Entrepreneur clubs on campus give students opportunities

By Donte Medder |Staff Writer|

Start it Up Club and Toastmasters club strive to help students reach higher levels of success in the business world.

Graduate Student Rusty Palmer has been involved in Toastmasters since 2012 when the club started and saw immediate benefits from his association with the club.

Palmer said, “I’ve been trying to find work here since 2009 and I wasn’t getting call backs. Then I put Toastmasters on my resume and I have gotten six job offers.”

Our on-campus Toastmasters club was established in 2012. The club focuses on helping members better their public speaking, leadership and growth as an English speaker for those who learn English as a second language.

Since being in Toastmasters, Palmer has seen growth in his public speaking abilities.

“I went from not being able to speak in front of a room full of my peers to doing a fast pitch in front of 250 people including the mayor of Riverside,” said Palmer.

Palmer introduced a new club this year, the Start it Up Club to provide a resource for students, other clubs and even small businesses to network within the community.

The club was established for people to come together to build teams for a project, event or workshop that can benefit students and create entrepreneur ventures.

If students want to have an on-campus event, or want to have a community off-campus event, the club can help them create student teams to build on the ideas and execute them. This is Palmer’s main objective for the club.

“We want to build leaders, teamwork experience and help students foster their ideas into an actual creation with the teamwork attached to it,” said Palmer.

Palmer believes that many people leave college prepared to work but they do not have the support or the push to get to their goals.

He said there are people who can’t find basic employment when they’re done with school because of the lack of leadership skills.

Palmer plans to have the leadership team take a backseat and push students involved towards other students who think similarly.

Palmer said, “What we’re going to do as a leadership team is just support member ideas.”

Once the club is completely established with a solid membership he plans on being able to help small businesses in the community.

“We want to be able to help small businesses down the road too,” Palmer said.

“So if a small business needs help in some areas they can come to us and we can form a committee of students to help with a specific problem,” he continued.

The Start it Up Club already have two events planned for this January. One is a partnership with the career center in which they will help students find the right kind of employers.

Another is working with a company called Bridge the Tech Gap and this event will help students in attendance learn more about technology as a resource.

The Toastmasters club meets on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. and the “Start it Up Club” meets at 1 p.m. on Thursdays in the Student Union.

Students who wish to be ready for the real world are encouraged to join these clubs to further advance their skills.