For OU ECCI aggressive supervisor Josh “Thumper” Riesenberg, his journey by college and OU Esports has been, and can proceed to be, a winding journey of exploration.
Riesenberg’s roots in gaming go all the best way again to when he was 9. From a younger age, he competed in titles from Name of Responsibility to Rainbow Six: Siege. He even gained semi-pro standing in aggressive esports earlier than he retired early in his school profession.
“However a good friend of mine on the Overwatch staff requested, ‘Hey, are you able to simply assist us with this one factor?’” Riesenberg mentioned. “I didn’t actually have any expertise. I used to be skilled in educating however not teaching. So I made a decision to attempt that and actually beloved it. So I simply stored working by and acquired higher teaching.”
Ultimately, Mike Aguilar, present director of OU ECCI, noticed Riesenberg’s potential in administration and inspired him to be the primary to coordinate and lead all of the OU Esports aggressive groups. However Riesenberg continued to stretch his limits from there and was a pivotal a part of the division’s newly fashioned analysis committee.
“Each time I’ve moved, it’s right into a place that beforehand didn’t exist,” Riesenberg described. “So it’s not like somebody had performed this job they usually graduated or mentioned they weren’t doing extra and Mike wanted a fill, and I used to be the most effective candidate. There wasn’t an precise head coach of the Overwatch staff earlier than me.”
For Riesenberg, being in his roles all through OU ECCI has given him experiences which can be uncommon in school, and he has been capable of develop abilities that even these within the workforce wrestle with.
“The second something comes out of your mouth, it’s now not what you mentioned anymore, it’s what your viewers hears,” Riesenberg defined.”So it’s about understanding communication goes each methods and goes up and down the hierarchy. You usually take six months to 2 years in an organization earlier than you’re like, ‘Okay, that is who I talked to for this that is who I speak to for that’.”
Although Riesenberg has accomplished his MBA with a certificates in entrepreneurship, this isn’t the top of his educational journey. He has utilized for a PhD in strategic communication by the OU Gaylord Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication, and he expects to begin within the fall of 2025.
His time with OU ECCI has ready him for the challenges that include the curriculum planning and analysis that he’ll full as part of his PhD program.
“I’ve to make sure that all the things I’m doing is relevant,” Rosenberg described. “One of many issues that makes OU Esports totally different is that we’re making ready the scholars for engagement and employment, even when it’s not inside the gaming or esports business. Doing analysis and educating the lessons that I’m going to design and educate, they will’t simply be this nebulous factor up within the cloud that nobody apart from one other PhD will ever learn or perceive. This must be right down to the widespread scholar.”
Although wanting ahead to his PhD and persevering with to work with OU ECCI, Riesenberg can be taking the second to look again on what the division has meant to him.
“It’s all the things,” Riesenberg mentioned. “The flexibility to remain related with the group, I rather more determine with, in addition to having the ability to assist children discover their manner a little bit bit. You realize they’re not fully on their very own. After which they construct their very own communities. It’s a completely totally different tradition.”
