Scholars Academy: Rachel Brader
The College of Business Administration Scholars Academy will welcome 20 more students this fall. Meet a member of the 2017 cohort.
The UNO College of Business Administration Scholars Academy is a close-knit community of ambitious, high-achieving business students who want to challenge themselves while pursuing a bachelor’s degree.
During this four-year program, Scholars are mentored by Omaha-area business professionals, take special business courses taught by award-winning faculty, and gain real-world experience through community engagement and international travel. They also receive generous scholarships.
Scholars are selected the spring of their senior year in high school after a rigorous and competitive application process.
Meet new member Rachel Brader of Omaha, Nebraska.
Why did you choose UNO?
I chose UNO because I love the Omaha campus and the opportunities the university provides. From different clubs to studying abroad, UNO allows you to do everything you want. The biggest draw for me was getting the large campus feel with the small campus attention. When I visited other colleges, I felt like I was just a number to them. At UNO, they made me feel welcome and like they genuinely wanted me to be there.
Why did you choose business as a major?
I have always been interested in business. I always enjoyed finding new ways to advertise my lemonade stands or new tactics to persuade family friends into buying Girl Scout cookies. However, I never saw it as a viable career path until my junior year in high school. Up until then I had wanted to be a high school history teacher. DECA changed all of that for me. DECA is a career and technical student-led organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs. Through DECA and a marketing class, I learned how to channel my creativity and passion for selling and advertising that I had all those years ago. Throughout my senior year I wrote a 30 page business plan and research paper with two classmates, and we created a 15-minute presentation on our findings. This project taught me how to find my niche in the business world and gave me the extra push to pursue a business major.
I am someone who enjoys being busy all the time, and I think the Scholars Academy will provide me with opportunities to channel that energy into helping better my community.
What business concentration are you planning to pursue? Why?
The concentration that I intend on pursuing is marketing. As I mentioned above, my DECA project allowed me to find what I was good at in the business world. The main portion of our project was writing a social, local and mobile promotion plan for a business. Through this project, and similar ones from the year before, I have found that I really love marketing and advertising and the more creative side of business. I love gathering information about a product and trying to sell it to a target market in the most creative way possible. That is why I am so excited to be able to continue to find my path in the marketing and advertising world at UNO.
What aspect of the Scholars Academy are you most looking forward to?
I am looking forward to working with the other Scholars on projects similar to the ones I worked on in DECA — things like leadership workshops and charity kickball tournaments that I have organized and led throughout the last year as the state vice president of membership services. DECA taught me how to work cohesively with a group of leaders, and it gave me my best friends. I can't wait to work with the Scholars who are just as driven and passionate about the program as I am. I am someone who enjoys being busy all the time, and I think the Scholars Academy will provide me with opportunities to channel that energy into helping better my community.
What do you like to do in your free time?
To be honest, I haven't had free time in maybe a year and a half. I have filled all my free time with planning DECA socials and community service events, state office trips, working baseball games to earn money to pay for internationals, doing my written project for up to five hours a day, making cookies to sell out of our school store, and every other random little thing I do for Millard North DECA and Nebraska DECA. When I actually do have free time, I am looking forward to being able to golf and play tennis again, work more and hang out with all my friends before they go off to college around the U.S.
What is one thing we would be surprised to know about you?
I have met friends around the country through DECA and networking. Some of my best DECA friends don't live in Nebraska. I have friends in Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, California, Massachusetts — you name a state I probably know someone in DECA there. I regularly talk to a lot of them on a daily basis, and I enjoyed seeing them again at Internationals at the end of April in California!