ÃÛÌÒAPP

Shelly Vitanza:

Welcome to the ÃÛÌÒAPP Moment. Thank you for listening. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the director of public affairs at ÃÛÌÒAPP. Each week, we showcase the great events, activities, programs, projects, and people at ÃÛÌÒAPP. Speaking of a great project, the junior league of Beaumont, an organization that always has great projects going on and is really responsible for so many amazing things in the Southeast Texas area, our art museum of Southeast Texas, the John Jay French Museum and many, many other projects that I can go on and on and list, they have established the Julie Richardson Proctor scholarship at ÃÛÌÒAPP. It was endowed in August 2019 with a gift of $71,767.96. The scholarship was established to honor Julie Richardson Proctor’s legacy by rewarding a student who epitomizes the spirit of volunteerism and giving back to the community. The scholarship is open to full-time students of all majors, undergraduate and graduate levels who maintain a 3.0 GPA. Very exciting scholarship, very beneficial to our students and a wonderful memorial to Julie Richardson Proctor who was a phenomenal lawyer and a community advocate here in Southeast Texas. Julie passed away from ovarian cancer. We talk a lot about experiential learning at ÃÛÌÒAPP and producing graduates who are ready on day one of employment and so, I found this course that took place in the fall of this year at ÃÛÌÒAPP, really remarkable, because it gives students immediate marketable skills. It’s a social media campaigns course, 49 ÃÛÌÒAPP students earned not only their credits for this class, but they earned the HubSpot social media certificate, which is a professional social media strategy certificate. Now HubSpot is a leading company in inbound online social media marketing and software development. The free certification program is super popular among social media content managers and recognized in the industry. So, the course here at ÃÛÌÒAPP combines content with the requirements for the certificate. So, students simultaneously gain, like I said, the credits but then they earn their certificate. That’s significant because the average pay of a social media manager is between $35,000-$72,000, so with a certificate from HubSpot, ÃÛÌÒAPP students are poised for those entry-level positions in the field of social media, so, you know just very practical skills you can gain here at ÃÛÌÒAPP while getting your degree. I talked to one of the students who took the course, Matt Gonzales and he said that he had already started working with some small businesses and helping them with social media so he’s able to supplement his cost of college by applying his HubSpot certificate and working immediately in social media, so really cool stuff going on here at ÃÛÌÒAPP. Okay, so if you listened to last week’s ÃÛÌÒAPP Moment, thank you, and you will recall we launched this new series: “What have you done with your ÃÛÌÒAPP degree?” Because where I sit in the public affairs office of ÃÛÌÒAPP, I have the privilege of hearing a lot of great success stories about ÃÛÌÒAPP graduates. It’s really a fun part of my job. So last week, we heard from Hannah Rumsey, a brand-new graduate, headed off to full-time employment with Exxon Mobil. The second guest in my series is someone I see all over the social media airway. She’s active in the community, a friend to many, many people. She seems to always be trending and she’s succeeded in every job she’s had, especially the one she has now. It is Sharita Gardner, she is a business

development representative at Mobil Oil Credit Union among other things we are going to get into. Sharita, welcome, so glad you could join.

Sharita Gardner:

Thank you so much for having me today, Shelly. I appreciate it.

Shelly Vitanza:

Alright, we’re going to tell your story. So, we’re going to start with where you’re from and what’s your background and how you came to be a ÃÛÌÒAPP student to begin with.

Sharita Gardner:

So, I am from Houston, Texas, actually a smaller, suburbial area outside of Houston, the Missouri City, Stafford area. I graduated from high school and I attended ÃÛÌÒAPP, so that’s what brought me to Beaumont and Southeast Texas. I wanted to go away for college, but I wanted to go somewhere where I could still go home and wash my clothes at my parents house and utilize their resources.

Shelly Vitanza:

That was pretty smart! I have a son like that. He’s attending Lamar and he shows up with his laundry and wants a home-cooked meal. I understand. What did you major in when you got to Lamar? Talk to us about your experience here and what you were involved in.

Sharita Gardner:

So, I was a corporate communications major. I initially attended Lamar thinking I wanted to be a news anchor, so my major was broadcast journalism. I got interested in broadcast journalism in high school. I was on yearbook and I did the newspaper and we also had a weekly show that aired regarding our high school activities and events, and so from that point on, I pretty much knew that I wanted to get paid to talk to people and that I just really loved interacting with people and learning their stories.

Shelly Vitanza:

Okay, so I think you, like many students who enter college, they start out going in one direction and then they go in a different direction. They change majors and think that happens pretty frequently, but at least you stayed in the same college and kind of in the same mode of studies in the communications department. Was it a hard transition to move from the broadcast over to the corporate communications?

Sharita Gardner:

It was not. I didn't’t make that decision until I think my junior or senior year, so I was too close to graduation to completely go another route and so, I think my advisor, Dr. Myhousky, advised

me, “well, if you want to do something in the communications realm, you are able to. You’ve taken most of your classes, your able to stay within this degree path, if you stay in the communications department.” So, for me, corporate communications leaned more towards kind of an HR aspect of communications. What makes a business run effectively? What makes an organization run effectively with communication? That was right up my alley and so I did not have to do much to be able to switch my major and I still ended up really enjoying what I got my degree in.

Shelly Vitanza:

That’s great. So, when did you graduate?

Sharita Gardner:

So, I graduated from Lamar in 2012. I was waiting tables the entire time I was in college and I was still waiting tables after I graduated and I decided, you know, I’m not from here, I don’t know a lot of people. I’m just going to go to all the staffing agencies and try to get acclimated to the area, and through that, I was introduced to the Beaumont Chamber of Commerce which opened up a whole other realm for me.

Shelly Vitanza:

You just kind of made your way. You just decided not to go back to Houston or Missouri City and kind of found your way here in Beaumont. So, talk to us about that transition because I’ve heard that people say, Sharita, and I’m a native of Beaumont, that Beaumont’s kind of hard to infiltrate. Beaumont’s kind of hard if you’re not from here to be included and you’ve obviously overcome that. Let’s talk about how you did that.

Sharita Gardner:

So, I would agree with those individuals who say it’s hard to get acclimated to Beaumont. I did not have family and friends here. Most of the people who I graduated Lamar with, they were from Houston, Dallas, and other areas and they graduated, and they went home. Well, I knew that I did not want to move back in with my parents and so I already had an apartment here and so I was just going to keep my apartment here, work a little bit and see if I could find