Building Students for Success

Yes, The Odyssey is a newspaper. It is a forum for students to share, express, and discuss whatever they wish with other members of the group. But behind the scenes, it is a business –a business that is ran almost entirely by local students. Each campus leadership team is comprised of young entrepreneurs who work to build and grow their own business. This team works across campus to build relationships with local businesses, develop strategies for better content and grow the overall support within the Greek community.

While many young graduates and interns are gaining their first experience hustling spreadsheets, cold-calling daily or even filing papers, these students have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in all aspects of running their own division of a company. This experience allows students to better themselves through their own hard-work and our coaching. Developing exceptional organization skills. Learning how to effectively communicate with people of all ages and levels. Gaining experience leading and motivating a team. Setting goals and holding people accountable to them. These are more than just “skills” that anyone can learn, they are strengths which can be developed to set students up to reach their goals in life.
By partnering with current students to build The Odyssey and develop these strengths, we are able to provide an incredible opportunity. These skill sets will continue to grow and help the students involved succeed in both life and business. While building a resume is something every student worries about (or should), it is much more important to learn new things and develop into a well-rounded individual. To be truly successful, students entering the workforce need to be able to handle anything thrown at them and adapt to situations based on what they have previously learned. And I believe college is the time to do this not just in the classroom, but especially outside!

I consider myself exceptionally lucky to do what I do. Working with people I can relate to and working to develop this business for the benefit of local students, the campus leaders, and the whole company is not something many people can say they were involved in. But getting to help students in a position I am not too far removed from makes our growth and success all the more gratifying. And as we continue to partner with student leaders to build The Odyssey into the product I know it can be, every party involved will continue to benefit.

Pat Krouse, Regional Sales Manager

Taming the Information Age

The last time I read anything, rather than skimmed, was early 6th grade. I had a class that taught us how to speed read, and while I'm no where near as fast as I ought to be, I can now get the gist of everything that I read without looking at every word.

Any more with the incredible amounts of information out there, everyone has had to learn to skim to get the meat of the information in as little time as possible.

Sentences are getting shorter. Paragraphs are getting shorter.

And for me, as graphic designer and infographic aficionado, this future is exciting!

Ever wanted to know who's the most bad-ass of the cast of the Expendables? (Click image to see full size)





Or why there's a budget shortfall in the US?


Infographics can tell you that.

In fact, an infographic can do more than just deliver a lot of information in a little amount of time. At their very best, they illustrate relationships between concepts, bringing some new information to light.








And here at The Odyssey, because infographics are so important to this generation of consumers, we've dedicated an average of 2 pages of our newspapers to information visualizations.

Here are some of the highlights from the last semester:






Kathleen Tennant, Designer