Category: Feature Writing

For as long as she can remember, Emmanuel College senior Jamie Siracusa wanted to run a business. She spent her younger years coming up with ideas for businesses and making up “mini-businesses” for fun. It was after her senior year in high school on a trip to Old Orchard Beach that Siracusa had a groundbreaking idea for a business that she couldn’t ignore.

Siracusa launched that dream in March 2016, her junior year of college. She spent the next months getting the business up and running, all while balancing her dream business with the rest of her life.

Siracusa is not alone in her business ventures. Emmanuel College freshman Uzoma Okebalama, seniors Matt Baker and Richard Griffin were also inspired to start businesses once they reached college. Okebalama wanted to change the fashion industry while Baker and Griffin took their hobby and monetized it.

Some students get part time jobs in college to make money, others start their own businesses. Whether they do so out of passion or necessity, these business can begin small and grow into something much greater. When these businesses do grow, students have to balance managing the business with their classes and other obligations such as jobs, sports, clubs, and friends. Finding that balance between growing a business and other school related obligations creates a successful business while still in college.

In the Emmanuel College Student Handbook, there are two sections concerning student businesses on campus. The first lists solicitation “without the written permission of the Dean of Students, Associate Dean/Director of Student Activities, Director of Residence Life or designee” as a breach of the student Code of Conduct. Here, solicitation refers to a request for money in exchange for a service.

The second sections goes into detail about solicitation in the residence buildings specifically. It outlines that businesses such as “babysitting/child care services, sales, haircutting, etc.” cannot be operated out of the residence hall. It also dissuades students from using their room numbers in advertisements for the business. Students are also not allowed to advertise their business in the residence halls.

“Operating a business out of the residence hall is different than starting a business. You could start a business, a clothing business for example, we’ve had students do that, and they design the clothes and they sell them through a website. That’s different than cutting hair in your room in the residence halls. So the prohibition against businesses in the residence halls isn’t against starting them, it’s against operating them out of the residence halls,” said Dr. Patricia Rissmeyer, Dean of Students.

The purpose of these prohibitions, she explained, was to keep student facilities at the college operating for their intended purposes. This means, for example, that a student with a cupcake business cannot reserve the kitchen in the St. Joe’s Basement all day in order to make their cupcakes, or use the mailroom to send out their orders.

“There is somewhat of a line there as far as what we would support with our own facilities and our own resources,” said Rissmeyer.

Students get around the issue of operating a business out of the residence halls by hosting their businesses online. Siracusa, Okebalama, Baker, and Griffin all use websites and Facebook groups as a platform to sell their product.

Siracusa started Quote Handbags, Apparel, and Accessories in the summer 2013. Since then it has evolved into the business it is today. Q, as Siracusa calls her business, offers t-shirts, canvas bags, and her signature “Quote Tote,” all of which feature inspiring quotes from the Bible others such as “make choices that liberate you” and “choose kindness & laugh often.” There is also an option for customizable quotes.

“As a Christian company our mission is to ultimately spread the word and love of God,” said Siracusa.

Baker and Griffin began “Monster Meats,” their beef jerky business, in 2015 after Baker got a dehydrator for his birthday. To date, they have made over 30 flavors of jerky that they sell through their Facebook group, “Rich and Matt’s Monster Meats.”

“We let our friends try it, we shared it with people. At first we just liked hanging out and eating it but people seemed to like it a lot. So we made more,” said Griffin. From there, “Monster Meats” has grown from a hobby to a business. Their small specialized batches allow them to save money on meat because, if a batch doesn’t taste as good as they thought, they don’t have too much leftover product.

Okebalama started Urban Zoo, a clothing company, in her senior year of high school.

“I was irritated by how quality fashion had to be expensive and often meaningless to the vast majority of people and couldn’t be used as a means to better those that helped to create the product, but yet still remain fairly priced and of a high quality,” she said.

All four students run their businesses during the semester, and have differing opinions about balancing the two.

“The jerky takes time to dry out, so we just put it in the dehydrator and wait for the magic to happen,” said Baker. They have the dehydrator in their City View apartment, which is housing offered through Emmanuel College.

“To be honest, I have not found the perfect balance yet. I really have not given Q the full attention I would like to, because of my first priority of schoolwork,” said Siracusa.

“That’s actually a funny question. I don’t know if there truly can be a balance. Both require the same amount of energy,” said Okebalama.

Griffin and Baker credit their growing success to their friends love of meat. Without them, “Monster Meats” would not have an audience. So far, their friends and family are their only customers, but as the business grows, they hope to attract more attention outside of this circle.

“We aren’t at the point where we’d consider ourselves successful but our faithful Urban Zoo community will definitely be the reason why we fail or succeed,” said Okebalama.

All four students hope to continue their businesses after graduation, although Griffin and Baker are more unsure about how long they will continue.

“It’s too soon to say,” said Baker. With five months until graduation, it’s not unusual for senior entrepreneurs to not know if they will continue their college era start up.

“I will definitely still be pushing Urban Zoo after graduation. Might even show up on an Urban Zoo cap and gown,” said Okebalama.

“When I graduate I would like to pursue Q with full force and engage in many more realms within the business. I would like to do more advertising, shows, partnerships and of course service to others within the business,” said Siracusa.

2010 alumna Asha Isabella is one entrepreneur who continued her business after college. At Emmanuel, she designed clothing, some of which was used in a fashion show hosted at Emmanuel. She continued designing after college, putting out two collections.

Isabella designed clothing for retail clients and customers such as the rapper Flo Rida for whom she designed spike studded Supras, a brand of sneakers.

After some time, Isabella says she lost her inspiration, focus, and clarity in designing. She experienced a “quarter life crisis,” and has been working on a novel ever since.

Isabella was not available for comment.

Looking towards their futures, Okebalama and Siracusa have the highest hopes for their businesses.

“I want Urban Zoo to go where all entrepreneurs hope their businesses will go. I want to see my products on the community around me and the world. I want the name Urban Zoo to inspire many and bring comfort to some. I don’t just want money from selling shirts. I want the being of my soul to be remembered in an idea that’s benefits far surpassed my own needs,” said Okebalama.

“Truly I hope to see the business have a huge impact on people and evolve and change over time. Q is nowhere near where I want it to be. New ideas come into my head everyday and I hope to make a large impact and have something stick. I hope to develop a larger product line, expand my online platform, enter the retail market, and most importantly create an attached long-lasting ministry to the business,” said Siracusa.

Selecting a college is traditionally viewed as the most important decision a student can make in their educational career. One wrong decision could change the course of their life, or so they think. Students and their families place a lot of pressure on the college decision and there are many influencing factors.

Sandy Robbins, Emmanuel College’s Dean of Enrollment and Admissions and Pam McDonough, a guidance counselor at Exeter High School, offer counseling to graduating seniors during their college decision making process. Robbins, who has been at Emmanuel college for 16 years, highlights aspects of Emmanuel College that students might not see through a typical college search. McDonough, who has been at Exeter High School for 34 years, has intimate knowledge of what seniors are looking for in colleges and the application process.

“I do think that there’s the cerebral part of the search,” said Robbins. “Does it have the academic programs that I’m looking for, is it the location that I’m looking for–it’s just sort of cerebral–is it small, is it large, can I afford it, can I get in.”

The question for graduating seniors remains, what is the most important factor when selecting a college? Students are faced with the daunting task of determining which college is right for them based off of information they receive online, through the mail, and if they’re lucky, on tours of the institution. Sorting through this information and determining where ranking falls could make or break a student’s final decision.

This is true. Out of twenty students interviewed, twelve indicated that they looked at rankings during their college decision making process.

“From a school counselor’s perspective, I help kids to direct them away from rankings because really it’s about helping them find an academic fit, a social fit, and an economic fit and each student is individual,” said McDonough. Students are given a laundry list of items to consider when applying for colleges such as academic programs, sports, class sizes, and overall happiness of current students.

“Looking at rankings about what is a good school, what could be a good school for one learner or a student with academic expectations might be different for another,” McDonough said.

Ranking websites may not paint the entire picture of the college either, showing prospective students only the numbers side of the college rather than the more personable side.

“I, as a professional, would much rather tell a story about a student than I would to say we rank somewhere because we’re trying to make a difference to individuals lives,” said Robbins. She is a firm believer in visiting the prospective college and seeing current students on their campus.

Colleges do offer alternatives to an in person campus visit. Emmanuel College has an online tour, though it is not a video tour as some colleges have. Prospective student can click on each building on campus and learn more about them. Images of both the insides and outsides of these buildings are shown.

“[Rankings] certainly gives students an idea of the name brands of schools but I encourage students to get beyond the branding,” said McDonough.

It’s not just administrators who feel this way about college rankings either. Current college students, reflecting back on their admissions process, realized there was more to selecting a college than where they fall rank wise.

“At first, I thought rankings were an indication of how good a college was,” said freshman Hugmaelle Jean. “But doing more research on a college, although it wasn’t in a high rank, made me realize ranks don’t really matter. Ranks can’t be the only thing that makes you like a certain college.”

Sites like the US News & World Report are responsible for generating these ranking lists that prospective students see. They create these lists based off on “U.S. News’ researched view of what matters in education” as well as “quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality,” according to their website.

These indicators are graduation and retention rates, undergraduate academic reputation, student selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, alumni giving, and graduation performance rate. The most important of these factors are undergraduate academic reputation and graduation/retention rates, which hold 22.5 percent weight. Faculty resources follows closely behind with 20 percent.

According to US News’ Communications and Public Relations Coordinator Enxhi Myslymi “U.S. News does not receive funds from colleges that impact their rankings.”

This does not mean, however, that schools do not use their own money to try and impact their rankings. According to an article in Boston Magazine, “from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, for instance, to lure students with high GPAs and SAT scores, private four-year schools increased spending on merit-based aid from $1.6 billion to $4.6 billion.”

In their decision making, US News looks to data sourced directly from the colleges themselves as well as the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Council for Aid to Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, according to their website.

Emmanuel College is listed as “Rank Not Published” on US News. According to Robert Morse, Chief data strategist at US News, schools labeled at “Rank Not Published” are in the bottom 25 percent of their ranking category. For Emmanuel, this would be the National Liberal Arts Colleges category.

These schools like Emmanuel go through the ranking process, but an editorial decision is made not to publish the ranking.

“Not all rankings are created equal,” said Robbins. “They also change what they rank on and so that has an impact to it. For instance… the US News and World Report, they recently changed their classifications and we had been classified in one classification and now we’re in another.”

US News also has four categories for ranking colleges, National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges.

Emmanuel College’s direct competitors when it comes to accepted students are Suffolk University, Stonehill College, Assumption College, the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst), and the University of New Hampshire (UNH) according to Robbins.

“I consider our competitors people who we share accepted students with and we sort of split what happens for people who are accepted to both,” said Robbins

Not all of these institutions are ranked in the same groups.

Were Emmanuel College to be ranked, it would be in the same group at Stonehill, which is tied for 108 in the National Liberal Arts Colleges category. Suffolk, UMass Amherst, and UNH are all considered to be National Universities and are ranked 188, 74, and 107, respectively. Only Assumption is in the Regional Universities (North) category, tied for 23.

This differentiation between institutional categories makes cross comparison of rankings difficult for students. They cannot compare colleges side by side if they are in different categories because they are held to different standards depending on the programs offered.

Location was a determining factor for twelve of the twenty students interviewed, followed closely by the majors and course offerings of Emmanuel College.

“Location,” said alumna Anastasia Yogas. “To gain as much internship experience while in college as possible, I wanted to attend a school that had easy/possible access to internship locations. Attending a small school (which I wanted) in an inaccessible location seemed like a wasted opportunity.”

“Definitely the reputation of the major and professors within the department,” said senior Katelyn Belmonte. “I was at an advantage knowing my major, and it influenced my entire academic career, from required courses to internships. Emmanuel had the best composition of a well-rounded four years.”

These kinds of factors are what admissions officers and guidance counselors like to see students paying attention to.

“There’s the very emotional part, the gut,” said Robbins. “It’s the way you feel when you visit that college.” For Emmanuel, most students are drawn in by the campus feel that is created in the city. Emmanuel’s campus features a quad with recently added picnic tables and brick architecture that appeals to prospective students visually.

“I really think that it’s really important for students to self reflect about what they’re looking at in higher ed and what values that they have,” said McDonough. Only the student themselves can know which college is right for them based off of what they want to glean from their time in higher education. Rankings cannot determine those factors for students.

“The most important factor was how it felt to be there when I was touring or visiting for accepted students day,” said Jean. “I think how you feel when you are on campus is the most important thing because it gives you an indication of how this college will be for you.”

“My friends joked that the only job I’d be qualified for was to host ‘I love the 2000s’ on VH1. Ironically, I am now both a writer and a pop culture critic,” said Andrea McDonnell, Assistant Professor of Communications and Media Studies at Emmanuel College. Her field of focus is media, specifically media produced and consumed by women.

McDonnell now finds herself teaching three classes in the Fall 2016 semester with about 55 students total. These numbers vary, in the Spring 2016 semester McDonnell has 80-85 students. She is also the club advisor for Emmanuel College Communications Club and distinction advisor to seniors for their final semester.

Helping Students Realize Their Potential

In the fall of 2016, McDonnell was the distinction advisor for three Communications and Media Studies students. According to the Emmanuel College website, a distinction in the field is given to a student who have a grade point average of 3.5 or higher in their major courses and who complete a presentation of their project. This project is a significant research project the student completes with the help of a professor who is their distinction advisor. After being reviewed by the student’s major department, they are either granted or denied distinction in the field.

Class of 2016’s Eve Barkin was one of McDonnell’s distinction students. Barkin’s presentation was titled A cross-generational reading of HBO’s Sex and the City. Her distinction focused on “how women cross-generationally interact with these texts, and what these interactions reveal about millennial-targeted media in the 21st century,” as described in a Distinction in the Field flyer.

McDonnell was also the distinction advisor for Rachel Aiello and Jennifer Burgess, also of the Class of 2016. Aiello’s distinction was titled Making it Ours: Our Bodies, ourselves and the dynamics of literary liberation and “explores Our Bodies, Our Selves and its origins at a 1969 Women’s Liberation Conference at Emmanuel College to highlight the influence of a media text and how it can function to make the personal political,” according to a Distinction in the Field flyer. Burgess’ distinction, Kardashian Kulture: Exploring the beauty myth within 21st-century media, focused on “the Kardashian-Jenner family, analyzing the ways in which these self-created stars have utilized their “beauty-empire”, television series, and social media personalities to shape and mold the lens through which beauty is understood within American and global, culture today,” as listed on a Distinction in the Field flyer.

“It was a no brainer,” Barkin said about selecting McDonnell as her distinction advisor. “She was the one who taught me in my favorite media studies courses, and she really knew me as a student.” Barkin credits McDonnell with driving her towards interesting projects and her best possible work.

“It was incredibly helpful that she knew my learning style and what I was most interested in when it came to media studies,” said Barkin. “She was able to help me pick my topic and sculpt my thesis and distinction project using that personal knowledge.”

“I love to see how the projects unfold and to be a source of support and encouragement,” said McDonnell. She does not like to make the project all about her suggestions, however, and wants the focus to be on what the student is creating.

“My role is really just to help the students know that they have the skills and the thoughtfulness to achieve their goals and the rest takes care of itself,” McDonnell said. Her process seems to have worked because all three of her distinction advisees received distinction in the field.

Before Media Studies and Emmanuel

McDonnell is originally from Hicksville, Long Island, which McDonnell credits as being “very suburban” rather than “hick-like.”

“People sometimes think I am trying to be funny but that’s the actual town.” In high school, McDonnell wanted to be a poet. She always enjoyed creative writing and her parents never dissuaded her from pursuing that dream.

“I couldn’t choose. I became an American Culture major because it was interdisciplinary and very flexible,” McDonnell said. In college, she took classes in all areas of study, from English to Print Making. She interned at Jane magazine, which launched in September 1997 and ran until August 2007. This publication designed for women who did not like the typical format of women’s magazines and targeted those in the age range of 18-34. McDonnell was well within that age group when she wrote for the magazine and so not only was she primed to be a consumer, but seeing the inner workings of the magazine opened her eyes to the construction of media designed for women.

After graduating in 2001 from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie with a B.A. in American Culture, New York, McDonnell moved back home to Long Island and worked roughly eight jobs in New York City and upstate New York over the course of two years.

“I was a security guard at a couple of big name museums,” said McDonnell. “Imagine! I am the least threatening security guard out there.” After writing for a sculpture website, McDonnell got a job as an educator at the Long Island Children’s Museum. “That was also where I started reading gossip magazines and where my idea for my dissertation took hold,” said McDonnell.

McDonnell went back to school, this time to the University of Michigan for her P.h.D. in Communication Studies. McDonnell’s dissertation, Just Like Us: Celebrity Gossip Magazines in American Popular Culture, looks at the production, content, and readership of gossip magazines to understand why they matter in contemporary American culture. In 140 pages, her dissertation looks at “tabloidization and the gendered public,” the female reader in relation to celebrity gossip magazines, and the “ordinary celebrity.” McDonnell’s dissertation closely resembles her first book, Reading Celebrity Gossip Magazines, which was published in 2014.

Implementing Her Field at Emmanuel

McDonnell helped Barkin and Piccirillo to found the Emmanuel College Communications Club in 2014. The mission of the club is to “create an open forum for discussion of media and culture, fostered by an innovative, creative, and honest exchange of ideas and opinions,” according to their Facebook page. Under McDonnell’s guidance, the club has gone on to host events such as “Was it Something I Tweeted?” and a 1 in 5 Sexual Assault discussion.

“When me and Eve had the idea to start the communications club, Andrea was a huge help in turning the idea of a communications club into an actual organization,” said Piccirillo. “So she also was my club advisor. But quickly she turned into someone I look up to as a mentor and friend.”

Both Piccirillo and Barkin feel this way about McDonnell, that she has become more than a professor to them. Though neither had her as an official advisor, both agree they used her as an additional resource, seeking guidance and advice from her regularly.

“Andrea also cares about her students and the EC community, I think all the work she has done as an advocate to spread awareness about campus sexual assault is a testament to that,” said Piccirillo.

McDonnell has brought these ideas forward in her students, especially in Barkin and Piccirillo. After being her students for four years, they have come to know her on a more personal level. They see her as an incredibly intelligent, kind, and passionate person. “She’s very humble and dedicated to helping her students find their way,” said Barkin.

“She really loves Survivor,” said Rachel Piccirillo, one of Andrea McDonnell’s former students. “Unsure what that says exactly about her but she’s the only person I know on earth that still watches.”

Where is She Now?

McDonnell is currently in the process of writing a second book entitled Media & Celebrity. She is co-writing this book with Susan Douglas, a professor at the University of Michigan and McDonnell’s mentor and friend. Douglas has previously written literature on celebrity and reality as well as celebrity and aging. Both of their fields of concentration focus on women and their representation in media.

Through her research, McDonnell hopes to show that aspects of our cultural landscape that are often deemed as trashy matter in terms of how we see society and ourselves.

“I wanted to redeem women’s popular culture, so often seen as trash, as a worthy object of academic study and as an important touchstone for our broader national identity,” said McDonnell.

“When I was conducting research for my first book, I realized how scattered the literature on celebrity and media was,” said McDonnell. “There were lots of studies of celebrity and film and celebrity culture, history, etc. But the studies about media and celebrity were kind of all over the place and there was not a single, clear history of the intersection between media technologies and the rise of celebrity culture. By the time I finished that book, I thought, ‘I could write this history.’”