A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE HOGUEY’S CLAWSET Where students perfect marketplace skills

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A Sneak Peek Inside Hoguey’s Clawset

Where students perfect their marketplace skills

By Rachel Heston-Davis

Need a customer service rep who exudes calm while piecing together a solution to a problem? Marissa can do that!

Need an adaptable employee who pivots when obstacles appear? Christina can do that!

Need more efficient organization? Kimberly can do that!

Marissa Gomez ’22, Christina Hardin ’21, and Kimberly French ’20 learned these and other timeless skills while employed at the Panther Clawset. A storefront and print shop, the Panther Clawset sits next to Jo’s Java in the Dietzman Center. The store sells University clothes, gifts, and collectibles. The print shop takes custom apparel orders. The Clawset currently employs seven student workers and serves as an incubator for valuable marketplace skills, like empathy, communication, critical analysis, and problem solving. Students who assist with new apparel development even practice creative design.

Manager Allen Farthing ’87 sees the Clawset’s student workers as a win-win solution. Students need experience putting their smarts into action on a job site. The Clawset needs manpower to grow its business. Farthing looks for applicants who will treat the enterprise like their own.

“This is a real business,” he tells them. “There are real deadlines, real customers, and real dollars being counted.” He says the student workers “absolutely have a direct effect” on the Panther Clawset’s growth as a business.

Ideally, he hires students whose areas of study complement the roles they will fill. Kimberly, for instance, minors in business; she serves as the Clawset’s bookkeeper and hones her management skills there. She managed the switch from an inefficient sales tracking system to something more userfriendly. “I actually designed and formatted the spreadsheet template that we still use,” she says.

Christina learned the importance of flexibility when she began as a general employee behind the counter. “Everyone pitches in and helps out anywhere they can,” she realized, and quickly added cleaning, organizing merchandise, and assisting on deliveries to her job duties.

Everyone solves problems, too. Marissa remembers fielding a phone call from a frustrated customer with questions about an order. While politely managing the call, she secured information that ultimately satisfied the customer. She learned “to never take a customer’s anger or frustration personally” and “how to quickly and effectively find information” in tense moments.

Christina learned the value of patience one week when confusion arose between herself

and another employee over scheduling. She soon learned that a personal emergency in her coworker’s life caused the confusion. “Sometimes situations develop out of the blue,” she said, “and instead of having a knee jerk, frustrated reaction, patience can go a long way.”

These experiences will shine on a resume. In the meantime, they help Farthing scale up the Panther Clawset’s services. Although the storefront is closed due to COVID-19, the Panther Clawset still offers merchandise and accepts print orders through its website, ThePantherClawset.com. Students will gladly fill your order.

You can help these students build experience on their resumes! The Panther Clawset accepts orders for custom print apparel, which will support the addition of more student employees in the fall. Order for your church, school, team, or other organization today at

ThePantherClawset.com.

What I Want Scholarship Donors to Know

Thank you for being Christlike. Jesus himself gave and instructed us to do the same. I appreciate your attention and direction to his teachings. Thank you for making higher education a possibility for me.

– Christina Hardin, recipient of multiple donor-funded scholarships

Thank you for giving.