Journalism Department graduates Rebekah Peppler ’08, and Vanessa Virbitsky ’08, are two of four remarkable UW-Oshkosh alumni to be receiving the Outstanding Young Alumni Award of 2012. 

These distinguished alumni will be honored by the University’s Alumni Association during Homecoming 2012 for their professional and civic accomplishments and future promises.

While at Oshkosh, Peppler was a member of SPJ and Virbitsky a sports writer for the Advance-Titan. After the j-department congratulated them via Twitter two days ago, we got an unexpected response:

What are the odds?! Now that their paths have crossed years later, what exactly have these two accomplished after graduation that has earned them this honor?

With a bachelor’s degree in journalism from UWO in hand, Rebekah Peppler extended her education in New York City, where she completed the class pastry arts program at the French Culinary Institute. Independently, she is a freelance writer, recipe developer, photographer, and avid food stylist. In 2010 she began her NYC career as the culinary advisor/researcher for CBS news, and is currently the food editor at Tasting Table, where she provides New Yorkers with daily e-mail publications about the best food and drink culture the city has to offer. 

After graduating from UW-Oshkosh with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science, Vanessa Virbitsky went on to receive her MA in public relations at Ball State. There, she was the graduate assistant gymnastics coach and media relations assistant for the University.  In 2009 she became the Media Relations Intern for the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado, and in July 2010 began her position as a Communications Manager. Today, she is playing a key role in the upcoming 2012 London Olympic Games.

It is safe to say that this year; Virbitsky and Peppler will be bringing home the gold at the 2012 Homecoming reception on October 12.

For more information on all of this year’s recipients, check out this article!

With three weeks until graduation, seniors are checking their grades, getting their cap and gown and, most importantly, searching for jobs. But where should you be checking? It’s well known that searching for a job is a full-time job in itself. Here are 5 places you should check out to find a job that fits you (anyone looking for an internship, this applies to you too!).

1. Big Shoes Network – If you are looking for a job in the Wisconsin, Illinois or Minnesota, Big Shoes Network is a great site for finding open positions and internships in the journalism field/PR/social media/advertising/communications field. You can narrow down your selections by type of position, specific geographic areas in Wisconsin or Illinois, and posting date. Sign up for the free email chain and you’ll get sent open positions directly to your inbox, which makes the search even easier.
2. City Job Sites – Most cities will have at least one site that lists job openings. If you know what area in Wisconsin or the U.S. you’d like to go, start by picking out a large city in that state and looking for its job site. Doing a simple Google search for the name of the city + jobs yields good results. I found sites for Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Oshkosh and Sheboygan that have a huge listing of categories and tons of open positions in those areas.
3. Titan Jobs / Alumni Career Services / Career Services– These are services offered through the university and are free until you graduate, so you should make use of them (some services cost a one-time $25 service fee after graduation). Titan Jobs has open internship and full-time positions from employers in the Oshkosh and surrounding areas. You can upload a resume and create a profile that participating employers can read when looking for possible candidates. There’s even a Titan Jobs app to download so you know what and when career/networking events are happening around campus. If you’re unfamiliar with Titan Jobs or want help on your resume, head over to Career Services Office in the Student Success Center during their walk-in hours and a staff member will sit down and go over any professional needs you have.
4. Intern2work – This new website is open to College of Letters & Science students and works towards connecting Northeast Wisconsin students with employers looking for interns. You can never have too many internships and even if you are about to graduate, taking an internship right out of college while you try to find a full-time job is an awesome way to get more experience while you search. Check out the Intern2Work Facebook for more information or go to the Intern2work site to fill out your profile.
5. Networking!! – One of the best things you can do as a recent graduate is to let those around you know that you are looking for a job. Talk with professors, family members, friends and co-workers and tell them what type of position you’d like to get and where you want to go. Many times if people know you are looking they will keep you in mind and inform you of job positions they run across that fit your description. Use these last few weeks as a student to set up informational interviews with companies you’d like to work for. As a student they are more willing to bring you in and talk to you about your future career. The more resumes and cover letters you send out, the more exposure you are getting for yourself, so don’t be afraid to show your face to as many people as you can!

By Jessica Bedore (@JessiMarie09)

During the fall semester of my junior year at UWO, I attended the PRSSA National Conference in Washington D.C. with five other members from our chapter. While the entire trip was a blast, one of my favorite moments was attending Lauren Berger, the “Intern Queen’s” session on finding and securing internships.

For those of you who don’t know, Lauren Berger graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2006, where she completed 15 internships in only four years of college. From there, she landed a job (of course!) at Creative Artists Agency, and soon after, she started her own business, Intern Queen, Inc., as a service to college students across the country.

When I heard her speak, I was very drawn to her spunk and passion for the industry. At the time, I was searching for an internship and I was starting to get frustrated after being turned down from a few companies. Her session was just the inspiration that I needed to land my first internship.

After I listened to her session, I went up and introduced myself to her. Even though I was SO nervous, I knew that I had to put myself out there. I handed her my business card and told her that I believed in everything she said. We talked briefly, but I never expected anything else to come out of our short encounter.

A few months later, I saw a posting by Lauren on her website, internqueen.com, about a new initiative to hire campus ambassadors across the country. Her goal was to have student interns working for her at every university in the United States. That’s not an easy task! When I saw that, I reached out to her right away to express my interest, and I hoped that she remembered me.

To my surprise—she did! (Hence the importance of networking) Almost a year and a half later, I am in my last month of working for Lauren and her amazing company. My main duties as a virtual intern varied. All of us were required to blog at least twice a month, which was always my favorite part because students across the country read our postings.

My favorite project as a virtual intern for Lauren was definitely being a part of the publicity committee for her book’s launch in January. I got the chance to work with Random House Publishing, Good Morning America and several other national media organizations to promote and market the release of her book. It amazed me how much we could accomplish as a team even though we were doing everything over conference calls and Skype.

Perhaps the best part of being involved with Intern Queen is the connections that I was able to make and the “extra perks” of the job. Lauren is connected to thousands of people in the PR world, and she is always more than happy to share her connections with us. A few months ago, her site listed an internship at People’s Revolution (think Kelly Cutrone from Kell On Earth and America’s Next Top Model), and one of her virtual interns got the chance to work there thanks to her recommendation. As an intern for Lauren, I also get to attend any networking conferences that I think would benefit the Intern Queen brand and myself for free.

Sadly, this month is my last month of working for Lauren. I will dearly miss all of the friends that I have made (although never met) from schools near and far and the opportunities that have come my way thanks to the brand’s network. However, UW Oshkosh will continue to be represented at Intern Queen. Two students from PRSSA, Mia Johnson and Taylor Cook will be the new UWO virtual interns for Lauren next school year.

All that I can say is: take advantage of internships that may seem “unconventional”. You never know what could come of them!

If you have wanted to intern at a newspaper, you’ve had limited opportunities in recent years. But the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation is changing that.

During a teleconference earlier this month with the WNA, newspaper editors and college internship coordinators like myself, the WNAF ironed out particulars of the program that is matching smaller circulation newspapers with some of the state’s finest aspiring journalists. To make this happen, the Foundation is funding half of each intern’s salary. They unveiled the initiative this week.

The WNA Foundation is seeking five journalism majors to participate in the paid internships — reporting, editing, advertising, marketing or other newspaper-related careers — during the summer of 2012. Each intern will receive approximately $3,200 for the eight-work program, or $10 an hour for a 40-hour workweek.

Newspapers are located geographically throughout the state, and students can apply for the area that is closest to home or school. Participating newspapers include:

• Door County Advocate
• The Star, Sun Prairie
• Various papers within the Capital Newspapers Portage Division (Wisconsin Dells events mainly)
• Grant County Herald Independent, Lancaster
• New Richmond News

To apply, students must submit a short essay on their personal philosophy of journalism’s role in society and supporting documents or published work samples.

The deadline for applications is May 11, 2012.  To apply, visit http://www.wnanews.com/index.asp?menuID=432&firstlevelmenuID=139 for details and a link to the online application.

Every year the Oshkosh Leach Amphitheater holds a Summer Concert Series where different bands play live every Tuesday night from June to July. Gates and concessions open at 6 p.m. with live music from 6:30-8:30 p.m., and the cost is less than $5 with a student ID. What could be better than spending a summer Tuesday night listening to live music near the river? Surprisingly, research showed that the Summer Concert Series didn’t attract the local college crowd, which happens to make up a large portion of the city. This is where Dr. Jin Kyun Lee‘s Strategic Ad Campaign class stepped in to save the day.

In efforts to attract UW Oshkosh students, increase revenue and spread awareness of Leach Amphitheater events, J-students collaborated last year to create an ad campaign appealing enough to do the job. Using the slogan “Streaming Live,” a reinvented campaign was born: “Streaming [Live] at the Leach – Tuesday Night Concert Series.” The new logo created by J-students in Lee’s class will be used on all advertisements and billboards for the concert series.

That is pretty neat considering how the campaign began as a class project and evolved into an actual campaign adopted by the Leach Amphitheater! This just goes to show how in the Journalism department students are involved in hands-on projects and gain real-world experience. As summer approaches, be sure to be on the lookout for the new Leach Amphitheater ads created by our very own J-students!

By Lindsey Noack (@LinzCnoack)

If you see zombies around campus, don’t be scared. They are trying to save lives, not take them. The UW Oshkosh chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) decided to use a unique theme this year for its annual National Organ Donor Awareness Competition (NODAC) campaign. The Saving Lives: Dead or Alive campaign focuses on educating the UW Oshkosh community on the importance of organ donation.

“The purpose of Saving Lives: Dead or Alive is simple –we want to let people know they can save lives,” said Derek Schroeder, vice president of UW Oshkosh PRSSA. “Every registered organ donor can save up to eight lives when he or she passes on. Our event also emphasizes the organ’s one can give while still living including a kidney, a liver segment, a lung lobe, a portion of intestines and a part of one’s pancreas.”

So why use zombies to promote organ donation?

“We decided on this theme because zombies are an interesting way to show the dead without them being dead, hence ‘the living dead,’ plus they’re quite popular right now in TV shows and movies, so we thought it would grab people’s attention,” said Schroeder.

The Saving Lives: Dead or Alive free event, which is being held today, Thursday, April 12 from 5-8 p.m. in the Titan Underground, is a campus wide “hunt for organs” that will consist of teams of four or five people competing for either the LIVING or DEAD side. Teams will be given a map that will serve as a guide for teams to race to different stations around UW Oshkosh campus, which are named after different organs. Each station “organ name” will be determined by the organs someone is able to give while LIVING and which organs a person gives after they are DEAD.

There will be a team task or trivia question at each organ station that must be completed in order to earn a “donor dot” and move on to the next station. The first LIVING and DEAD team to complete all six stations on its route and return to the Titan Underground will compete in a final competition against each other in order to win a Kindle Fire.

More information on the event as well as team registration forms can be found on the Saving Lives: Dead or Alive Facebook and Twitter sites. Forms can be returned to the Journalism Department office, Sage 3003, or emailed to NODAC2012@gmail.com.

Happy Organ Hunting!

I didn’t do it intentionally. In fact, I didn’t even know I had done it. But last week, when I looked at all the employers who had given of their time to participate in the Department of Journalism’s Spring 2012 mock interviews, I noticed an interesting trend. Seven of the nine employees were UW Oshkosh graduates, and six of those were journalism alumni:

Ross Mollet, associate creative director and copywriter at Arketype Inc.

Adam Sturm, UW Oshkosh campus coordinator for WISPIRG’s Energy Service Corps

Pam Seidl, director of marketing and community relations for the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau

Kate Unger, marketing manager for Reeve Memorial Union

Frank Isca, marketing programs manager and inbound marketing specialist for Weidert Group

Jon Huser, marketing manager at Bekins A-1 Movers

The seventh employer, Barb Kretsch, marketing communications manager at Secura Insurance Companies, had graduated with a degree in music.

It reminded me of another blog that I had recently read from our very own Tom Hanaway, who graduated in Summer 2011 and who is now working as a marketing and outreach specialist in Madison. His article, printed in USA Today College, gives five suggestions how to be an awesome alum. Tip No. 3 — be a mentor.

That’s just what the employers were who participated in the April 4 interviews  — mentors. The employers shared with the students what they did right and wrong in the interview. But the employers also met with journalism faculty members afterward, and we learned a few things that I’ll be passing on to the participants:

• Dress more professional. Nice is OK, but for an interview, get a suit or at least a jacket.
• Don’t be afraid to tell the employers who you are. All students told about their skills. But many didn’t give the employers a good feeling of what they were like. Employers want to know if you’d be a “good fit” for their company. They want to know about your personality and interests outside of work.
• Let your passion shine. Too many students wanted to be “generalists.” That’s OK, but if you excel in writing, for instance, make that clear in your interview, your resume, and your portfolio.

Some of the employers, however, were so impressed with our students, that two were called in for real interviews. (Translate that into real jobs.) How cool is that?

The date for the Fall 2012 mock interviews isn’t yet set. When it is, I’ll post that on the journalism website. You don’t have to be in a class to participate in the mocks. Anyone can. In fact, every one should. So make the time in your schedule. It will help hone your interview skills. And it just might land you a job. And that is really, really cool.

Tracy Zhang is a traveling scholar from Shanghai, China. After earning her degree in Advertising, Zhang went on to teach. She has been a teacher for about five years now and has come to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh to sit in on a couple of Journalism classes.

This semester, she is a special guest in Dr. Sara Steffes-Hansen’s New and Emerging Media class. The class focuses on the rising trends in social media/networking, blogging culture and new media studies. To broaden the students’ perspective on social media as a global phenomenon, Dr. Steffes-Hansen asked Zhang to teach the class more about social media in China.

As the second largest country by land area, The People’s Republic of China stands as the world’s most populous country with a population of more than 1.3 billion! Practically the biggest country on Earth with the most inhabitants, one must wonder how social media has shaped the culture of China, or rather how the culture has shaped its social media.

Due to government censorship, sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are banned in China. Instead, the social media industry is run by “local players,” Zhang explained. There are three top social networking sites in China just as there are three main players in the U.S.: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but in China they are: Renren, Kaixin and Weibo.

Both Renren and Kaixin are the Chinese equivalent of Facebook. Renren launched in 2005 and Kaixin launched three years later in 2008. Because both sites allow users to blog, post photos and play online games like “Happy Farm,” Renren and Kaixin appeal to college students and young urban professionals.

Weibo, on the other hand, is the Twitter of China. It  allows users to micro-blog on a public platform as long as they stay within 140 characters. But in Mandarin Chinese, characters have more meaning, allowing users to say more with fewer characters.

Next Zhang talked about the Chinese equivalent of YouTube called Youku. Interestingly, only 30 percent of all videos on Youku are user generated. This means there are fewer homemade “stunt” videos, recorded pranks and just general shenanigans that go on on Youku. Most of the content are TV shows and Movies, so it doesn’t surprise me when studies show that the average American YouTube user spends 15 minutes online, whereas the average Chinese Youku user spends about one hour.

Zhang also mentioned Douban, an artsy website similar to Pinterest where mostly young artists share ideas on culture, music, fashion and film.

Then there’s the dying breed, the Myspace of China, Qzone. Mostly appealing to teens, Qzone was one of the earlier social networking sites in China, and like its American counterpart, it is being phased out by newer, more attractive competitors.

But what about the more intimate sites that facilitate online dating? China has got that too. A popular dating site in China is called Jiayuan. Attracting white collar professionals, Jiayuan requires that registrants have a four-year college degree in order to join. Also, in order for a candidate to be more credible, Jiayuan encourages its users to scan their ID card into the system to verify their identity. As Zhang explained, these precautions make the site a lot safer against sexual predators.

Similar to the U.S. and yet different in so many ways, China’s social media connects billions of people every day to share ideas, converse and fall in love.

If you haven’t already started thinking about internships to enhance your resume, now is the time. The more experience you have the better your chances are of getting that dream career. I interviewed Barb Benish, the Department of Journalism’s internship coordinator, and she gave some wonderful insight on the importance of having experience and useful ways to get the experience that is needed.

It is important for journalism professionals to stay active in making posts online. Some websites to make these posts include: Blogger, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Employers are looking for active candidates that excel at those websites.

Check out Titan Jobs and upload your resume for employers to view. It is also a good way to see when employers are doing interviews on campus for a job you are interested in. Along with on-campus interviews, new job opportunities are uploaded on to Titan Jobs every day!

“To prepare for an interview you can get experience working for the Advance-Titan, joining Ad Club, PRSSA or any social media club,” Benish said.

Benish conducts an internship class to help students prepare to get the job they want. She also organizes mock interviews for students and journalism professionals. This is offered every semester.

“It’s the one time to find out what you are doing right, and what you are doing wrong. It’s a good opportunity to practice,” Benish said.

So, if you need help gaining experience before your actual interview, Benish is the one to go to. You may ask yourself if there is an internship out there that is available for you. There are internships available for everyone; it is up to you to make this opportunity possible. As Benish says: “if you want it, yes.” That is an excellent motto to follow.

For more information on internships for the Department of Journalism, check out the J-department website. Now that you have the knowledge, put that knowledge to work!