Welcome back, students! We hope you are rested and refreshed from your spring break adventures, and ready to get back to business. Here are a few highlights of this week’s important happenings that you don’t want to miss.
— The Career Success Center has a few more openings to join the multi-day Travel Friday road trip to Seattle. View more information here.
Don’t miss this opportunity! The Senior Mentoring Event will pair a senior in Apparel Design, Interior Design, Graphic Design, and/or Merchandising Management with a professional in the student’s field for a morning of conversation, input, and professional networking advice. Apply with your resume by April 10.
— The official application deadline for HWeekend is April 5 — but it fills up quickly (like, really quickly) so do not delay, and apply today.
— Impact Oregon, the statewide invention challenge, will have a kickoff meeting on Thurs., April 6. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn you through the process of getting an idea out of your head and into a product cycle.
— Advising has opened the spring pro-school application process. Here is the link.
— Our Fridays in Austin platform will begin its run for spring term next week.
— Our full lineup is in The Works (as usual) so don’t miss it!
MBA candidates take their seats before the graduation ceremony in Stirek Auditorium.
Eighty-eight students representing eight nations were recognized June 13 for having completed their MBA studies during the 2014-15 school year. The Oregon State MBA program features eight different tracks, and the graduation ceremony honored students from all eight: research thesis, commercialization, business analytics, marketing, accountancy, wealth management, global operations and executive leadership.
Prior to the ceremony, six MBA graduates one other College of Business student were inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, an international honor society serving schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The inductees were Sinae Cho, Casey Miller, Yuriy Mikitchenko, Gary Phibbs, Kevin Russell, Halley Todd, and Phil Walter.
Erick Frack, president of Katapult Partners, LLC, and a 1981 College of Business graduate, delivered the keynote address at the MBA graduation ceremony. Frack’s talk centered around leadership, which he believes centers around caring about other people and listening to them.
“Your ability to show yourself as a good leader will help you more than anything,” Frack said.
Three of the MBA graduates also addressed the audience: Perren Baker (business analytics), Feng Qiu (research thesis) and Lauren West (commercialization). Baker urged his cohort to strive for a work/life balance, Feng talked about the challenges of being an international student while thanking his major professor, Keith Leavitt, for changing his life, and West told her fellow graduates, “When opportunity comes knocking, always say yes.”
The ceremony also recognized Grace Berczel, Casey Miller, Thomas Nguyen, Sara Kelley and Dan McCain for completing their combined doctor of pharmacy/MBA degree.
Following the 75-minute program, graduates and their guests repaired to Austin Hall’s third floor for a reception.
It was the second celebratory event of the day at Austin Hall, which in the afternoon hosted an outdoor reception for the College of Business’ newest bachelor’s degree recipients and their families and friends. Each of the 753 graduating seniors who stopped by received a COB business card holder as a gift from the college, and the event also included a photo booth and a group picture of all of the graduates on hand.
Associate dean Jim Coakley, right, congratulates MBA graduate Ryan Perry.
High-fives from Nicaraguan children were among the highlights for the OSU Enactus group.
For eight members of OSU Enactus, winter break meant a trip to someplace warm, but not to rest and relax.
Enactus is an international group through which university students work to discover their own potential while helping to improve the economic situation of others, and the Beaver chapter of the organization sent a contingent to Nicaragua for continued work on a microloan program there. OSU Enactus has made multiple journeys to Nicaragua, including one last July.
“There were many heartwarming stories that gave us contentment for all of the hard work that had been put in,” Garret Flowers reported on the OSU Enactus blog.
One of them involved a woman named Andrea Sanhante, who has a business that sells tortillas, beans and cheese to community members.
“We were inspired by her work ethic and her ability to multitask with her career and her family,” Flowers wrote. “It is amazing to see how the program impacted her small business. She has said that she has increased her profits by nearly 50 percent.”
Allison Ramsing has been honored as the top new advisor in Region 8.
Allison Ramsing, academic advisor in the Oregon State University College of Business, learned while growing up in tiny Aurelia, Iowa, that life was about meeting challenges and mapping out plans to get where she wanted to be.
As a child she had a condition that, given the state’s agricultural claim to fame, was an obstacle to say the least.
“I was allergic to corn,” she said. “You can imagine how well that worked.”
In the nation’s top corn-producing state, not that well.
But neither the allergy nor her small-town roots – Aurelia had fewer than 1,000 residents, and her high school graduating class numbered just 33 – got in the way of her pursuing, obtaining and excelling at what she calls her dream job: advising design and fashion students.
And her work has drawn the attention of the National Academic Advising Association, which in December named her the Region 8 2014 New Advisor Award Winner. She’ll be honored at the regional conference in Couer d’Alene, Idaho, in March and is eligible for consideration as the national award winner.
Ramsing started at the College of Business in July 2012 as advisor and retention coordinator for the School of Design and Human Environment. She holds a Master of Science in Education in Higher Education Administration from the University of Kansas, a Certificate of Appreciative Advising from the University of South Carolina and a Bachelor of Science in Apparel Merchandising, Design, and Production from Iowa State University.
Ramsing consults with her freshmen students at least once a term, and with her upper-level students at least once a year.
“We look at the whole picture,” she said. “How are you doing with your classwork, in your residence hall, with your family, with your friends, are you involved?”
Merchandising management student Magda Ponce calls Ramsing “the reason why I am continuing to pursue an education at Oregon State University.”
Carol Leder, head advisor for the College of Business, cites two examples of Ramsing’s commitment to student development: co-teaching of a freshman-level course, BA 160, designed to instruct students about how to be successful in college, and advising the DAMChic student club that puts out an online fashion magazine of the same name. (It can be viewed at http://issuu.com/damchicmagazine/docs/la_dramatic/1?e=7666273/9569842).
“As an academic advisor, I am responsible for helping foster each student’s potential and assisting them in understanding the difference between a major and a career,” Ramsing said.
