Kim James 
Although a carried out live performance pianist, growing Penn sophomore Teresa Xie isn’t always gambling the ivories on the Settlement Music School in the course of her summer internship, but alternatively learning approximately advertising and marketing track for the Philadelphia nonprofit.
“I wanted to get again into the track, and I desired to look if advertising might be certainly what I thought it’d be,” Xie, from Chicago, says. “I think it’s cool to be operating in a nonprofit. The settlement isn’t a huge business enterprise, so I certainly get to be on the advertising team. I think the enjoy has definitely helped me see the nitty-gritty aspect of advertising; I’ve found out I’m most fascinated branding and improvement, now not a lot making brochures.”
Xie, a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, is thinking about the mixed philosophy, politics, and economics foremost with minors in patron psychology or cinema research. Also, a journalist and photographer, she changed into awarded the internship through the RealArts@Penn software, which offers a stipend.
Photography and video projects to show off college students and instructors on the college at the internet site are a massive part of her work at some stage in the three-day-a-week internship. She took pictures at the annual meeting of the board of administrators and assisted in video shoots at locations around Philadelphia. Although working with the advertising crew this month, she can additionally assist the fundraising group.
“My favored part of my paintings is actually going round and interviewing humans and putting in cameras due to the fact I love pictures and media, and I hate sitting down,” she says. “I like going to extraordinary locations in Philly and meeting new humans. It’s a beautiful experience.”
She additionally researches advertising in external media outlets, comparing print and online alternatives to sell the faculty’s open homes, performances, and training. She has additionally been updating website content material, along with teacher biographies.
The school, based in 1908, provides training in music, dance, and the creative arts. It is one of the oldest and biggest community colleges of the state, with more than 200 instructors in six branches serving more than five 000 college students a year. “I assume it is a genuinely welcoming, family-oriented area for college kids to get engaged in track after college from a younger age,” Xie says.
Highlights
One of the maximum thrilling video projects she has worked in this summer becomes a teacher profile who performs the vibraphone, she says. The video is an instructional on the way to improvise and get the track at the page. “That was cool. We went to his house and set up lights and cameras,” says Xie. “It’s a fun manner to promote the faculty’s jazz lessons.” She additionally controlled two video shoots of a rising college freshman who have been students at Settlement about their stories with a local collaborative and how that has shaped their musical careers. Another shoot she preferred changed into Settlement’s new Rhythm and Brews program for adults who need to learn to play drums.
Office view
The advertising department is presently set up in the school’s tune library. “I see outdoor a window into the Settlement car parking zone on one side, and rows and rows of the track on the other,” Xie says.
Impressions made
Megan Looby, the school’s director of advertising and marketing and public family members, says Xie has been “amazing” to paintings with. “In communications, we’re just a two-individual group, so it’s been outstanding to have her brainstorm thoughts and conduct market research tasks,” Looby says. “She turned into appealing to us inside the interview method due to the fact she is interested in so many of the matters we do right here, inclusive of photography, video, writing, advertising and marketing, the creative side.”
Penn connection
Xie played the piano, beginning at 5 years vintage and on thru high college, peaking her junior 12 months whilst she played in Carnegie Hall after winning the American Protégé global competition. Focusing on a classical repertoire, she also finished with a chamber group. “Since going to college, I have not been capable of exercise or play so busy with other things,” she says. “Music is in my lifestyle, but in a distinctive manner.”
At Penn, she is a music beat reporter for thirty-fourth Street Magazine, part of the scholar-run Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper, writing articles a week, including album critiques and profiles of recent artists. And she teaches as part of the pupil-run After School Arts at Penn software thru the Platt Student Performing Arts House. Once per week during the school year, she volunteers to instruct Philadelphia public school elementary students at the piano.
“I genuinely loved it. I preferred that the children had been excited to play each week,” she says. “Even even though a lot of them didn’t have the approach to practice, I may want to see them enhancing. The enthusiasm that youngsters confirmed to do tune after faculty was amazing.” Her interest in marketing was sparked on a subject journey to Condé Nast and Estée Lauder with the MUSE Penn advertising membership. “I without a doubt loved being at the one’s agencies and seeing what they produce,” she says. She also is a photographer for The Walk, Penn’s pupil-run editorial fashion magazine. And she is the advertising director of the academic affairs department of the International Affairs Association.
Outside the internship
Living with pals in a sublet close to Penn, Xie explored the metropolis’s neighborhoods and took bartending training. “I wanted to take benefit of that and cross into customer service in the restaurant bartending industry,” she says. “I assume getting out and meeting people is right to do.”
Looking ahead
Xie hopes to apply what she is studying, approximately advertising and marketing, to her hobbies. “I want to discover extra internships and jobs that should do with my principal, politics, social change, and social activism,” she says. “I want to experience like I’m making an effect.”
