Mike Yem rushed DU in the Spring of 2006. Mike recalls Alex Droske ’06 as Vice President of Recruitment and Mike was close with Lee McFarland ’09 and Brandon Trontvet ’09, both who rushed the previous semester. During pledging, Mike moved into Red Room as, at the time, dorm contracts were able to be broken. Mike moved around to Fourman and Annex until he moved out in 2010.
Some of his favorite memories include Two Yard Hop, chapter retreats to Canada, boot & intramural hockey, and just hanging out with his brothers. Mike served as Vice-President of Membership Education and Chronicles Chair. Midway through his term as Membership Education, Mike was deployed to Iraq in 2007 for a year. Outside of DU, Mike worked with UND’s graphic design department and served in the National Guard.
After graduation, Mike spent some time at UPS and later moved to Rydell’s in Grand Forks. At Rydell’s, Mike worked as a body shop estimator, then in marketing, and now a jack-of-all-trades where he does IT, software development, operations, technology training, and search engine optimization (SEO).
Mike’s advice to undergraduates is to take school more seriously than he did. Be open to new experiences and don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone because “you don’t exactly know what you’ll end up doing” and “you’ll never know when you’ll find a passion”. When Mike walked into a SEO job interview he said he didn’t know what SEO stood for but that he would learn it. Now he speaks at conferences to hundreds of people on SEO.