During Nebraska’s fall break in October 2017, Raikes School Executive Director Steve Cooper and Director of Recruitment and Student Success Anna Pressler traveled with 26 students to Silicon Valley to visit companies, connect with Raikes School and Nebraska alumni, and get a feel for life in the city.
We hopped a direct flight from Omaha to SFO on Sunday, October 15 and hit the ground running. On Sunday, we explored the Computer History Museum and enjoyed dinner with Raikes School alumni and friends living and working in the area. Monday included company tours and meetings at Google, Box, Facebook and Marqeta and the ever-important dinner at In-N-Out. The trip concluded on Tuesday with trips to Uber and Dropbox. The students promptly crashed on the plane ride home!
Raikes School students are incredibly lucky to have easy access to local companies like Spreetail, Hudl, Bulu Box and others. We also have strong recruiting pipelines in Seattle but this experience in Silicon Valley opened our students’ eyes to the plethora of employment options and the innovation happening in Silicon Valley. Lara Quiring (cohort 2017) said, "I loved the San Francisco trip because it gave me an opportunity to see tech companies, rather than just hearing about them (as a freshman!), and I got to make connections with people already in the industry who had helpful advice to give about jobs and areas of interest...after the trip I knew I needed to add a CS major to my math major because the work we got to see and hear about is fascinating and impacts the lives of so many."
Check out the video linked in the photo above, made by two members of cohort 2016, Karl Shaffer and Jacob Koperski, who were on the trip.
Support from Raikes School alumni and friends was vital in making this trip possible. Cody Ebberson (cohort 2000) and Reshma Khilnani, a Raikes School Corporate Advisory Board member, were especially integral in coordinating company visits and logistics. Sean Golden (cohort 2003) coordinated the visit to Marqeta after his trip to the Raikes School’s annual alumni reunion last fall. We hope to replicate this experience in other cities in the future, potentially Seattle, Austin, New York City, or Kansas City. Luke Bogus (cohort 2017) noted the importance of his interaction with our Raikes School alumni, "As a freshman, having the incredible opportunity to visit San Fransisco to network and engage with some of the finest products to come out of the Raikes School not only reaffirmed my choice to choose the Raikes School, but also gave me a glimpse of what my future beyond the Raikes School can look like thanks to the education and preparation of this interdisciplinary honors program."
Contact Anna Pressler, anna.pressler@unl.edu, with suggestions or interest in helping coordinate future trips.