Posted: 12 Jun 2010 04:57 PM PDT

Published: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 10:00 AM Updated: Sunday, June 13, 2010, 7:47 AM

They have worked four years, often longer, juggling jobs and classes, cramming for finals, studying abroad working internships — all with the hope of finding a career foothold despite the worst job market since the Great Depression.

More than 11,000 members of the Class of 2010 from Oregon's seven public universities capped their hard work with commencement ceremonies this week and last.

Now, they move on either to graduate school or to join more than 212,000 other Oregonians looking for work, including untold thousands of last year's graduates still searching for jobs.

Many from the Class of 2009 are living with their parents and working part-time retail jobs they could have landed without a degree. Others are taking more college classes to put off paying back student loans, which average more than $20,000. Many say they've lost self-confidence. Still, none of the 18 students from the Classes of 2009 and 2010 interviewed by The Oregonian expressed regret about going to college.

Job prospects for the Class of 2010, which number about 18,000 students in Oregon when you include those who graduated last fall and winter, are slightly brighter because of a recent increase in employers hiring college graduates, said Edwin W. Koc, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers. What's more, recruiters will focus on the Class of 2010, he said.

"If you come out of the Class of 2009, you are going to be treated as someone who has been in the job market for a year," he said. Employers want to see some experience, he said.

After a yearlong search, Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City, is about to get some experience, but at a cost.

She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.

"It has gotten me pretty much nowhere," she said.

When she graduated, Mroz figured she would quickly land a job with an international nonprofit. After two months, she took on a catering job as she broadened her search. Still living with her parents in Oregon City, she sent out more than 70 carefully prepared job applications and resumes.

"I never got a single interview, except for the catering company," she said.

By March, she had added three more catering jobs.

"I have gone through weeks when I completely doubted myself," she said. "What am I doing wrong? It is a question I ask everyday. ....After a year of getting basically no response, you start giving up."

Mroz recently drove cross-country for a 3-month unpaid internship that she started last week with a nonprofit agency in Baltimore. The agency helps refugee immigrants settle in the United States. After that internship ends, she will pay her way to Kenya for a community development internship through the San Francisco-based Foundation for Sustainable Development.

If those experiences don't lead to jobs, Mroz said, she'll consider graduate school.

Of course some graduates are landing jobs, particularly those with specific technical skills such as John Yeier, 24, who graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls on Saturday. He's the sole member of his class with a degree in embedded engineering , which integrates computer software and hardware in cell phones, cars and other machines. He will work on small plane navigation system software for Garmin AT in Salem.

OIT Class of 2009 graduates also have been unusually successful because they study for technical jobs such as nursing, medical imaging, mechanical engineering and dental hygiene. A survey of the class, with 58 percent responding, found that 71 percent have found jobs related to their degrees and another 21 percent are working.

A recent national survey of more than 13,000 graduates in the Class of 2010 shows that about one in four who applied for jobs will have one waiting for them after they graduate. That's up from one in five students who landed jobs last year, but far below the one in two graduates who found work in 2007.

The Oregon Employment Department's job bank lists 14,373 job openings, but they are most prevalent in low-paying occupations that don't require college degrees such as retail sales, trucking and housekeeping.

Audra Armen-Van Horn, 23, Portland, worked for Victoria's Secret while earning her psychology degree from the University of Oregon. Now, a year after graduating in 2009 and applying for more than 100 jobs, she's still working part time for the store while hoping to get a job with the American Cancer Society.

"I have a bachelor's degree, and I'm making $8.50 an hour," she said. "It is pretty depressing. .¤.¤. But it is a job. I'm happy I have a job."

Malcolm Staudinger, 22, a 2009 graduate in environmental science from Portland State University, lives at home with his parents in Vancouver, Wash., and is now looking to Montana and Alaska for a job related to geographic information systems.

"I apply probably for half a dozen jobs a week and have gotten maybe three or four interviews in the past year," he said. "It is tough because it makes you doubt yourself. You feel like you have these great skills and worked hard and you are constantly getting passed over again and again and again."

This year the college majors delivering the best job prospects are accounting, business administration, computer science, engineering and mathematics, said Koc of the Association of Colleges and Employers. The major with the dimmest prospects -teaching. "This is the worst I've seen for education majors," he said.

Mindy Lary, 27, Beaverton, can testify to that. She graduated in 2009 with a Master of Art in elementary school teaching from the University of Portland and has been substitute teaching since.

"I applied for 75 teaching jobs, anything within an hour's drive of the Portland area, and I didn't even get an interview," she said.

Some recent graduates are trying to create their own jobs. Lisa Anderson, 23, a 2009 journalism graduate from the University of Oregon and receptionist for a Portland law firm, has joined five other journalism graduates in starting a men's clothing magazine and website.

"We printed our first issue in March," she said. "It is definitely a labor of love."

Linda Williams Favero, assistant director of the University of Oregon's career center in Portland, said the job market for college graduates is improving. She helps students and recent graduates polish their job hunting in a 6-session, 3-week seminar. By the time participants finish her class, half have a job or prospects for one, she said.

One day last month, Favero advised nine recent graduates taking her seminar to treat their job search as though it were a full-time job. Tap social networks for job contacts, she advised, and organize information interviews with potential employers, prepare a 30-second elevator job pitch, polish your resume and keep positive.

Matt Petryni, 24, a 2009 UO graduate, said the seminar has helped him regain hope after a discouraging year of rejections from the world of urban planning where he hopes to work. He's heartened by seeing other graduates land jobs, he said.

"So it is not impossible," he said. "That is good to hear right now."

-- Bill Graves

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Canadian filmmaking duo revels in Rush job - Times Colonist

Posted: 10 Jun 2010 02:04 AM PDT

WHAT: RUSH: BEYOND THE LIGHTED STAGE

WHEN: Friday and Saturday, 9:30 p.m.

WHERE: Odeon Theatre (780 Yates St.)

- - -

Documentary filmmakers Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen have interviewed more than 1,000 subjects during their careers, but few were more tentative than the trio of talkers at the core of their new documentary, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage.

Rush, which consists of bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart, is known for its aversion to the press. While their devotion to their fans is absolute, Rush often take a pass when it comes to talking about their personal lives in print or on camera.

Dunn and McFadyen, longtime music fans and award-winning filmmakers whose films have chronicled the biggest names in heavy metal and hard rock, knew that getting Rush to talk wouldn't be easy. However, they didn't think the simple act of getting the band to greenlight a film about itself would require months of laborious negotiation.

It did. McFadyen hatched the idea for a Rush documentary at the close of 2006, and sent his first e-mail to the Rush camp in early 2007. Seven months and many e-mails later, Rush finally signed on.

Like anything involved with Rush, the shooting schedule for the film, which arrives this week in theatres across Canada, was of epic proportions.

"Production-wise, it was a full two-and-a-half years," McFadyen said from the Banger Films office he shares with Dunn and their 17 employees.

"They are pretty private, but they got to know us and like us and opened up."

Despite the group's hesitation, Beyond the Lighted Stage (whose title incorporates lyrics from the Rush hit, Limelight) is a revealing look at one of the most adored and underrated acts ever to come from Canada. In their current incarnation since 1974, the group has achieved sales statistics that place them in the company of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in terms of consecutive gold or platinum albums by a rock band.

Dunn said he hopes the documentary reveals the mysterious appeal of the group -- which the rock press has deemed terminally unhip for the majority of its four-decade career.

"It's never been cool to like Rush," he said. "You have to endure the ridicule. Hopefully, the film will allow fans to bask in the light of it."

The documentary features comments from a host of fellow musicians -- from Jack Black to Trent Reznor -- who are unabashed in their love of the band and well-versed, as most Rush fans are, in the group's remarkable history.

"Something we were fascinated by was how many musicians who had completely different musical styles were influenced by Rush," Dunn explained. "Last time I checked, Death Cab for Cutie and Pantera don't sound anything like Rush, and yet Vinnie Paul (Pantera) and Jason McGerr (Death Cab for Cutie) are self-professed Rush maniacs. There is something about Rush's music and their philosophy that connects with all these musicians."

It took months of planning to assemble and shoot the talking heads (which include Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Kirk Hammett of Metallica and Gene Simmons of KISS, among others). But the logistical side of Beyond the Lighted Stage was nothing compared to research that went into uncovering the group's heretofore untold backstory.

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Piers Morgan ‘to replace CNN veteran Larry King’ - First Post

Posted: 14 Jun 2010 02:14 AM PDT

Piers Morgan, who set out to carve himself a career in television after being fired as editor of the Daily Mirror six years ago, is rumoured to have landed one of the biggest jobs in American television. He is reportedly set to replace Larry King, the influential host of CNN's Larry King Live.

The 76-year-old King has presented the 8.0 pm show for nearly quarter of a century. But audience figures are on the slide and CNN is known to have been on the lookout for a replacement. They have not commented on media speculation overnight that Morgan (above) is to sign a four-year deal worth somewhere in the region of $7.5m.

If Morgan is confirmed in the job, it would make him one of the first high-profile British presenter on American TV since David Frost in the early 70s. "This could be huge," wrote celebrity blogger Perez Hilton last night. "Who knew Piers was in such demand?"

Morgan is known in the States as a judge on America's Got Talent, and as the winner of The Celebrity Apprentice.

He would likely to step down from his role as a judge on Britain's Got Talent and base himself permanently in the US. With lead judge Simon Cowell recently announcing that he is to reduce his appearances on BGT, the show's future looks uncertain.

Morgan, 45, became the youngest national newspaper editor in more than 50 years when Rupert Murdoch made him editor of the News of the World in 1994 at the age of 28. The paper became notorious for its lack of regard for celebrities' right to privacy.

He was then

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

La. Fair Will Have Jobs Related To Oil Spill - WKRG

Posted: 13 Jun 2010 03:01 PM PDT

Bastrop, Louisiana - The Louisiana Workforce Commission job fair Tuesday in Bastrop will have 100 temporary jobs related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Shirley Trapp of Morehouse Business and Career Solutions Center says Bastrop was chosen for the fair because the community was hit with job losses when International Paper closed its mill in 2008.

The News-Star reports that Hub Enterprises of Broussard, which has a contract with BP, is recruiting 100 workers for security officer and supervisor jobs along the coast.

Applicants must complete 16 hours of state-mandated security officer training to qualify for the jobs, and Hub will provide the training free. The jobs will pay between $13 and $14 an hour, depending on experience.

___

Information from: The News-Star, http://www.thenewsstar.com

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.