Class focuses on a series of guest lectures to inspire Seaver business students.
By Sarah Pye
Living Editor
The class described by its instructors as everything “we wish we’d had as students” returns for its second semester at Pepperdine.
Success 101 (officially known as BA 299) is a one-unit class taught by Pepperdine alumni Mike Costache and Alexis Bonnell. Costache and Bonnell said they aim to teach students the things they will really need to know to achieve success in the business world through resume-writing workshops, networking opportunities and an extensive series of guest lectures.
The speaker series is integral to the structure of the class, according to Costache. This semester’s class has 12 professionals on the docket to speak, including Howard Gordon, the senior vice president of marketing for The Cheesecake Factory, and Kari Scrimshaw, director of talent sourcing for The Gallup Organization.
Wednesday’s class will feature Sonja Hagen and Alex Wilcox of jetBlue Airways Corp. According to Costache, everyone is invited to attend the guest lectures, whether or not they are enrolled in the class.
“(Alexis and I) didn’t have these resources when we were in school,” Costache said. “And we certainly didn’t have access to high level executives to walk us through.”
The success stories of the two instructors are also used to inspire students. Bonnell is a 1999 Pepperdine graduate, having received degrees in public relations, advertising and marketing. She is now a partner at Pioneer Consulting and also serves as vice president of public relations at Voice Mail Broadcast Corp.
Costache also graduated from Pepperdine in 1999, and is the chairman of the Young Professionals Global Network. He works for an investment banking firm and, along with Bonnell, is a partner at Pioneer Consulting.
Both instructors are teaching the course for free and said they are only interested in “bettering (students’) ability to succeed.”
Success 101 has seen some changes since it was first offered in the spring. According to Costache, when Dr. Keith Whitney, chairman of the Seaver Business Administration Division, approached him and Bonnell to teach the course in December, the two had less than a month to cobble together a course worthy of enrollment.
Now, said Costache, the class is more structured, with a more extensive syllabus and course requirements that include book reports and an end-of-term portfolio.
Though not only for freshman, enrollment in this semester’s class is about 90 percent first-year students, compared with about 60 percent freshman enrollment during the spring semester.
Eventually, said Costache, Success 101 will become the first class in an eight-semester class series for business students, possibly to be termed the Leadership Scholars Program.
September 11, 2003