“I’m the first person in my extended family to earn a master’s degree,” says Rebecca (Plomero) Mettille ’19, ’21 MBA. “Now I’m encouraging my younger cousins and others in my family to do this. And I let them know that Olivet Nazarene University is a great place to earn that degree.”
Rebecca first encountered Olivet Nazarene University (ONU) as an undergraduate transfer student. She remembers seeing the name ONU everywhere — on a building, in television commercials, in online ads — and thinking that she needed to look closer at ONU for continuing her education.
“I met with an Admissions counselor, and everything felt right for me,” she recalls. “I met with a professor and went to a class. Then I started crying because I knew ONU was the place for me. I cancelled tours that I had set up at other schools because I had made my choice.”
Blazing a Trail
Rebecca was one of the students in the first years of ONU’s public relations and strategic communications major. She served as an account executive for their Inspired Strategies Agency, providing marketing and communications services for local businesses in the Kankakee area. She was also the secretary for ONU’s chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) and then became chapter president her senior year.
As she neared graduation in 2019, she discovered a path for completing her Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at ONU. She accepted a graduate assistant position in ONU’s Office of Development and enrolled in the MBA program.
Rebecca wanted to complete one more ONU experience that she had missed along the way. The day after graduation, she joined an ONU mission trip and headed to Costa Rica. God had even bigger plans for her on this trip. Sitting next to her on the airplane was Joshua Mettille ’20, an art education major at ONU, who would become her husband in 2022.
Welcoming New Challenges
After returning from Costa Rica, Rebecca began her new graduate assistant job and began her MBA degree program with the nonprofit management emphasis. The next two years were a whirlwind of experiences and education for her. “I was learning about fundraising on the job,” she says. “In the evenings, I was working with ONU student callers in the Phonathon fundraising events. Having my MBA courses all online helped me in managing my schedule. As a grad student, I was impressed by the way ONU lived out its mission of ‘Education With a Christian Purpose’ in the MBA program.”
Today, Rebecca is the Social Media Manager for the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Working from home and from RSNA’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, she is responsible for capturing and sharing organic content for the organization.
RSNA’s annual conference — one of the largest radiological meetings in the world — is held each year at McCormick Place convention center in downtown Chicago, which is the largest convention center in North America. During the conference, she takes videos and photos, assists with video interviews, and manages the organization’s different social media channels.
Joshua teaches art at Glacier Ridge Elementary School in Crystal Lake, Illinois. They are also new parents, having welcomed their first child in 2024.
“I had told myself many times that I could never get my master’s degree,” Rebecca says. “Now with my MBA, I know that I can do what I want to do when I put my mind to it, and I can do more than I think I can. Even if something is difficult, I can do it and get it done.”
Learn more about ONU’s graduate degree programs at Olivet.edu/academics/graduate-programs. For more information or to enroll, email onlineadmissions@olivet.edu or call 877-465-4838.
