In the Jungle; Jeffrey Yankovich

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 gorillas of Pittsburgh State University. I'm your host, Howard Smith, and today we're joined by Jeffrey Yanke of Edge. Jeff, thanks for me and with us. Pleasure to be here. Hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, where are you from, and how you found Pitt State. I'm originally from LaNexa, Kansas, I went to school up there at Shawnee Mission West. Go Vikings. Yeah, go Vix. And so I originally found Pitt State because my brother ended up going here. It was kind of a small school down to the south, but we had a big name and a lot of things going on. And so it was kind of a good stepping stone to have family down here, and I came and visited him quite a bit and really just fell in love with the campus and the people here and a lot of the opportunities going on the campus and the university down here. You know, having, being a fellow Viking with you, having gone to Shawnee Mission West as well. One of the things when you visited campus that attracted you, I know we get a lot of students from over the park, have for years.

For sure. What were some things that you saw that you thought, you know what, this is really the fit for me. Well, I think before you even get to campus, just to drive down here, you see all the Pitt State billboards and just driving through downtown. You see it's just plastered in red, the businesses. Just love the university, love the campus and you know, I've been to other towns and there's really not that community engagement coming like what you see in Pittsburgh. It's really the whole town is united around the university and the guerrillas and what's going on down here. But then you get to campus and you just see people out, you know, enjoying themselves, having friends, smiling and having a good time and it's just a buzz of activity going on on the campus. It's really incredible. And obviously it's a beautiful campus too. I think we've put a lot of work into keeping the campus, our steen and beautiful. So what are your goals and aspirations for the future when you graduate from here? What do you want to do? Well, right now I've got a job offer from Walmart headquarters down in Bentonville. So I've done two summer internships with them and merchandising and so they gave me a full time offer for merchandising down there. So that internship paid off then? They got to know you know, they see what your skills are and they've asked you to stay

on with them. That's great. For sure. So what is your major that led you into that? Well I started off with two majors in international business and finance and then a minor in French. But I went ahead and added French as a third major after getting here just because the modern language department was making some great changes and so it allowed me to add on that third major. How hard is that? It's not too hard. I think I give a lot of credit to our College of Business. They've designed a really great core program and so your majors really only deviate by a semester too and most of the classes are the synonymous for all those majors. Which for a lot of the freshmen is very good because if they want to change majors in the College of Business they don't lose anything. Oh that's good. There's someone like myself to tack on an extra major, it's really only an added semester for that. So they've built a nice core. It goes through. It's a fantastic core program. That would certainly be a marketable piece in when you're looking at the program. For sure. Now I know you're a senior and in your senior year I know you're focused on finishing I think.

Right. And so I know you've been involved in activities too and maybe not as much this year but previously. What are some of the things you've been involved in? Well from the very first week I was here at Pitt State, I got involved in an organization called an Actus. So it's out of the College of Business and it stands for Entrepreneurial Action and Us Creates a Better World. And so what it is is it's taking entrepreneurial skills and students and it's applying them to communities. And so we can use business to solve social needs or solve a lot of the problems that you see going on in the world today. It's similar to like Tom Shoes where it's like you buy a pair that give a pair to someone to need. We do a lot of that. And so we'll find artisans in third world countries that can't really get a fair wage and sell their products in the US and give them fair living wage and fair working conditions or we're tackling feud insecurity or even within Pittsburgh we're working to address homelessness and a lot of the problems that are going on with that. So what was your role in an Actus? Well as a freshman I was thrown into the spotlight and I was a project manager for small business consultation project and so that really for me helped before I was even in those classes

get to kind of see and work and play with the business. My sophomore year club elected me president and so that was a big step in opportunity. And then I was also recognized at the national board and made one of the first student representatives for our national student advisory committee. So I served with one other student as Midwest liaison. My junior year I was again elected president and then at the national board I was then inducted into the first cohort of an act of student fellows. And then this year being senior year with a bit more challenging classes I've stepped back and so now this year I'm a project manager for a project that we're doing about food security and Haiti and I'm also going to be our VP of technology. Wow. That's a lot. So you've got a lot. I had an opportunity for a lot of learning outside in the classroom. For sure. I think last year when I counted I was in 13 student organizations. 13. Yeah. And you still made your classes. I still made my classes and still kept my GPA up.

Wow. So would you say opportunities kind of something you have at your shot at here at Pitt State? Yeah. I mean the amount of opportunities overwhelming. You really have to narrow down to decide what you want your college career to be and just go for it. What were a couple of other things you were in? You don't have to go through the other 12 but maybe a couple of other things. Last year I found a lot of benefit from a newer student group called the outdoor activities club. And so this was a group that was started. I believe spring of two years ago, just students that just loved being outdoors. And we had a lot of international students coming to Pitt State that really wanted to see America and see the country. And so they said, hey, why not take them outdoors, take them camping, take them to the water falls and all the natural sites around. And so I started getting involved in that last year and I found it really rewarding not only to kind of see the outdoor life in America and see parts of the country that you don't normally see on a daily basis. But also to make those connections with a lot of those international students and see you know, the smiles on their face and the rewarding experience they get from being able to do a lot of that while they're here.

Well, thanks for taking them out. That's a great opportunity for them as well. Has there been anybody that's influenced you while you've been here at Pitt State that you'd look back on saying, no, that was good advice. That was a good instructor. Yeah, I think some of the instructors are very personable and I think that is really transparent throughout the entire university. I think even our president, Dr. Scott is a very personal person. You can just walk up to him and say hi and he'll have a conversation with you about how your day's going and what's on your mind and things like that. And I think that really just branches down and reaches the entire university. I have plenty of faculty that you see off campus that are giving their time back to organizations, even though it's not required of them, doing a lot for the students that's not necessarily expected or required of them just because they want to see students succeed and they believe in those opportunities for students. Hey, what advice would you give to a prospective student considering Pitt State? What would you tell them? Why should they consider coming to school at Pitt State? I would say get involved. Pitt State is really renowned for the student organizations. I think that we have here and they really mere our great excellence and our great programs

that we have going on here, a lot of the great majors and course degrees that we have. There's always a synonymous student group that's working to do that out of the classroom. I think a lot of students get to college and don't really get involved at first your second year and wait till junior senior year and they're just full of regret because they could have been doing something for four years but they waited and now the opportunity's gone. And that proves why you belong at Pittsburgh State University. Thank you for joining us in the jungle. I'm your host, Howard Smith. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. Join us for in the jungle Wednesday afternoons at 3.50 and Friday mornings at 8.50 here on KRBS.