Richard Mendoza is a Controller at Mountain Temp Services (MTS) in Aspen, Colorado. He was recently named employee of the month at MTS where he partners with leadership to analyze performance, manage risk and improve operational efficiency. Through his daily practices he helps create a healthy, functional, and productive work environment.

Richard has 30 years of accounting experience and within that time, seven years of banking experience.  This gives him a wide range of financial knowledge. Throughout his professional career Richard has worked at a CPA firm, understands all accounting functions, bank underwriting, systems management, cash management, insurance management, office management, construction contracts, artist contracts, and event ticketing. 

Richard also has 35 years of restaurant and hospitality experience. He has been a private chef, waiter, bartender, cook, busser, host, and dishwasher.  Along with his accounting and restaurant experience, Richard was a ski coach for 22 years at Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club in Aspen, Colorado. Throughout his coaching career he has coached hundreds of athletes and helped many people become better individuals.  In fact, one of his athletes later became a gold, silver, and bronze medalists in the Winter Olympics.

Richard has recently returned to the University of New Mexico after a long break to compete his Bachelor’s degree. His first-class back at UNM is English 2210.  It is in this class Richard has learned new skills such as creating a website and learning how to make a YouTube video.  He worked through three separate projects and created multiple documents along with two videos for peer review. He was also required to give multiple peer reviews which helped him understand the techniques he uses in his professional career. Richard was himself a scholarship track athlete at the University of New Mexico where he was named Track Athlete of the Year in 1995 as a freshman.  

Richard worked two to four jobs at the same time for 30 years. He always had an accounting / banking position at 40-50 hours per week and would fill in his extra time with coaching and restaurant / catering work.  One of the best lessons he has learned in life came from the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club's core values which are commitment, teamwork, and integrity. 

Date: March 11, 2026

To: Ms. Didi Asiya

From: Richard Mendoza

Subject: Final Course Reflection

I am thankful to have had the opportunity to be one of your students in English 2210 at the University of New Mexico.  It was a great experience.  This final reflection is an important part of the process.  During the semester we focused on project planning, project analysis, content development, organizational design, written communication, visual communication, reviewing and editing, content management, and production delivery.  Throughout this reflection I will be able to tell you what new skills I acquired and what skills I improved emphasizing project analysis, visual communication, and reviewing / editing. Finalizing this review will be examples of how the things I leaned in this class helped my professional career. 

Project planning was the first step.  I needed to create a roadmap for Project 3.  This is where I needed to integrate content development and organizational design.  Understanding what genre I used impacted the presentation.  I improved my research skills using primary and secondary sources learning how to use the internet for my primary source.  I had mostly used paper text in libraries previously but for Project 3 I needed specific up to date statistics for my proposal and presentation.  I found myself searching the City of Albuquerque’s official website for statistics from the police department. After my research and engineering was complete, I needed to figure out what to write and how to make it appealing to the intended audience.  Project planning was also crucial in the development of my webpage.  I was required to conceptualize the final product at the beginning.  Since I am returning to school in a new digital age these skills are foundational to my future classes and professional career. 

Project analysis is an important outcome I used throughout the class, my projects, and my professional career.  I went back multiple times, analyzing my posts.  Did I answer the basic questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how.  I thoroughly analyzed Project 2 because the context needed to match the genre.  I was writing an official response to /from the University of New Mexico regarding a sensitive multicultural situation. It was a technical document responding to social justice and needed to maintain its integrity throughout. 

Visual communication helped me understand and practice general visual design principles. In Project 1 I was required to create an instructional YouTube video.  This was new to me as I only watched YouTube videos in the past, I had never created one.  I had to create a user-friendly video that walked people through an exact process.  I chose how to make zucchini bread.  It wasn’t as technical as my other two projects that used technical statistics, graphs, and outlines but I still needed to understand design principles associated with creating a YouTube video.    

Reviewing and editing is possibly the most important learning objective of the class especially since this is an English class.  Reviewing and editing not only entails the obvious elements of spelling and grammar but is also the context and styles we chose.  Without proper spelling the audience is lost.  I had to review all my projects multiple times.  I read and reread my whole website.  My video on how to make zucchini bread, letter to / from the University of New Mexico regarding the official seal, and my proposal to the City of Albuquerque have all been edited multiple times.  I am going to keep the website because it was such a fun project and will continue to review / edit it for the foreseeable future.

In my professional career I create emails every day in memo format to for many different reasons.  I need to make sure they don’t contain spelling and grammar errors.  One email can contain the top executives at the company or the whole company of 100 people. This class immediately helped me refine my review and editing skills. Mostly through our reviews on the discussion boards. In my professional career I also help create Standard Operating Procedure documents for our company.  These are technical documents that are a set of rules employees must follow.  I also create step by step instructions for employees to follow for certain tasks. I used the grading rubric format I learned in this class as an effective way to grade certain tasks of managers at the company where I work.  While this is not directly spelled out in the class content, it is something from this class that I have used recently in my professional career.  I am also going to create YouTube tutorials for certain tasks at the company.  This class has helped me refine my professional skills and taught me new ways to do things.  This class has helped me keep my skills current in the twenty-first century workforce. 

Thank you for your help and guidance this semester,

Richard Mendoza