It's All About the Students Making Leaps and Bounds Towards Success - Behind the Scenes

The Eastern Oregon University National Millennial and Gen Z Community has been busy this year; these are just some things we have been up to as a chapter. We help each other become the best we can be: the best leaders and the best students. As a chapter we have done local trips, and speaker visits to build our chapter and community around us. Each day we are becoming better individuals, and learning something new. National Millennial Community and Gen Z at the national level has been our catalyst to want to do more behind the scenes.

As a chapter we made a huge decision to put in more work, and make the most out of our chapter, and time as a college student in NMC. We made connections to alumni, and started networking. We hosted Mr. Bill Imada to speak on campus to help students around us understand advertising better. On top of this, we still attended the executive trips at the national level with other chapters. Needless to say, we have had a great year!

Eastern Oregon University National Millennial Community Visits Nike World Headquarters

Pictured: Adam Donnelly (alumni), Dustin Zimmerly, Josh Leiferman, Dr. Shari Carpenter, Travis Morscheck (alumni), & Casci Carpenter

Beaverton, Oregon- Easter Oregon University National Millennial Community students, and alumni get to reconnect while getting to tour the Nike Global Campus. This was a huge stepping-stone, and opportunity to get the insider of Nike from two EOU alumni who have made a career at Nike.

Making these connections are vital for our campus’ students to be recognized. Being able to have conversation about the millennial generation, and what is expected out of us as we enter the workforce in this extremely competitive environment. It was beneficial to hear from our alumni as they have had experience in the workforce as a millennial.

Not only did this open a new door for our chapter, but also we got to meet a few famous people while we were on campus. One of our members, Dustin Zimmerly is a collegiate cross country and track athlete here at EOU, and he got to meet Mr. Alberto Salazar. Alberto Salazar is an American Track Nike coach, and former world-class long distance runner.

Alberto Salazar & Dustin Zimmerly

Nike campus was amazing to get to walk around and analyze the culture that everyone works in. There are so many employees there, and a variety of workspace options for employees. On campus there are gyms, daycare, hair care, small shops, lots of food venue, and it goes on and on. This is all open to the employees; this is a company that truly cares about their employees.

Mr. Bill Imada, Eastern Oregon University National Millennial Community Co-Founder Comes to Visit, and Share His Knowledge With the Students.

Mr. Bill Imada

Mr. Bill Imada is originally from Ontario, Oregon where as he has made his path to Hollywood. He owns an ad agency called IW Group. He understands the meaning behind an advertisement, so he came to share his knowledge with us here at Eastern Oregon University.

On February 15th, EOU NMC hosted Bill Imada for an event on campus to learn more about Bill’s journey to get to where he is at now, and to understand what companies are thinking when making an advertisement.

The students started with participating in an activity to get their creative mind thinking together. “By using pictures we created a story, this story was based of the person before. We went down the line of students, and made our unique story of how we portrayed the picture Bill gave us,” said John Brown.

Pictured: EOU Students

When going over the brand archetypes there were four categories Bill Presented, “Internal, External, Order, and Change”. Each company falls underneath on of these four categories, and makes their statement. For example, the company Apple is “The Creator”, or Pampers are “The Caregivers”. As Bill was teaching the students he said, “It’s about what the company is trying to portray themselves as- think deeper”.

While keeping these in mind we watched Super Bowl commercials, and analyzed how they related to the companies archetype. Good conversation was started about the reasoning behind this, and how companies are changing to get their message across in three to fifteen seconds.

Thank you

Eastern Oregon University Chapter of National Millennial Community would like to send a huge thank you to Mr. Bill Imada for helping us become so successful. Not only did we do these events as a chapter, but also we attended trips with other chapters. These trips help us with develop our professional skills, and experience the life in companies. Each company is different to interact with, and this can help us with career success in knowing what we want coming out of college.

Cody Singer, Dr. Shari Carpenter, Sam Wagerman, Josh Leiferman, Mr. Bill Imada, Alex Navarro, Brittany Hargrove, & Casci Carpenter