Let me preface this with the fact that I’m switching gears temporarily. A side project I have been working on is an escort program – essentially a revival of gator walk – that involves groups walking around campus at night to escort students to vehicles, dorms, libraries, etc. It would be a nonprofit project and is solely focused on increasing campus safety. Also, the three people below could really take any of the spots, since they all have experience in those areas (though in different ways).
1) Sargent Tim Peck – UFPD
Supplier – Sgt. Peck is an officer with UFPD, and as such he has extensive knowledge regarding the issue I’m tackling – an unsafe campus.
I found Sgt. Peck simply by asking around UFPD. He is the officer that handles most student affairs directly, so I was pointed in his direction when I started asking UFPD who I should talk to about a new campus safety program. I met him on campus at the UFPD admin building.
Since Sgt. Peck is a UFPD officer – and I’m a student working on a safety program – I think that the dynamic is very different than what many of my peers had to deal with. He was extremely helpful and there wasn’t really any expectation of something in return. I do think the biggest reward for him is that the campus would be safer and his job would hopefully be easier.
*Applies to all* All of these people have the same impact on my network. It’s limited in scope to UF, but they are as close as I can get to major authority figures in this field. They also have valuable experience after working at UF for dozens of years between them, so I have virtually a book into the past that I can use to reference how other programs were started, why they failed, etc.
2) Jeremiah Mcinnis – SNAP Coordinator
Domain Expert – Jeremiah works for UF in Parking and Transportation as the SNAP coordinator. He supervises the program and it the person UFPD handed SNAP off to about three years ago when they gave it to TAPS. He has extensive knowledge about the intricacies of student transportation at night.
After speaking with Sgt. Peck, he recommended that I also speak with SNAP to get more statistics about students about moving around at night. Once I was at TAPS, I ended up waiting about two hours before I managed to find someone that could point me in the right direction. After I found out Jeremiah was indisposed for the day, I got his email and set a meeting the next week.
Similar to Sgt. Peck, Jeremiah works for UF and is content helping me in any way he can if it means that campus will be a safer place.
3) Victor Harrell – UF Safety & Security
Market Expert – Victor works closely with housing to ensure security for students living on campus. He works closely with Sgt. Peck and is familiar with all the issues students have in terms of safety and knows potential threats, especially at night. He has even been a supervisor when staff were needed to provide escorts in certain parts of campus at night.
During my second meeting with Sgt. Peck, Victor walked in to speak with a few of the UFPD officers – Sgt. Peck included. Peck informed Victor of the program that I was working on and he was immediately interested in giving helpful advice on the program.
Much like the others, Victor provided advice with no expectation that he would receive anything in return, even going so far as to tell us we should reach out to him again for a more in depth meeting as he was only there for 15 minutes.
Like I mentioned before, this network is relatively limited to UF. All of these people virtually live for UF, and as such they aren’t the best for any projects outside of Gainesville. However, they did teach me the value of knowing just one important person in a field. Because it was through one person that I found the others, and it seems that I wouldn’t have even been able to get the program rolling if I didn’t have help from at least two of the three people above. From now on, one of my largest focuses in networking will be to find a person that is at the top in their industry, and have them introduce me to others. They already went through the effort to determine who is and isn’t important/useful, it makes sense to capitalize on that and target those people as nexuses in my future networks.
When I first read "escort service" for the University I was very enthusiastic until I read on and realized I was thinking of something else entirely. That said, this still sounds like a worthy side-project. UF's campus is beautiful at night but I always did have a lingering feeling of knowing that a crime was probably being committed somewhere on campus. This service would hopefully nullify that feeling.
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