Inspiring future leaders toward success

Sarah Zigila has a favorite saying: “Let my haters be my motivators.”

It’s carried the former Macomb student through difficult times when she couldn’t find support for her ambitions, and it’s something she’s shared with countless high school students while working with Winning Futures, a Warren-based non-profit organization that empowers youth to succeed through mentoring, strategic planning, and workforce preparation.

“Even if you don’t have support,” Zigila says, “you can choose your own path.”

Zigila is “an Eastsider through and through” and came to Macomb straight from L’Anse Creuse High School in 2000, but she admittedly “fell off the wagon” during that first year. No one in her family had finished college, and she said it was hard to find the help she needed to continue her education.

But she found a way, returning to get her associate degree from Macomb in 2003 and later earning a bachelor’s in community development from Central Michigan.

“I encourage others often – if you’re confused or unsure, Macomb is a phenomenal school and I strongly recommend it,” Zigila said.

After more than three years at Winning Futures, Zigila is starting a new job as business development executive at Innovative Learning Group in Troy. And this spring, she will earn her master’s degree in training and development from Oakland, proof that persistence pays off.

“It’s something no one can take away from you,” Zigila said. “Other than getting married, it will honestly be one of the happiest days of my life.”

At the nerve center of the nightly news

In his Broadcast Television class at Macomb, Erik Anderson had to produce a 30-minute television show, weekly.  The experience has come in handy working the assignment desk at WXYZ-TV, channel 7.

“If people only knew what it takes to put a news show together,” says Anderson, who earned an associate degree in communications from Macomb in 2004, followed by a bachelor’s degree in the same from Oakland University. “We’re checking out tips, listening to police scanners, sending out crews, and at the end of the day we see the whole puzzle come together and we have a story.”

Anderson was introduced to the broadcast field at South Lake High School, which led to a gig controlling the audio and lighting in its auditorium his senior year.

“But it never seemed like work,” offers Anderson, who went from high school to Specs Howard School of Media Arts, where he earned a one-year certificate.  “After Specs Howard, I knew I needed a degree, and Macomb was my jumping off point for that. At Macomb, I had the chance to explore what I liked about the industry and what I didn’t like.”

While attending Specs and Macomb, Anderson interned at WJR Radio.  A self-described night person, he nevertheless accepted the unpaid internship starting at 5 a.m. He highly recommends that other broadcast-bound students do the same if given the chance. “I learned more in my internship that I ever did in a class,” says Anderson.  “And for those who think they are going to be the next Howard Stern, just keep in mind there is less than a one percent chance of that happening.”

Progressing from internship to part-time producing job, Anderson had hoped to keep advancing toward full-time employment at WJR, but the radio market was entering its grim period and jobs were scarcer than FCC licenses. Applying for a part-time writing position at WXYZ, he was offered a full-time job on the assignment desk instead.  Anderson didn’t hesitate, “Where do I sign?” he asked.

While he misses the technical aspects of his work at WJR, Anderson enjoys the faster pace of a television newsroom, where each day is unpredictable and the next big story might be on the line he just answered.

“The assignment desk is the nerve center,” says Anderson, who sometimes has to huddle with the competition when it comes to calling up the station’s chopper.  “We share one with 2 and 4 and have to vote on whether we want to send it.”

As assignment editor, Anderson interacts regularly with reporters and camera crews, and sometimes the anchors as well.  He works the night desk primarily, from 3:30 to 11 p.m., and is solo after 6 p.m. On occasion, he’s called upon to write a web story or a ticker at the bottom of the screen.

“I’m working in the market I want to be in,” offers Anderson, “And working in the industry I want to be in. And it’s still a lot of fun.”

Alumna pays it forward with teaching career

In eighth grade, a teacher cautioned “think smaller” when Stephanie Messel shared what she hoped would be her life’s work.  She credits a few Macomb faculty, as well as author Stephenie Meyer, for convincing her that there was no limit to what she should dream or could do.

“I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was in second grade,” says Messel, who earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Wayne State University last year and teaches middle school at My Virtual Academy (MVA). “My learning disabilities left me behind in many areas, but they also helped me succeed in others. Today, I am able to connect to my students on their learning levels because I have been there.”

Students attending MVA often experience difficulty learning in a traditional classroom, as Messel once did.  Assigned early on to special education classes, she worked through her memory and comprehension issues and “grew out of them” by high school.  Still, one learning obstacle still lingered. Enrolling at Macomb, she met with Counselor Patricia Dolengowski and disclosed a debilitating test anxiety. Dolengowski arranged for Messel to take all of her tests at the Learning Center, and soon the education major was outperforming her own, and one former teacher’s, expectations.

“By the time I transferred to Wayne State (at Macomb’s University Center), I no longer needed test-taking accommodations,” says Messel. “Macomb helped me make that transition. I love that school.”

The daughter of two teachers and sister of a John Hopkins professor, Messel also loves teaching.  This year, she is teaching seventh graders math, science, language arts, social studies and history, as well as two electives: journalism and health, which she creatively customized based on the MVA syllabus.

“One of my students asked me if I like my job, because I always sound so happy,” relates Messel, who conducts her classes via computer, Skype and weekly telephone calls to all of her students. “And I do, but I one hundred percent want to experience teaching in a classroom.”

And she is also one hundred percent certain that working at DisneyWorld helped her develop the confidence she needed to teach others.

“What a great experience. That was my living away from home,” says Messel, who spent over a year in the Magic Kingdom, on three different assignments through Macomb’s Career Services.  “It opened me up to different cultures.  I even learned a little bit of Portuguese from one of my roommates.”

Messel also took American Sign Language at Macomb and as many social science and history courses as she could, after discovering in a class on Egypt and from the Twilight books, that she has a passion for  both learning facts and reading fiction. “As long,” she says of the later, “that it has a happy ending.”

And, like her student’s learning issues, happy endings are another thing she knows a little bit about.

“I’m living my dream,” says Messel, who will soon be pursuing a master’s degree in education.  “Macomb helped me prove some people wrong.  You can’t let anyone bring you down. Whatever you want to do, you just have to try.”