Quad Projects // Update 11.01

Pictured above, the Venetucci Farm team prepares for their midpoint presentation to both the Farm and the Pikes Peak Community Foundation.

Here are some updates on a few of our projects:

Last week, our City and County team working on improving access to social services developed and fleshed out a list of tangible and obtainable solutions. They are currently working on trimming those ideas down and adding basic analysis to determine which ideas are best practices as well as great fits for the barriers they are seeing with accessing social services in our community. They will have their first draft of the report to the city and county by November 8^th. We are excited to see what they discover!

The Venetucci team executed a midpoint semester presentation given the week of October 15th and was met with positive feedback and a more robust understanding of what the farm needed to move forward, incorporating more “dream big” potentials for the farm into their already well thought out plan. The team is in their fall semester of the year-long project and is honing in on the work done over the summer while also adding new ideas to pass along to the team that takes over the project this coming spring. Thomas Hazelwood our Air Force cadet (you can check out his bio here) came up with new ideas that included looking at Venetucci through a new lens as a destination with a vineyard and a winery/restaurant on site. The team also celebrated the birthday of one of their teammates, Jeremy, by dining on pizza and celebrating! Our teams always find a way to have a healthy mix of work, humor, and sincere revelry in their meetings. It is always a good, productive and enjoyable time. You can check out the current ideas our team has discovered and chime in your thoughts over at our Venetucci Farm Page!

The Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) team spent their time developing a plan for their presentation to CSU members this past Wednesday, October 17th. They originally created 40 slides to share but reevaluated their process and reduced their presentation to the 10 most impactful ones; saving the extra details and additional data as a backup in case those in attendance asked further questions. During their presentation, they had the opportunity to record themselves so they could receive feedback from their mentor on how to improve on their delivery skills which is one of the invaluable perks our teams receive from our amazing faculty advisors. CSU also provided feedback and answered questions the team had on moving forward as well as solidifying the direction of the project. CSU members were impressed that the team was well prepared, delivering a presentation with ideas that were both informative as well as innovative. The CSU team is continually conducting research with a focus on natural, geothermal, and biomass resources as well as evaluating legislation and other business moves that CSU could pursue to reach their objective for this project.