Sarah Newman

Worked as a seasonal employee in the wholesale department, providing care to the plants in stock, and customer support to landscaping professionals and restoration project managers. Additionally, I applied my organizational and data management skills to establish a dataset of current stock, to improve crop planning, and to provide additional information on inventory losses.

• Contributed innovative ideas and solutions to enhance team performance and outcomes.
• Worked effectively in a team to ensure all daily plant care was completed.
• Approached customers and engaged in conversation through use of effective interpersonal and people skills.

Assisted a PhD student in the maintenance of three land parcels being used for ecological restoration research, and performed data collection and entry.

• Maintaining experimental controls (selective weeding based on experimental design).
• Maintaining experiment grounds (using an electric string trimmer or mower when appropriate).
• Collected and entered soil moisture data into Excel.
• Assisted in the collection of plant community data using USDA codes.

Assisted conservation and evolution research, funded by USFW, on two endangered vernal pool species (Lasthenia burkei and Lasthenia conjugens).

• Set up, calibrated, and maintained laboratory and field research equipment.
• Maintained inventory counts of seed materials to assist in experimental planning.
• Planted and maintained several greenhouse refresher populations to enable future experimentation.
• Assisted in population estimates of target species in the field to locate future parcels for study.
• Created and maintained datasets for multiple seasons of data collection.
• Assisted in the implementation and monitoring of several experiments.
• Promoted to a supervisor role, overseeing other undergraduates' data collection to ensure data quality.

• Assisted with check-in and check-out procedures for guests.
• Answered phones, responded to inquiries, and took messages.
• Scheduled reservations for groups and special events.
• Collaborated with colleagues to ensure smooth operations of front desk area.
• Answered guest inquiries, recommending shopping, dining or entertainment.

Assisted customers with returns, exchanges, refunds, and other transactions at the front register and the photo department. Received recognition from district-level management for the exemplary customer service I provided (indicated by the quantity of customer reviews I received).