by Neely Borger | Jan 22, 2014 | Current Students, Faith Infusion
After a week in Brisbane, the group headed to a small town called Moree in the Australian Outback. In Moree, students planned to work with native Aboriginal children with different forms of technology, including the iPad, Microsoft Office programs, and other programs on both the Mac and PC systems. The team was excited to partner with missionary Brad Johnson and expand upon the principles they had learned concerning global poverty and lack of education in class the previous week. Working with these less fortunate kids was a great way to broaden students’ perspectives with global mission work, focusing on education in an impoverished area. Unfortunately, Dr. Ian Shepherd was not able to come to Moree due to an illness he came down with in Brisbane. Dr. Phil Vardiman along with his wife, Jackie, and the 22 students stayed at a private school in Moree.
“I was not sure what to expect coming into Moree. By the end of our visit, I had built strong relationships with many of the Aboriginal children. It was neat knowing that I had planted a seed for the continuing of their education,” says Alex Cotton, a sophomore Accounting major.
Every day, around 25 students from the local community came to the private school. Each ACU student was partnered with one of the local kids from the neighborhood. For most of the day, ACU students would work with the kids using different technological programs, teaching them various functions on Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, iMovie, and other general applications on the iPad. After a couple of days, many of the local kids felt more comfortable using these programs. The kids were fast learners, quickly applying the new skills they had learned to projects they worked on throughout the week. The children did learn many new computer skills; however, seeing strong relationships form between ACU students and the kids was also a highlight of the trip.
For the final project, groups of students acted out and filmed parts of Bible stories with the kids. The Bible stories included Jonah and the whale, Moses and the 10 plagues, and David and Goliath. Using the iMovie program, students edited the videos and then showed them to the entire group at an “awards” ceremony the last day. Working with the Aboriginal kids allowed ACU’s students to take concepts learned in the classroom and apply those principles in a real life situation. ACU students walked away with a greater understanding of poverty and lack of education in a different culture. They also left Moree truly feeling how God’s presence had blessed both them and these children over the past four days.
by Neely Borger | Nov 12, 2013 | COBA Events, Current Students, Executives In Residence, Faith Infusion
This Fall Break, a group of 23 students along with professors Dr. Jonathan Stewart, Dr. Joyce Haley, COBA Executive in Residence David Swearingen, and ACU Chief Marketing Officer Jason Groves headed north to the single most competitive work environment in the country-New York City. While in New York, the group was able to visit Wall Street and meet with executives from companies like Johnson & Johnson, Magnet Media, Dentsu American, CNN and the NBA. Brandon Baker, a ’98 ACU graduate, hosted the group as they toured the New York Stock Exchange. Brandon now serves as the organization’s vice president of information technology. Seeing ACU alumni like Brandon succeed in such a competitive business environment shows how competitive ACU students are against graduates from larger elite schools, such as Harvard and Yale. ACU students are able to infuse faith into their work, offering a set of ethics and values to the marketplace. Swearingen states, “If there’s anything business needs more of, it is Christians who bring their ethics and values into the marketplace. That’s what ACU students and grads do.”
“Being in NYC was so empowering! There are opportunities everywhere you look. We have discussed businesses in a classroom setting, but actually meeting business CEOs and leaders gave us a whole new perspective of how companies operate,” states Gentry McMath, junior accounting major.
Amanda Clary, Shannon Ball, Sarah Hailey, Whitney Stevens, Jaci Isham, Gentry McMath, Natalie Goin, Allie Rostron, Savannah Smith, Amy Sloan and Meghan Eager on the NYC fall break trip.
by Neely Borger | Oct 10, 2013 | Careers In..., COBA Events, Current Students, Faith Infusion, Special Speakers
Earl Young
COBA was proud to host the legendary world class Olympic Gold medalist Earl Young. Mr. Young spoke to COBA students at a COBA Career Connect session on October 9. Earl’s list of accomplishments and accolades is quite remarkable on the track field and in the business field. Earl was brought to ACU by track coach Oliver Jackson from the orange trees of the San Fernando Valley in California. At the age of 19, he was a member of the 1960 United States Olympic Track and Field Team, winning a Gold Medal in the 1600 meter relay while also setting a new World and Olympic record. He is an All-American in Track and Field and participated on numerous international teams establishing four World records and four American records. Earl Young attended ACU and graduated with an undergraduate degree in Business along with History and Religion and graduate studies in Business Management.
Earl also shines in the field of business. Mr. Young has served in the role of Advisor, Corporate Officer and Director of companies in the United States and abroad. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies and Investment Banking firms in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, and London. He has also worked with the World Bank and U.S. senators and congressmen. One of the organizations he has worked with is the Madagascar World Voice, a philanthropic organization partnering with World Christian Broadcasting to broadcast news, education, and entertainment with the fundamental message of hope and freedom to over 2 billion listeners throughout the world. Earl’s connections in Madagascar started the process of a scholarship funded by the World Bank for ACU students who are from the Republic of Madagascar.
Mr. Young’s resume also includes work with the Diamond Fields International Ltd., Earl Young and Associates, Renaissance Capital Group, AMI Investment Corporation, and Chafin and Young. Mr. Young is a member of the Abilene Christian University Council and a Director of the American Studies Institute Advisory Board of Harding University.
Earl is truly the definition of an exceptional performer in all aspects of life. Earl told students how he used to doubt all of the talk about God’s direct provision and intervention in people’s lives. Looking back on his life, he now sees how God was the sole reason for all of his opportunities and achievements. His gold medal in the 1960 Olympics has opened many doors for him throughout his life time. Earl encouraged students to think about their own gold medal and what achievements and blessings in their lives they have that will open the numerous doors for them. ACU and COBA are proud to recognize Mr. Young as an ambassador for God through his actions and achievements throughout the world. Earl currently lives in Dallas and continues to exemplify the faith-based truth that with God, all things are possible.
“Once the door of opportunity has been opened for you, you have to have value to offer before the door closes. Embrace every opportunity or that door will close too quickly.”
Earl Young addresses students at COBA’s Career Connect
“The workforce is looking for hard working Christians with integrity. With all of the high pressures in business, honesty is such a valuable characteristic for businesses today.”
by Allison Phillips | May 1, 2013 | Current Students, Faith Infusion
On April 3, four ACU students, accompanied by Dr. Vic McCracken, traveled to Washington D.C. in order to attend the IJM Student Conference and Global Prayer Gathering. These students made the trip as part of their involvement in ACU’s chapter of International Justice Mission, or IJM. IJM is committed to raising awareness and stopping trafficking around the world, whether that be sex trafficking, child soldiers, or forced labor.
Kayla, Carlee, and Sarah in D.C.
The Global Prayer Gathering, an event at which students gather to pray and hear the stories of former trafficking victims and caseworkers from the field, was very meaningful to Carlee Finkelstein, a junior marketing major from Plano.
“For me it was really amazing to pray with people all across the world for IJM and their mission,” she explained. “As a college student I know that I can’t just write a huge check to IJM to help with their work, but I can pray and that is what God has called us to do.”
Kayla Lawrence, senior accounting major from Cross Plains, felt that the student conference provided a lot of insights on running an event like Justice Week, ACU’s annual event focusing on social justice.
“I learned the most at the student conference by hearing ideas from other schools on how we can improve our Justice Week even more,” she elaborated. “It was very interesting to talk with students from across the states and hear what events and strategies have worked on their campus to spread awareness and what earned the most success. I thought it was very helpful and we plan to incorporate some of those cool ideas into ACU Justice Week 2014!”
In addition to learning, a couple of ACU students were asked to speak at the Student Conference about Justice Week and the way their social justice organizations are run here on campus.
Sarah Ratliff, a senior marketing major from Lake Kiowa, who was asked to speak at the Student Conference, said she really enjoyed getting to talk about what IJM is doing here at ACU.
“Getting to go is so exciting,” she said, “but being asked to speak and display our leadership is another thing. I hope that we can continue to have great leaders that can continue to set a great example on campus and off so we can make more trips like this.”
There’s a lot of opportunity for COBA students to make a difference in the world, so be sure to check out opportunities like IJM!
The IJM Group in Washington D.C.
by Amanda Pittman | Dec 6, 2011 | COBA Events, Current Students, Faith Infusion, Special Speakers
We are excited to share with you a bit about one of our Leadership Summit 2012 speakers. Jose Zeilstra was featured in a Fortune article back in July of 2001 (just two short months before 9/11) titled ‘God & Business: Bringing spirituality in the workplace violates the old idea that faith and fortune don’t mix. But a groundswell of believers is breeching the last taboo in corporate America’. (article written by Marc Gunther from Fortune magazine’s July 2001 issue; cited from CNNMoney’s website.)
Not only will Zeilstra be sharing about having faith in the marketplace with our students at Summit, she’ll also be sharing about her experiences as a survivor of Tower I on September 11, 2001. We are honored to have Jose Zeilstra as a guest speaker at our Leadership Summit 2012 this coming January.
Stay tuned for more Leadership Summit speaker spotlights and updates from Summit coming in January.
by Amanda Pittman | Dec 1, 2011 | City of Abilene, College Decisions, Current Students, Faith Infusion
Students in Dr. Wright’s Creativity in the Marketplace (Marketing 440) class have been given a unique opportunity: to select a non-profit and use their marketing skills to solve a specific problem facing that non-profit. We had an opportunity to chat with the group leaders from two different groups to find out more about their non-profit and what they are doing to help.
Meet Corbin. He’s a senior marketing major from Coppell.
Corbin (he's the one jumping). This is in Europe when he went with ACU's Study Abroad for the semester.
His group is partnering with World’s Backyard, a non-profit started and based in Abilene. We asked him to share about their work. He’s what he told us:
1) Tell us a little about the details of the project:
The project was based on creatively helping a certain non profit overcome an obstacle they were facing. This involved figuring out the need these guys needed met most and doing whatever we thought would help the most. For my group it was helping the World’s Backyard (started by Brayden and Jason Boone), which is a simple organization that ministers to refugee children throughout Abilene.
2) How’d your group select your particular non-profit group?
Our group chose this non-profit because Brayden is one of my best friends and we had the opportunity to see tangible results from our help. (I’m also in involved with it so it made client contact easy.)
3) Tell us a little about your non-profit (what they do, how the help others) and how is your group helping them?
Essentially TWB links college students with various apartment complexes around Abilene that house foreign refugee children. Once a week they go and pick up these kids to take them to play soccer and other sports and games at Madison Middle School. The need they had was simply a matter of getting the name of their organization out there and telling people what they were about. We were able to do a small marketing campaign around campus and the apartment complexes for an event they hosted the weekend before Thanksgiving (it was actually a pushcart derby!)
Corbin and a new friend
4) What are you learning about business through this project? How are your business skills being sharpened and refined?
I’m learning that marketing is something that must be tailored to each individual demographic (i.e.: we had to make advertisements in 4 different languages to reach all the families!) and also it is alot more motivating and rewarding to partner with people you care about on a deep personal level – I’m learning how to take that motivation into situations where I might not know the client as well and still be excited about the project and think creatively. This class has prepared me for that by discussing the necessity of creativity in a sometimes boring and straight laced professional world.
***
Next, meet Ashley. She’s a senior finance major from Hallsville.
Ashley (far right). Pictured with COBA's SIFE team.
Ashley’s team is working with Operation Christmas Child, a seasonal project of Samaritan’s Purse. Here’s what she said about their non-profit and their project:
1) Tell us a little about the details of the project:
The assignment was to find a non profit and see if they needed help in any aspects of their business that we could solve using marketing. We then had to put that task in motion, or at least get the ball rolling. Ideally, we’d be able to come up with a solution to their marketing related problem, take the steps needed to accomplish it, and see results… All before the semester ended (which was about 5 weeks time).
2) How’d your group select your particular non-profit group?
We brainstormed numerous local nonprofits that we could easily get in touch with; then we focused on the actuality of us being able to do a real and effective job for them. We tried reaching out to one organization we thought might fit those criteria, but there was conflict in scheduling an initial meeting with them. This is when GW Shaw mentioned a project his church does every year and we decided to turn it into a marketing venture.
Operation Christmas Child table. The group set up in the Campus Center to promote this non-proft and to ask students to get involve and help out.
3) Tell us a little about your non-profit (what they do, how the help others) and how is your group helping them?
Operation Christmas Child is a national project hosted by Samaritan’s Purse. Their objective is to provide a box of small presents and necessities for underprivileged children in the Philippines. They are able to do this through a mass amount of volunteers (primarily churches) who fill up shoe boxes and drop them off at Samaritan Purse locations. GW was the only one in our group who had even heard about this project, so it was clear that we should bring awareness about it on campus through advertising and allowing students to get involved.
What we did: bought 100 foldable boxes from the website at a small cost. We set up an appropriately decorated table in the campus center with the boxes on them, in hopes that people would take them, fill them, and drop them back off at the table. We also put a big sign in the campus center, hung flyers in the dorms, made a my.acu login advertisement, made a slide for the chapel slideshow, and showed a one minute video during chapel on the day we set the table up.
We had a time span of two weeks for people to pick up, fill, and drop off the boxes. We had hoped for a return of 10 boxes, but we were pleasantly surprised when after exactly 7 days all of the boxes were gone. When it came time to pick up the boxes, there were a little over 20 full boxes which was double what we were expecting. So this project turned out to be a great success for the short amount of time we had.
Chapel slide promoting table that was set up in the Campus Center
4) What are you learning about business through this project? How are your business skills being sharpened and refined?
I used to dread doing group projects; but in most of my upper level classes, group work has been enjoyable. I’ve learned to trust and lean on everyone by delegating the right tasks to the right people. It’s amazing to see how much more you can accomplish through correctly allocating tasks. Surpassing our project goal wasn’t a bad feeling either.
We are proud of these student groups who are learning how to use business to serve and grateful for the good work they are doing to help others. We are blessed with a faculty who excel at teaching business skills and who are even more committed to helping our students understand how they can use their knowledge and skills to make a difference in someone’s life.
