While most Houghton students and faculty spent October break visiting family, studying, or traveling, a group of 18 students, faculty, staff and alumni traveled to Hilton Head, South Carolina, for the GolfWeek Amateur Golf Tour’s National Championships. Faculty, staff and alumni in attendance were Professor Kenneth Bates, Vocational Opportunities and Career Advising (VOCA) Director Kim Pool, and Houghton alumna Carmen McKnell. The trip was not one for pleasure as the students interned for the tournament organizers throughout their stay.
The students’ main objective was to gather information on the golfers competing in the tournament. They garnered demographic data and surveyed the golfers’ spending habits while at the tournament. Over 900 athletes participated in the tournament, competing on eight different courses. The economic impact of such a large event will be analyzed by Professor Wei Hu’s Data Science 1 class, and the findings will be presented to the tournament organizers.
“The days were long for the students,” Pool stated. “They had to be on the courses before dawn and before the golfers started to arrive. Students were responsible for golfer check-in, marshalling the course to make sure the golfers were keeping the appropriate pace of play, and recording all players’ scores at the end of the day. After the golfers finished playing each day our students would survey them by using clipboard surveys. The event organizers also plan to send out the survey via email to all of the golfers.”
Houghton students collaborated with students from the University of Tennessee Martin (UTM) as well as York College in Pennsylvania. Senior Matt Bissett valued this cooperation saying, “I definitely believe that this trip was beneficial to me professionally. This trip was all about creating some connections…There were multiple golfers who gave me their business cards…but I also made so many connections with my peers, especially the UTM students…maybe someday in the future we will be able to help each other out in the job market.”
This “experiential learning opportunity” as Pool calls it was coordinated by Pool and the VOCA staff to help students apply classroom learning to situations they will encounter later on, helping “students prepare for careers by allowing them to apply classroom learning and practice their skills.” Pool added that plans are in the making for a similar learning experience in Daytona, Florida for NASCAR week.
Pool, Bates, as well as participating students Bissett and Bjorn Webb (’18) each held different perspectives on what the GolfWeek trip accomplished. Bates viewed the experiential learning trip as one aspect of a whole education, saying “One event can’t really prepare someone for (his/her) career, but multiple events go a long way in rounding out the important equipping task to which Houghton is committed.” Bissett concurred, noting, “as much as I love my classes and my professors…experiences like this are ones that you can’t teach in a classroom, and I believe that is true of most jobs.”
Webb felt the experience benefitted him professionally, not just for the hands on learning, but also for its resume value. He said, “I was able to make connections and relationships with people in many fields that will help me as I move forward with my career… This opportunity will also look great on resumés in the future. To be able to tell someone that you have actually taken part in a real life study [applying] data science is very beneficial in your professional career.” Pool, whose job is partly to help undergraduates at Houghton build resumes, agreed with Webb when she stated, “These experiences allow students to make linkages between classroom learning and the real world. They also provide them with concrete experience that can be highlighted on a resume and in interviews with prospective employers.”
The Data Science 1 class expects to finish their analysis of the data collected at GolfWeek in Hilton Head SC by the end of their semester, having gone from raw data to polished, concrete findings of the economic impact the golf tournament had on the local economy on Hilton Head and nearby Savannah, Georgia. Pool expects promotional videos advertising this and upcoming experiential learning trips as well as the new Data Science major to appear on Houghton College’s website in the near future.