Our Students
Athlete + intern = a perfect pairing
Christian Turner isn’t old enough to drink wine, but that didn’t stop him from using his business skills to market it.
Turner, a 20-year-old Marketing Management major from Cincinnati, got an up-close view of winemaking operations this past summer at Luva Bella Winery in Lowellville through YSU’s Monus Entrepreneurship Fellows program. His project—promoting Pete’s Red and Pete’s White, two local wines named after none other than Pete the Penguin. With fewer than a dozen schools in the country having their own wine label, the Monus Fellows program offered Turner a rare chance to market YSU’s official wine while working closely with local entrepreneurs, Frank and Ruth Sergi.
“I love being a part of it, because I get to use connections I have with the school along with my internship, so I think it’s just a great fit for me,” said Turner, a junior, who is also a tailback on the Penguin football squad.
Boosting sales of Pete’s Red, a pinot noir, and Pete’s White, a pinot grigio, also helps students. A portion of proceeds from every bottle benefits student scholarships. Wine can be purchased online at luvabella.com and shipped to 35 states.
Some of Turner’s marketing ideas during his internship included networking with distributors and adding YSU wine glasses to enhance product displays.
Turner worked hard at the winery, on the field and in the classroom. He credits prioritization and time management for helping him earn him a 4.0 GPA last Spring semester. Turner has been making his mark as an athlete since he scored two touchdowns the first game of his freshman year.
“That was honestly one of the highlights of my life,” he said. “Being able to see my dream of playing college football come true almost brought a tear to my eye, just thinking back on everything I had been through and all the hard work it took to get to that point.”
Turner has his sights set on another big dream – an NFL career. He also hopes to one day open his own sports training facility for athletes of all ages, adding that his YSU experience is preparing him for a variety of future opportunities.
A Penguin sweep!Matthew Heffinger, a senior Mechanical Engineering major, received the Student Award at the annual conference of the Ohio Additive Manufacturing Cluster in Cleveland. He joined Emily Hawthorn, a 2018 YSU graduate, now lead additive manufacturing project engineer for BDI Additive, and Brett Conner, director of the YSU Advanced Manufacturing Research Center and associate professor of Manufacturing Engineering, in sweeping all awards at the conference. |
#1 in Best PracticesA team of students in the Williamson College of Business Administration earned first place at the Beta Alpha Psi Best Practices Midwest regional meeting. The presentation team consisted of Abbey Berick, Carly Chopp, Nicholas Parsons and Austin Sambuco, with contributions by Marcy Grossen. |
ADDY
Mario Ricciardi, an Advertising and Public Relations major, received a Student Silver ADDY Award for video cinematography at the Akron ADDY Awards. Ricciardi’s submission was a music video created to accompany the release of an album by a local musician.. |
Tops in mathSA team of three YSU freshmen won a Meritorious award in the international Mathematical Contest in Modeling, placing in the top 8 percent of more than 25,000 participating teams worldwide. The students are, pictured left to right, Subham Singh, Gyaneshwar Agrahari and Luke Hetzel. “This is a remarkable achievement,” said Padraic Taylor, associate professor of Mathematics and Statistics.
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Tops in the MWUndergraduate students Jared Vanasdale and John Berndt received the Best Seminar Presentation Award at the 10th annual Midwest Graduate Research Symposium. They placed first among more than 120 presentations from students, mostly master’s and PhD graduate students, at universities across the Midwest. |
A lotta fish!Jonathan Creed and Jared Latone of the YSU Bass Fishing Club earned a berth in the 2020 intercollegiate national bass fishing championship after placing sixth in the FLW Yeti College Open at Kentucky Lake. Creed and Latone hooked more than 39 pounds of fish over two days and beat out nearly 200 other college teams. |
Best ever
“It’s the best student group we have ever worked with.” That’s the assessment of Paul Jarrett, executive director of the Akron Symphony Orchestra, after a group of students in the Center for Nonprofit Leadership participated in a consulting project with the symphony last spring. Student participants included Brooke Lissy, Jack Sebest, Cliff Hill, Shannon Arnim, Chayla Regano, Jenna Roesch, Jasmine Smyles, Amanda Paynter and Lois Martin-Uscianowski.
Building a better wheel...
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...and a better bridgeYSU beat out schools such as the University of California Berkeley, Brigham Young, University of Wisconsin and University of North Carolina and placed third overall out of more than 40 teams at the 2019 National Student Steel Bridge Competition. The team of Spencer DeSalvo, Matthew Hone, Kenneth Anderson, Drew House, Thomas Carnes, Mohammed Khan and Luis Vindel qualified for the national competition by winning the Ohio Valley regional contest last spring.
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A team of YSU students placed first at the 2019 American Foundry Society Southeast Regional Casting Competition in Savannah, Ga. The team included Adam Cunning, Andrew Prokop, Rachel Hart, Nick Huggins, Mike Morocco, Christiaan Randall-Posey and Justin Stellmar. Students designed a 14-inch aluminum alloy wheel, conducted stress and casting simulations, made the mold on YSU’s 3D sand printer, poured it at YSU’s foundry and entered it in the competition.