The Lundquist College of Business, in conjunction with the Connect, Engage, Opportunity Network,@@http://lcb.uoregon.edu/App_Aspx/advising.aspx?advising.5.txt@@ sponsored the first annual “Diversity in the Workplace” symposium on Saturday at the Lillis Business Complex. The network is a business cohort designed to help minority students pursue a business degree and gain admittance into the college.
The nearly 150 participants spent the day attending workshops, participating in discussion sections and watching presentations from two keynote speakers.
Tayah Butler, an academic adviser of the Building Business Leadership Project and the event organizer,@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Tayah+Butler@@ discussed how the symposium was unique.
“We know that people throw conferences, but we wanted to do something that was not as traditional,” Butler said.  “We wanted something that had a lot of participant interaction and engaged a different constituency.”
The day concluded with a keynote address from Rueben Mayes,@@http://lcbdiversity.uoregon.edu/symposium/presenter-biographies/@@ the director of strategic and transformational gifts for PeaceHealth System.
Mayes, a former professional football player and 1986 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year,@@http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/story/17127537/nfl-offensive-rookie-of-the-year@@ discussed his five keys to success as well as the importance of teamwork and how to deal with the inevitable failures of life and the professional world.
“I’ve failed a number of times. I’ve run into walls,” Mayes said. “My encouragement to you is to fail fast. Fail fast, get over it and move on.”
Amanda Ramirez,@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Amanda+Ramirez@@ a University freshman business major and member of the CEO Network, was responsible for developing and creating the presentation that Mayes used during his speech and spoke of how that responsibility was given to her.
“We don’t really have defined jobs in CEO, but Tayah gives us a lot of opportunities so it’s on us if we want to take them or not,” Ramirez said. “Tayah had an idea to try to help people stay with their business major because a lot of us end up dropping it, so she made this so we could help each other with our homework, have study groups and stay in the major. If it wasn’t for the network, I wouldn’t be a business major.”
Reflecting back on the day, Butler considered the event a success.
“Today has run amazingly smooth considering we’ve asked people to do things they haven’t tried before,” Butler said. “It’s going phenomenally well.”