Once a month, the Maverick Innovation Center, located on the first floor of Pinyon Hall, hosts Monday Mentors. Different Maverick Mentors come to Colorado Mesa University in order to speak about what they do and give advice on how students can achieve success.
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They speak for about an hour in a large setting and then proceed to divide into smaller groups with students to have one on one conversations.
There are a total of 23 Maverick Mentors.
The most recent Monday Mentors night was Feb. 12. Dick Maynard, Scott Shaffer, Christopher Dungey, Doug Neam, P.J. McGovern and Nick Tinney spoke. They are all entrepreneurs in the Grand Valley. The mentors will work with students who have dreams of business ownership or product development.
The Maverick Mentors are here to help with whatever they can for CMU students.
Maynard is a retired CEO of KEKB Broadcasting Inc. in Grand Junction. Maynard started in 1984. He built two stations up to number one in the market and eventually sold to Cumulus Broadcasting.
Shaffer began sculpting in 1987. He has created many sculptures, including the praying mantis on top of Wubben Hall. Shaffer’s most recent one is a brown pelican named “The Port Authority.” This was purchased by the Loveland Sculpture Group for donation to the City of Loveland, Colo.
Dungey is a violin maker and specializes in cellos. In 2012, he reached the milestone of making 100 cellos. He now continues to educate himself and researches about everything cellos.
Neam has recently retired from Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo., where he was vice president of engineering. Before that role, Neam was a program manager of the James Webb Space Telescope Pre-Phase A and Phase I. Students were very interested to hear what he had to say.
Tinney is the owner of iC3 Engineering, a product design company, and he is the manager of the GJmakerspace. Prior to that, Tinney worked at Ametek.
McGovern is the owner of McGovern Enterprises, which is a real estate company for office and industrial properties. McGovern has also owned and managed Pizza Huts in Colorado and Utah.
More than just the engineering students were there for the event. Mass communication, business, art and many more majors attended.
Tom Benton, the center’s director and Georgann Jouflas team up together to make this event happen.
“The event is for the students to come in and to meet with people in the community that have special expertise,” Benton said. “They’ll share what their industry looked like when they got started and what the future can be.”
“I heard about this event from my teacher, and I was curious to hear from the mentors to see what they had to say,” CMU student Alaina Bittmer said. “I wanted to hear about their background and history.”
For more information on Maverick Mentors or Monday Mentors Night visit their website: http://www.coloradomesa.edu/innovation/innovation-center/network.html.