THE BIG TEN CU
The Big Ten is a platform where we teach students for free, soft skills and skills that are relevant to the 21st Century workplace environment. So today, for instance, we are teaching how to update your LinkedIn profile.
So, The Big Ten started in 2016. It was started by a former student, his name was James Jinadu, who was the Vice Chairman of the Student Council at the time. So he and three other people went home for a summer internship. James worked at KPMG, the other three worked at PWC, Deloitte and Shell. They came back from these multi-national companies and discovered that they did not have the soft skills that were required to stand out.
They had the intelligence, they had the skills, and they had good academic standing, but they did not have skills like networking or teamwork. They did not have skills like communication or interpersonal skills and so they found it hard to stand out and by the time they came back, they just decided that “oh, let us start a class or a session that is free of charge that all students have assess to” and so, that is how The Big Ten was actually born.
The Big Ten is majorly aimed at two specific goals. The first is to make sure that the Undergraduates have a very rounded knowledge of workplace ethics, they are not just grounded in hard skills, that are the things they are taught in class. Another goal is so that, they can also fit into society and have a well-informed knowledge about their career skills even from their undergraduate level.
It is a community that helps build skills for the workplace and how to evolve with those skills. “We help secure internships for students across all courses and levels. We help review CVs of our members and there is usually a CV review once every semester. We teach relevant skills in the office, including teamwork, emotional intelligence, and many more.” The current lead facilitator said in an interview.
The Big Ten started in 2016, and since then, we’ve had so many testimonies of students who have gone on internships, who have displayed outstanding leadership skills, and students who have displayed outstanding workplace ethics. Including Kenose Osedeme, currently the lead facilitator at The Big Ten. actually, who started attending The Big Ten while he was a 100 level student. He said that The Big Ten helped him from 100 level to 500 level. He said that he has had up to 5 internship positions and still looks forward to The Big Ten, even as the facilitator, to the amount of knowledge that is being passed in the session.