In the Jungle; Brittan Brenner

Thank you for joining us for In The Jungle, where you stay connected to the current students at Pittsburgh State University. Now here's your host Howard Smith. Welcome to In The Jungle, where we meet the grillers of Pittsburgh State University. I'm your host Howard Smith and today we're joined by Britton Brenner. Hi Britton. Hi how are you? Hey doing great. Hey thanks for being here. You know we love talking to students on campus and find out where they're from and a little bit about them and I've been fortunate enough to know you for actually about two years now because you've been on campus and you've been active. First of all just tell us where you're from and a little bit about your hometown. I'm from Wichita, Kansas and I love my hometown. It's a great community I was able to go to an amazing high school who definitely formed who I am today and now it was the original. The original Wichita East High School. Yes the original. So that's cool. So how'd you find out about Pitt State? I found out about Pitt State. The day I was born. My parents were both students here when they had me. They chose to move back to Wichita to be closer to family but Pittsburgh State's always been a part of my life. My dad was a student athlete here and so we've

come back for games and I'm well acquainted with grill and nation and all that entails. Well that is cool. Tell us a little bit about your activities here. I mean I know you came to get a degree and I know you're gonna be finishing one but tell me about some of the activities you've been in and why those are special or what's kind of neat about them. So as far as activities that I've been involved in in college I think most notably I've been involved with the Student Government Association. I started in SGA my freshman year of college. I knew I wanted to get involved to enjoy my time on campus. I knew that that was important for me as a student. I started as a senator the next year. I was the treasurer. The next year I was the vice president and as I worked my way up the ranks I just continued to meet amazing faculty here at Pitt State and get networked in the community and meet such cool students and peers that I now call my dear friends that I know will be with me for the rest of my life and so I think that that's one of the largest pieces of involvement that I've had here and from there so many other involvements have stemmed I've been a peer mentor I've taught freshman experience classes with me. What's a peer mentor? A peer mentor is a student aid

in a freshman experience class. What's freshman experience? Freshman experience is the freshman course that you take the fall semester of your freshman year to get you acquainted with campus and just have an older student there that can help you answer questions that you may not want to ask a teacher and ask you which professors might be better for them to take and just get to know and have an ally on campus. Okay and then you were in a campus Christian organization? Yeah I am. I'm a part of Gemma for Lambda. It's a Christian sorority here on campus. It started my freshman year and so I've been able to kind of watch the organization grow. I've been on the executive team for a couple years now and so through that I've been able to meet amazing women who are large pieces of my life and will be things that I remember when I look back on in college. In addition to that I've been a resident assistant that I've been able to meet so many. You need experiences in that. What's you know people living in the dorms? Being in R.A. Anything you can share? Yeah absolutely. There are so many experiences being in R.A. There have been so many times where I've

been up until 2 a.m. Laughing with students but then there are also those nights where you know tragedy strikes for a student or life just gets really hard and so being in R.A. was a really big growing experience for me to learn how to be a leader and be that person for people when they don't have anyone which has been really valuable for me and allowed me to make some really core relationships while on campus. Sounds like the living environment has been a great experience. Let's talk learning for a second. What's your major? My major is communication. What took you down the communication room? I like to talk a lot. In high school I was involved in journalism and so I knew that I wanted to continue with that and Pitt State has an amazing communication department. My emphasis is public relations and so I'm able to communicate with the masses for companies and organizations and I get to have those conversations and talk to people like I like to and the faculty are just amazing. It's my favorite part about being on campus. Now are you doing an internship right now? I started as an intern this spring with the city of Pittsburgh working in community development with a woman named Becky Gray. At

the end of my internship they decided to keep me and so now I'm working for them while I'm a student here and so I work as the assistant planner for the city of Pittsburgh and assist in community development efforts in the community. With this major and some of your experience now what are your goals far as going out to the workforce? I want to maintain a career in municipalities. My minor is political science and so I have a passion for bureaucracy and governance and just the quality of life that citizens have in the communities they inhabit and I think municipalities are a great level of government. I think that once you get into state and federal levels of government you can get a little wishy washy and things get a little strange but in municipalities you have to be transparent and you have to be in your community and you have to enact the change that you want to and work with people and so I really enjoy that and I think that the experiences I've gotten here at Pitt State are invaluable in a resume because I'm able to move on to communities whether that be here or somewhere else and enact the things I've learned here. Do you think that you're working student governments helped you as far as that

role? Absolutely. I actually met Becky my boss in a committee that I was involved in with student government called Joint City University Advisory Board and it was the fourth thought of our community leaders and university leaders to create a board to communicate with one another that enabled me as a student to interact with and meet city officials to get the job and internships that I've gotten and so absolutely to have those things correlated. In your program so far what what's been a tough class? Right now I'm taking research procedures and it is a very hard class it's taught by my advisor Dr. Komo and it requires us to conduct our own research experiments and you have to come up with your own research question and you have to research it through literature you have to conduct interviews and you have to do surveys and you have to write a research paper. One that hypothetically could be published should you choose to and the quality of work that he expects is very professional and very polished and although at times it's annoying that at their high

expectations when I look back on the work that I'm completing in this class I can see where he's coming from. What advice would you give to a potential student considering Pitt State today? I think that when you're looking at schools it's easy to see all the opportunities that you could have. Bigger schools seem to have more opportunity but when you really boil it down each institution has the same opportunities but when you go to a smaller school there are less people by you know competing for those opportunities. Another thing I would advise a student to look at is that Pitt's Brick State is a teaching institution and not a research institution and so your professor's priority isn't conducting research it's teaching you and that has helped me tremendously as a student. You'll see the teacher to student ratios often but whatever that number is if it's 12 to 1 I continually feel as though it's 1 to 1 because I can call my professor and Hill answer. I can set up a meeting and they'll be there and they'll answer any question I have no matter how annoying it may be and that is invaluable as a student. Hey that proves why you belong at

Pittsburgh State University. Written thank you for joining us today. Join us for in the jungle Wednesday afternoons at 350 and Friday mornings at 850 here on KRPS.