Emporia State is working to expand the outreach program to communities in Kansas.
The goal of the outreach program is to connect ESU with other cities.
“Business schools need to remain relevant, and how do they do that?” said Kristie Oglivie, dean of the School of Business. “One distinctive area that we have found out our students want to come here for is applied learning. Students love to learn, but learning out of a book and learning from a real world project, you can tell the difference.”
Oglivie along with June Coleman, director of Career Services, and Tyler Curtis, executive director of Alumni Relations, are running the program. They hope that by reaching out to other communities they can create internships and job positions for ESU graduates.
“In general, what we are trying to do, just across the board, is develop relationships between career services and our internal areas, like the School of Business and alumni to create opportunities for our students so that after they graduate they have already established networks in certain communities where we already have a good foothold,” Curtis said.
Curtis said the reason for the trip to Salina last month was to have the initial discussions about who the employers are, what kind of skills they will be looking for and what might be a good area of opportunity for ESU students.
“Salina is only a piece of this bigger effort that is going on,” Coleman said.
Curtis says they want to have bonds in Salina, Topeka, Kansas City, Wichita and more. By making connections with different businesses in these towns it would make it easier for students to get jobs potentially near their homes.
ESU has done some outreach programs in the Emporia area, but last year began working on spreading the possibilities to other towns in Kansas.
“For example – True Value here in town,” Coleman said. “Last week, I talked to Jim Waters, who is the president of the company, about hiring a person that graduates in December. So they have a full-time opportunity in the Salina area.”
“We really just want to ingrain it in the culture we’re here for the rest of Kansas,” Ogilvie said. “Not only more out in the more distant areas like Kansas City, etcetera, but we need to serve Emporia.”
