Meet The Partners | Jaret Baker

Meet Jaret Baker! The AU Junior for Danville, Ohio is our second Corporate Partners Program student-feature. Check out our Q&A with Jaret below!  

As a current Junior can you tell us a little bit about your time at Ashland so far?

Since I started at Ashland I joined a lot of different organizations. The first [organization] I joined was AU GIVS. I really have found a passion for community service since I started at Ashland, and I’ve been able to move up in AU GIVS and now am the community service Intern actually for the University. On-campus I’m also in phi delta theta, the marching and concert band, and tri-theta delta fraternity. 

What are you majoring in?

So I’m double majoring in biology and toxicology and a minor in chemistry. Actually, when I started at AU I was a nursing major but switched, in large part because of a professor that I had, Dr. Jena Binder. She just really had a passion for microbiology that she was teaching at the time and it really inspired me to find something that I was passionate about and I found that toxicology was what I was really passionate about. 

I’ve always been interested in science, which is why I went into nursing, to begin with, and toxicology is a growing field. And there’s a lot of different avenues you can take with toxicology, it’s not like you’re limited to one thing so I think it’s just a really interesting field. 

What’s your dream job within toxicology?

I don’t really know yet, I was hoping to figure it out this summer with an internship (laughs) but unfortunately, all of my internships fell through because of COVID-19. But I guess one of the major routes I’m thinking of is agriculture, my family is in agriculture and my hometown is a farming community. So maybe something with the Department of Agriculture or the EPA. 

Will COVID-19 impact your decision to return to AU in the Fall, particularly if it means online classes? 

I plan to return to Ashland. I’m really hoping that we’re able to go back because I feel like I didn’t get everything that I wanted to get done. I want to return to my community service internship in the fall. And I joined my fraternity late. I joined this year instead of Freshmen like most people do and so I feel like I haven’t gotten enough experience in that. So I’m really hoping that I can finish out my career at Ashland, on-campus, and get all of those experiences that I haven’t had yet. 

If things move forward as planned and we do have students on campus this Fall, what are you most excited about returning to?

That’s a hard question. Probably just hanging out with friends that I have at school that I’m not able to see right now. And I really miss volunteering at Ashland. Since we haven’t been back I haven’t been able to and we’ve had to cut a lot of the events that we were going to do at the end of this semester that we were really excited for. And I actually get to move in two weeks early because of my (AU GIVS) internship to plan the service opportunities. 

AU GIVES is the volunteer organization for the campus. It stands for, Ashland University Gets Involved with Volunteer Service. Basically we have 6 different teams that specialize in different needs in the community and we coordinate service opportunity with students to participate in

Tell us, just briefly, you’re involvement with Corporate Connections and the Corporate Partners Program. Are you using the CPP as the employee or a dependent? 

Because one of my parents are, my step-mom works for MT Business Technologies. She’s a traveling salesperson. Her territory is Wayne and Holmes County. The company itself has locations throughout Ohio but her office is technically in the Mansfield location. 

Why Ashland, and would you recommend AU to others?

I would definitely recommend Ashland to anybody that asked. I’ve really loved my time at Ashland and I’ve found my home at Ashland University. It was the first and last place I visited actually. It was the only place I had a connection with. It felt like home there. And I really like the smaller sizes coming from a small school; I really like having that small atmosphere. You know most everybody on campus. I think a lot of it is the smallness. The fact that your classes are never really that big. It seems like all my professors always seem to care about you. They’re going to check in on you if you don’t show up to class, it’s not just like you’re another number here. Andon-campus there are so many organizations that people can become a part of, you’re able to find your own little home and a circle of friends. 

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Jaret is one of over two hundred students that take advantage of tuition discounts through the Corporate Partners Program at Ashland University. The Corporate Partners program is an employee benefit opportunity for external companies. It was created to provide access to training and educational opportunities that help shape both personal and professional development. To learn more information about this program or to see if you qualify, you can call 419.207.6759 or email corp-partnerships@ashland.edu