Asher Skelton is a sophomore majoring in Parks, Recreation, Sport and Tourism (PRST) with a dual emphasis in sport management and recreation administration. Although he has plans to work in athletics in the future, his goal this summer is to focus on communicating his CAFNR pride.
“I really like working on my communication skills, whether it’s over the phone, through email or just verbally,” Skelton said.
Skelton is an intern in CAFNR’s Office of Academic Programs. He helps schedule advising appointments for current and incoming students and is also part of divisional visits when students attend Summer Welcome.
“I’m helping share my experiences as a Mizzou student and what residential life looks like, what being involved on campus looks like,” he said.
With goals of becoming a high school or college athletic director, Skelton knows his internship experience will help him gain the skills to be successful in his future career.
“A lot of athletic directing is emails and phone calls,” he said. “I think being able to excel at the basics is super important.”
The pursuit of a career in athletics began when Skelton was in high school in Golden City, Missouri.
“I’m from a super small school district, so it was kind of all hands on deck,” he said. “Our athletic director needed extra help with recording stats and watching film, and I ended up helping out all four years of high school.”
Skelton believes CAFNR is the perfect fit for him because it combines his career path with his agricultural roots.
“I really liked that PRST was in CAFNR because I was involved in FFA a lot through high school,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to still be in touch with my agriculture side.”
On the other hand, one of Skelton’s biggest goals during his time at Mizzou is to help spread awareness of how diverse CAFNR’s programs and opportunities are.
“I think a lot of people believe in this stigma around CAFNR that it’s all agriculture, and I really want to try to break that,” he said.
One way Skelton is trying to accomplish this is through some of his internship responsibilities. He helps educate incoming students about CAFNR’s R.I.S.E. (Research, International, Service Learning and Experiential Learning) initiative.
“When we talk about R.I.S.E. experiences in our divisional visits, we talk about how most students gain at least two of the four experiences,” he said. “If you just go to class, you’ll typically get at least two of them.”
Skelton said getting involved on campus has come easily to him because of how CAFNR encourages its students to branch out.
“CAFNR is like a marketplace,” Skelton said. “There are so many clubs and organizations that are marketing to you all the time, so it was really easy to get involved and it’s not stressful either.”
Looking ahead, Skelton hopes to use what he learns during his internship to pursue his goals. He aims to become more involved in the sport management program while continuing to show the Mizzou community everything CAFNR has to offer.
“I just really want to make an impact,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be huge, but I’d like people to remember me at Mizzou.”