February 17, 2016

Dear Justin,
Over the past three years, I have learned that any internship connected with the Redhawk Experience will
evolve in unexpected ways and that it will be critical to have in place leadership that is adaptive and
resourceful. This year was no different, and you brought creative, consistent follow-through in both the
visioning and implementation of your internship projects.
You accomplished something huge for the university: the first student engagement mobile app, a tool that
allowed us to communicate a host of opportunities to new and returning students. I say without hyperbole
that we would not have been ready to launch the app in September 2015 without your leadership, attention
to detail, and good relationship-building with our partners at OOHLALA and on campus. Your project
management skills were in full bloom as you made sure university and vendor partners communicated
effectively.
Throughout your internship, I have been impressed by your reflectiveness, growing confidence, and steady
presence. Implementing the app required balancing your self-described inclination to control all aspects of
a project (do I ever resonate with that!) with the challenges and opportunities of coordinating a host of
moving parts and collaborators. I hope you understand and are able to describe to potential employers the
significance of what you have accomplished in a very short amount of time.
You exemplified flexibility, initiative, consistency, and vision throughout your internship, adapting midcourse when we learned about the opportunity to implement a mobile app. Yet even when we had this
bright and shiny tool in front of us, you also held on to the vision for the Redhawk Experience to engage
students as agents in charting their pathways through the university. I appreciate that you understand the
potential for the Redhawk Experience to influence students sense of place at SU and how they discern their
purpose. You helped both the division and OLL vision creatively about the potential of the app to engage
students with the fullness of the Redhawk Experience, and I look forward to implementing your ideas over
the next year, particularly as we introduce the Org Sync platform. Your insights have helped to make
possible a deeper understanding of what the Redhawk Experience can and should be.
As your internship has shifted into an independent study exploring students use of technology, I am
pleased that we have had the opportunity to continue to work together. You are bringing new awareness to
the division, grounded in evolving student development theory, to inform our decision-making and
practices in an arena that requires responsive leadership.
I am so pleased that you initiated our work together to enliven the Seattle University student experience,
and I very much look forward to staying connected as your journey continues.
Sincerely,
Monica L. Nixon, Ed.D.
Assistant Vice President for Student Development
ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR STUDENT DEVELOPMENT
901 12th Avenue P.O. Box 222000 Seattle WA 98122-1090 www.seattleu.edu Tel.: (206) 296-6066