Sean O'Keefe

Expert career coach Sean O'Keefe shows how students can get their dream job right out of college by building their own professional network from scratch. Students typically spend over 90 percent of their job search efforts applying to positions on online job boards, but their success rate is only 3 to 5 percent. Launch Your Career teaches students how to beat the odds by building a network of professional contacts they can leverage for internships and jobs, just as O'Keefe did as an undergraduate with a mediocre resume. O'Keefe says students have an advantage: professionals like to talk to young people who are just starting out because they remember being in the same situation. He walks students through his 8 step process: Discernment, Strategic Research, Personal Brand-Building, Outreach, Preparation, Advanced Preparation, Effective Followup, and Acing the Job Interview. The book includes access to an online Career Launch Readiness Assessment, so students can evaluate their strengths in five key areas: Discernment, Personal Branding, Networking, Job Search, and Professional Growth. Featuring stories of students who landed jobs or internships at companies like LinkedIn, Tesla, Google, Wells Fargo, and General Motors, this book is an invaluable resource for students, and for colleges looking to increase the ROI of their career counseling efforts.

The last potential heir to the Helius Energy legacy was quietly eliminated over half a century ago . . . or so they thought In December of 1999, a young reporter discovers an ancient deed in the Travis County archives of Austin, Texas. Hidden a century earlier, the original copy of the deed includes a covenant excised from the version available to the public. This covenant gives the grantor's descendants the right to reclaim ownership of the property if any future owner violates an explicit use restriction: a bar against the extraction of mineral wealth from the land. The reporter is stunned by the discovery--the land subject to the deed is one of the most valuable oil fields in the world. Now, any descendant of the original grantor has the power to reclaim ownership of this billion-dollar asset with the stroke of a pen, and Helius Energy, the energy conglomerate that owns the land, has no intention of allowing this to happen. Within hours of the discovery, the reporter is on the run, desperately racing to stay ahead of a team of killers dispatched by Helius. A second team is winging its way to California, with orders to kill John Caine, the last living heir entitled to claim the legacy created by the deed. Caine is unaware of his ancestry and the nightmare coming his way. His only hope for survival is Andrea Marenna, a beautiful lawyer in Austin who is unwittingly drawn into Caine's race. Together, they must find a way to survive long enough to unravel the century-old mystery that has placed them in harm's way.

In a captivating blend of photographs and text, Under Stately Oaks showcases over 150 years of Louisiana State University's past, following the evolution of the tiny Seminary of Learning of the State of Louisiana, founded near Pineville in 1853, into a university of well over 30,000 students for the twenty-first century. Thomas F. Ruffin has written an affectionate history of LSU, but it is also an honest one. The notorious scandals of 1939, the university's desegregation struggles, and free-speech alley confrontations during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, as well as the football team's 2003 NCAA championship and the university's pivotal role in relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina -- all are chronicled here.From the red pantile roofs and honey-colored stucco of its Italian Renaissance architecture to the ""stately oaks and broad magnolias"" hailed in the alma mater, the distinct beauty of the LSU campus is unrivaled. The history of the state's flagship university is as colorful as the azaleas that adorn its landscape every spring. Its first superintendent, William Tecumseh Sherman, later opposed its first faculty member and future president, David F. Boyd, in war. Yet both also fought for an LSU curriculum that embraced a liberal education with a classical component. When LSU lost its state funding during the 1870s, it was Boyd who maneuvered a merger with Louisiana A&M College, a move that ensured LSU's survival and preserved its identity. In the 1930s, Huey Long demanded the best for LSU on many fronts, and by the mid-twentieth century the institution was not only the state's premier university but also nationally recognized for its prestigious faculty and cutting-edge research. This newly updated edition features a foreword by Chancellor Sean O'Keefe and a final chapter entitled ""The 21st Century and Beyond,"" which details the concrete steps LSU has taken towards fulfilling its goal of becoming a nationally competitive flagship institution. The last chapter also portrays, in text and striking photographs, the central role LSU played in emergency relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina, and examines how the university is faring in the post-Katrina world. Under Stately Oaks captures the spirit of the university as never before. Though the book shows that much has changed over the years, it is primarily a celebration of the timeless aspects of the LSU experience and a compelling testimony to the university's ongoing commitment to progress.