations. Throughout the campaign, the interns increased the number of accounts reached by 210 percent and increased BRIEF’s familiarity in the region.

English Unbound is the newsletter for the Department of English at Clemson University. The editors collaborated to brainstorm ideas for articles and graphics related to the department. They primarily wrote articles to spotlight interesting students and faculty within the department. Over the course of both semesters, the English Unbound team interviewed and wrote articles about professors, administrators, graduate students and student organizations to highlight their projects and accomplishments. In addition to publishing articles, English Unbound also designed graphics to add useful and fun visual elements. These graphics included departmental course descriptions for the upcoming semester, helpful tips from students, seasonal reading recommendations and author spotlights. Interns published five issues of English Unbound during the 2022-2023 year.