Employer relations adviser encourages out-of-school experience

When Lindsey Montileaux attended the 2013 Pre-Admissions Workshop at the Association of American Indian Physicians conference in California, she never expected the experience to lead to an unforgettable internship.

After winning a 5K fun run at the conference, Montileaux, a University of South Dakota medical biology senior, met professionals involved with the N7 NIKE collection.

Following the conference, the track and field athlete kept in touch with those professionals, went through an application process and was chosen for the sole summer 2014 intern position with N7 at NIKE’s headquarters in Oregon out of thousands of applicants.

“What I did is actually work with grant recipients from that fund and gave more information on how sport and physical activity has a positive benefit for Native youth,” Montileaux said.

The product is inspired by Native American culture, as well as the ambassadors and Native athletes associated with it, Montileaux said. The funds are distributed in different grants to Native American and Aboriginal communities all throughout North America to start physical activity and sport programs.

In the two years prior, Montileaux was focused on science-based research, but she has always been interested in working with Native American youth.

“This experience was very real-world to me in actually interacting with communities and tribes and seeing what the needs are,” she said.

Identifying and realizing career-orientated and real-life experiences is exactly what Kasandra Girard’s position focuses on. As the university’s employer relations adviser, Girard, who started the position only a month ago, said her purpose is to help students find and prepare for jobs or internships.

“Anything you can think of career related, that’s what I can you help with,” Girard said.

Part of her job consists of reaching out to businesses and marketing USD students while also guiding businesses toward people who would work best for specific positions.

“My goal is to reeducate some of the employers on what they think they are looking for, and the traits that our students have when they graduate,” Girard said.

Geographically, Girard travels to meet with possible employers nearly anywhere within a day’s drive, but is looking to narrow down possibilities.

Throughout the time leading up to the Oct. 23 career fair, Girard plans to travel and talk to departments, student organizations and the campus’s population in general to get her name out and hear what opportunities people are interested in.

She said she wants to have a consistent presence in the Muenster University Center by tabling and utilizing social media more to also make students aware of her services.

Senior Mackenze Schauf-Benter was drawn to her summer internship from an email regarding the opening from the Media and Journalism department secretary.

Schauf-Benter said her department does a good job of pushing career opportunities to its students, and one way the Academic Career and Planning Center could improve is working toward more collaboration with individual departments — which is exactly what Girard plans to do in her new position.

“I want to hear from students where they want to be, what they want to do and go from there,” Girard said. “My main goal would be to help students in whatever their career goals may be.”

Schauf-Benter thought she knew exactly what she wanted from an internship, but ended up polishing a broad set of new skills in her internship with Peppermint Energies, a solar-powered generator company based out of Sioux Falls, this past summer.

“They sell solar powered generators, mostly for developing countries,” Schauf-Benter said. “I went there thinking I would just being doing their video production, but I did a lot of their social media, researching and anything they needed that dealt with marketing and advertising.”

In her time, Schauf-Benter, a media and journalism major, said she realized how much more she had to learn, but also where she wanted to go with her career.

“The internship made me want to work for a company that actually helps people rather than just try and find a job after college,” she said. “It gave me a different perspective on advertising — how it doesn’t always have to be bad. I was really proud of where I worked.”

Through Montileaux’s internship, she said she was able to intertwine some of her life-long passions, such as track and helping people, into an inspiring, educational experience.

“I was able to tie healthcare into sport and NIKE and business,” Montileaux said.

Montileauxn also said she was persuaded by people she worked with the summer after her first year from the research department to apply for the travel scholarship, which took her to her first AAIP conference that ultimately lead to her summer in Oregon.

(Kasandra Girard, an employer relations adviser at the University of South Dakota, conducts a mock interview with senior Aaron Swift Monday in the Academic and Career Planning Center.
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Malachi Petersen / The Volante)