New to RMU: Joseph Zimmer

 New to RMU: Joseph Zimmer

Written by Ashley Imhoff, Clarence Fields, and Reese Smith; edited by Dr. Cathleen Jones

Meet Dr. Joseph Zimmer! RMU's new Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs. In this position, Zimmer is the Chief Academic Officer, and second in line to President Patrick. He is responsible for everything regarding teaching and learning. This includes all the schools, deans, faculty, library, student support, solution central, student life, and housing.

 

Dr. Zimmer is originally from Buffalo, New York, and studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in teacher education, a master’s in English Education, and his doctorate in Reading Education. One of his favorite genres to read is history. Since being a Buffalo native, he is a devoted Buffalo Bills fan and has followed the team since the 1960s. 

Before arriving at RMU in June, he served many roles at St. Bonaventure University in New York, most recently including Provost, Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Interim President. While at St. Bonaventure, he enhanced their academic programs and added 25 new majors to the University. Throughout his 31-year career at St. Bonaventure, he had many accomplishments and felt he reached his full potential and was looking for something new, leading him to RMU. Zimmer chose RMU because of its reputation, academics, and faculty. He emphasized the importance of a college education not being a transactional experience and admires how the faculty truly cares about their students succeeding inside and outside the classroom. One of Dr. Zimmer's favorite parts of the job is commencement day. He enjoys seeing all of the components of his job tie together through the success of the students graduating and heading onto their desired career paths.

 

 Outside of work, Zimmer enjoys watching movies in his spare time and considers himself a film buff. He noted that it's easy to do in between work and he is interested in the characters and actors playing the roles. Some of his favorites include Casablanca and Field of Dreams. He also appreciates the art of classic black-and-white films.

He also has a profound interest in music. Back in high school, he developed an interest in music and is proficient in playing the saxophone, clarinet, and flute. One of his first teaching jobs was giving music lessons. He has participated in playing in local jazz bands, wedding receptions, community bands, and orchestras for musicals. He hopes to continue that interest here in Pittsburgh and even joked he might make an appearance in the RMU band! 

Since moving to Pittsburgh, he has loved the culture and how homey, safe, and comfortable it feels. He and his wife enjoy trying out the restaurants and the variety of food the area has to offer. Some of his favorites are Downey’s House and Mission BBQ in Robinson Township. As mentioned previously, Dr. Zimmer is originally from Buffalo and likes being able to visit his family frequently since Buffalo is only a few hours north of Pittsburgh. He is a father to four children and grandfather to four, soon to be five, with one on the way.

 

Since obtaining this position, one of his goals for RMU is to get the academic affairs within the University stable and moving forward. With his experience adding new programs and majors at St. Bonaventure, he is interested in creating more opportunities for new and prospective students. 

Spring 2021 Virtual Career Fair

Written by Natalie Quinn, Dylan Hernandez, and Robert Woodford; edited by Dr. Cathleen Jones

Friday, February 17th, RMU will be hosting their second virtual career and student engagement fair! 93 different companies will be attending, ready and excited to talk to you! All current students and alumni are welcome and encouraged to attend! This is the perfect opportunity for all majors to meet with prospective employers. Full-time jobs, part-time jobs, and internships are available. You can meet for 30-minute group sessions or schedule a one-on-one 10-minute meeting with any employer. You can build your own schedule to make it flexible and meet with as many or as few employers as you want. Register and start scheduling via Handshake before time slots are filled up. This is a SET credit eligible event.

Entrepreneurship Week

Written by Tori Saseen and Mallory Merkle. Edited by Dr. Cathleen Jones

At RMU, there is an amazing opportunity for students to learn about entrepreneurship. The Massey Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (MCEI) is striving to do just that. With events planned throughout the entire academic year, MCEI engages students and faculty to connect and participate in entrepreneurship events. The main event for the center is called Entrepreneurship Week and takes place in November. While this year’s events have not been put into place just yet, previous years have been quite successful. The events that took place were Venture Day for America, the debut of the Entrepreneur in Residence, and a Vision Board event with a student group on campus. 

Venture Day for America was an event with Katie Grimm. She hosted a lunch and learn with students in attendance and students were able to ask her questions and learn about how businesses come to be in America. 

The debut of the Entrepreneur in Residence was to showcase David and Mary Jo Dietrich, the founders of Caregogi, and their introduction to the campus. During their time in residence, they served as a resource for students and a network connection for faculty. 

The Vision Board event was done with a student organization on RMU’s campus known as Women in Business (WIB). WIB hosted the Director of the Center, Dr. Griffin-El, to talk about how women should plan their goals and how women in entrepreneurial positions are changing the work environment. Students created their own vision board where they created their dreams with magazines and other materials. 

If students want to get in contact with MCEI, they can find us at https://www.rmu.edu/about/massey/what-we-do MCEI is open to all students and is greatly encouraged for anyone who has a small business. 

Virtual Career Fair

 

Free Gift - Big RMU Welcome from your Department Head

My name is Dr. Jill Kurp and I am the Head of the Marketing Department here at RMU. I want to be among the first to welcome you to campus. I'd like to meet you and give you a free gift. I will be at a table outside of the Business Building on Tuesday and Thursday this week from 9am-10am and 1pm-2pm each day. Please stop by and say hello and get your gift from me.

Good Luck this semester and Welcome to the Marketing Major at RMU!!!! 

Dr. Kurp

RMU Virtual Career Fair: October 1st

 The Career and Professional Development Center (CPDC) is excited to host our first-ever virtual career fair in partnership with Handshake on October 1st from 12:00 – 4:00 pm.

The Fair is open to all RMU students and alumni. In order to participate, students must have an active account in Handshake which they have by virtue of being registered for the Fall, 2020 semester. Students should make sure their Student Profile is up to date and includes a solid resume. Their Success Coach in the Center for Student Success and Personal Development will be able to provide resume assistance if needed. Students will be able to network with employers and have career-related discussions just as they would in an in-person career fair – only without the waiting in line.

Student registration will open on August 24^th and will continue up until the day of the fair.

Using Handshake to host our virtual career fair allows employers to host one-on-one meetings and group sessions with up to 50 participants.  Students can register for specific sessions with employers for both group and one-on-one sessions which eliminates the “waiting in a virtual line” factor.

Employers will be recruiting for internships, part-time, and full-time positions. They, too, must have an active Handshake account to participate. Employer registration will open at 9:00 am on August 12th, giving them ample time to establish their sessions before students begin to register.  We hope you will encourage your network of trusted employers to participate. 

More information will follow as we get closer to October 1st.

For more information please reach out to the Career and Professional Development Center at careercenter@rmu.edu or contact Ellen Hitchins at hitchins@rmu.edu.

RMU students place 3rd in the USA in the National L'Oréal Brandstorm 2020 Competition

Three RMU students (Zack Kutchma, Lizanne Marshall, Joshua Troiani) entered the competition back in January and took 3^rd place overall in the United States.

The competition has been held for 28 years. This year, more than 40,000 students from 65 countries proposed nearly 10,000 innovations (https://brandstorm.loreal.com/en). At stake was the chance to compete in the Worldwide Finals in Paris, with the winning team getting the opportunity to further develop their project by spending 3 months of incubation at Station F, the biggest startup campus in the world. Most of the USA finalists came from very large schools such as University of Maryland, University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, University of Southern California, New York University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Howard University, and Drexel University. It is wonderful to see Robert Morris University in this list!

The goal of this ambitious project was to build a plastic-less future in the beauty industry. Throughout the entire process, the students had to touch on a variety of different business areas including consumer insight and behavior, product packaging and design, technology, branding, supply chain and logistics, and more. Not only that, but they tapped into their own networks to vet ideas with numerous industry experts in the respective areas to be sure they delivered a complete end solution.

From Lizanne Marshall (mid-April):

“Finding out that our team, the Pittsburgh Plastic Purgers, gets to share our ideas to potentially create an impact on the environment and help eliminate the use of plastic in this year’s L’Oréal Brandstorm 2020 finals is beyond exciting. This has been a dream of mine to be working with L’Oréal. I am beyond grateful for this amazing experience.”

Joshua Troiani commented on their team’s dynamic in mid-April:

“I would like to acknowledge Zack Kutchma and Lizanne Marshall on the hard work, dedication, and countless hours that went into this project. A simple thank you does not suffice. These people made such an impact on my college career, and my gratitude is so profound that a pat on the back for this project just isn't enough. We have already accomplished so much as a team, and I can't wait to see what we can do as we move forward even after this competition.”

From Zack Kutchma after their 3^rd place finish:

“It’s really cool when you look back at how all of this began. Four months ago, I was helping Lizanne with her resume. In the process, I came across Brandstorm. A week later, Lizanne, Josh, and I found ourselves in front of a blank whiteboard, thinking about how we were going to create a plastic-less future in the beauty industry.

The three of us realized that our chances of actually advancing was about 1%. However, I made the two a promise: If we all dedicated ourselves, we would be one of the 10 teams standing on stage at the USA National Finals in NYC in May.

While it wasn’t the NYC skyline we had hoped for, the three of us did make it to the USA Virtual Finals. Not only did we make it to “NYC,” but we were honored to have placed 3rd in the United States out of 2,800+ students, putting us in the 0.3%.

I’m extremely grateful for Lizanne and Josh for taking this journey with me! I can’t imagine another two people I would’ve wanted to experience this with.”

From Regina Kendrick, Assistant Manager II, University Relations & Employer Branding, L’Oréal USA:

“On behalf of the L'Oréal USA Brandstorm Team, I want to congratulate you all on a fantastic Brandstorm 2020. This year was by far the most competitive in history as we had over twice the number of teams competing than last year and more than any other year before. We were blown away by how innovative and thoughtful your ideas were, which did not make selecting the Brandstorm 2020 USA Top 10 National Finalist Teams an easy task.”

Although they did not win, coming in 3^rd means they are eligible to compete again next year.

Congratulations to these gifted students!