Painting the Spoonholder

Well it was another busy but fun day for the Morningside admissions team. On the final day of preparation for Iowa Private College Week that begins next Monday we were calling students to confirm their visits, setting up and rearranging the campus locations we’ll be using during the week, AND painting the Spoonholder!

Admissions painting the Spoonholder.

Ashley and Allie painting away!

Mack did all the wording, looks great!

The Spoonholder is the large bench that sits out front of Lewis Hall on our campus and is visible as you drive by the front of campus on Morningside Avenue. It was given to Morningside in 1908 as a gift from the class of 1903. Painting the Spoonholder is a Morningside tradition, and I did a little investigating about the history of this. Here’s what I found in the book, Morningside College: A Centennial History…

During Commencement week of 1908, the thirteen members of the Class of 1903 gave the college a “beautiful settee.” The Morningside College Bulletin described it as a “pew curved to a quarter circle and facing the college. It is built of solid cement, beautifully faced, while at the center is placed the name of the class. It will accommodate in all thirteen people and has a gross weight of 5 tons.” This “pew” became known as the “Spoonholder,” both for the kitchen utensil it resembled, and for its frequent use by young couples “spooning.”

The tradition of painting the Spoonholder comes from the class rivalries between the 1902 and 1903 classes. In 1902, when 1902 inscribed its year on a large granite boulder to present to the college, 1903 promptly painted the boulder green. Although 1902 scrubbed the paint off that evening, they awoke the next morning to find the boulder gone, and a pile of dirt marking the spot. The books from the senior classroom were also missing. The seniors found both after a hasty excavation. On the morning of the official dedication, 1903 organized a mock dedication, which Dr. Lewis quickly stopped. Shortly after the Spoonholder dedication in 1908, so the legend goes, the bench was painted green.

I’ve been at Morningside for 7 years now (came as a student in 2002), and I’ve personally seen the Spoonholder painted well over a hundred times by students and different student groups and organizations. I always feel bad for those people that spend a lot of time on it, just to get it painted over a few days later; but life isn’t fair, and most everyone knows this before they even start painting… I believe I’ve heard that the unwritten rule is you have to wait 24 hours before you paint over it.

Anyway, every year for Iowa Private College Week and for a few other group visit days, the Admissions Office paints it for our guests, and then we allow our guests to sign/paint it as well. It’s our way of letting our guests leave their mark at Morningside and take part in a campus tradition.

I mentioned that life isn’t fair, but I’m going to do my best to even the score a little bit for anyone who paints the Spoonholder this year. Whenever I see it painted differently I’ll take a picture of it and make sure to include it somewhere in my blog posts. I’ll start today with the pictures below of the Spoonholder. Before admissions painted it, it had been painted by the library staff here at Morningside early in June. They painted books on the front so it looked like a giant bookshelf!

The Spoonholder – Painted by our Library staff in early July.

Back view of the Spoonholder.

Below is what it looks like now in preparaion for Iowa Private College Week… (It will continually have signatures added to it all next week by our visitors, and I’ll post the finished picture after Iowa Private College Week on Monday, August 10.)

The Spoonholder – Painted by the Admissions Office 7.31.09

Mack finishing the back of the Spoonholder.

It will be difficult, but I’ll do my best to at least get 1 post up next week, and I will also be tweeting our event at some point so be sure to check our Twitter page and follow along!
Our Twitter page – twitter.com/msideadmissions

Take care and have a great weekend!

Filed under: Events, Just for fun

Road Trips and Iowa Private College Week

I love road trips. For those who have been “lucky” or “unfortunate” enough (depending on how you look at it) to travel with me, you know you’re always in for a bit of an adventure; I usually end up missing at least one turn or exit per trip due to sightseeing, being distracted with conversation, or more often than not, getting lost in deep thought (which others sometimes refer to as “spacing out”). I just want those who will be traveling with me in the future to know that my days of bad navigation will soon be over thanks to a handy gadget my father-in-law let me borrow for a recent road trip with my dad.

On Sunday my dad and I went to a Kansas City Royals game. We are not fans of the Royals, but my sister hooked us up with tickets in the third row behind home plate; there was no way we were going to pass these seats up! It turned out to be a beautiful day for a baseball game, 88 degrees and sunny, but the Royals ended up losing the game to the Rangers 7-2, go figure. The game was actually scoreless until the seventh inning when we learned that the Royals second baseman would have preferred overcast to the sunshine. :) Watch the game recap to see what I mean…

Anyway, to minimalize my wrong turns and missed exits my dad decided to print off a google map with turn by turn directions for the trip. Once we reached Kansas City and its multiple lanes of crazy traffic, however, we realized flipping through a bunch of papers and a road map wasn’t going to help much. It was at this time I decided to use the gadget my father-in-law let me take along, a Garmin GPS, and it guided us safely and accurately the rest of the way to the stadium. My dad and I had known about GPS systems like my father-in-law’s for a long time, but this was our first real experience with one. Let’s just say we’ve both started our Christmas list a little early this year.

MY NEW LOVE – How I feel about the Garmin.

You may be asking yourself why I’m talking about traveling in today’s post. Well, if you’re a prospective student or a parent of one it’s time to start printing your directions, pulling out your maps, and firing up your GPS if you have one, because Iowa Private College Week begins next Monday, August 3rd!

ROAD TRIP!
Iowa Private College Week

The following (in green) is a brief synopsis of Iowa Private College Week taken from one of my previous posts.
In case you don’t know, Iowa Private College Week is a week long event that takes place the first week of August (August 3-7, 2009). During Iowa Private College Week all Private Colleges in Iowa will offer two daily visit sessions, one starting at 9:00 am, and the other at 1:30 pm, for visitors to attend and learn more about what each college has to offer. Not only is it the perfect opportunity for high school students and their families to visit many different colleges in a short amount of time, but if they attend three or more colleges during the week and mail in their Iowa Private College Week passport they will be entered into a drawing for a $500 bookstore gift certificate. Each of the 30 colleges is giving away two bookstore certificates.

Morningside’s Event
Every college’s Iowa Private College Week event will be different, and over the years we have heard some great things about ours from our guests. I would love to share our unique theme with you; but I’m going to leave it a surprise for those of you who choose to visit next week.

However, here are a few things I can tell you about our event… if you visit you’ll learn a lot about us in a short amount of time, you’ll get to personally meet the admissions counselor who will be assisting you with your college search throughout the year, and you’ll also get to meet a professor in the academic area of your choice. I’d like to point out that not every college is lucky enough to have their professors on campus to meet with visitors during Iowa Private College Week. We’re so glad that our professors truly enjoy visiting with possible future students about their academic area, and that they take their own personal time to come back to campus for our event. It’s just another example of what we know makes Morningside College a great place; the people – our faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

If you’re a high school student (or parent) make sure to mark your calendar for this event.
To learn more about our event, and register to attend a session at Morningside click here.
We look forward to seeing you on campus!

To learn more about Iowa Private College Week (and the other colleges involved) please visit the link below.
http://www.thinkindependently.com/

Thanks for reading this post. We look forward to having another great Iowa Private College Week, and we wish safe travels to everyone who will be out and about across the state next week!

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Filed under: Events, Just for fun

Expect the Unexpected

Is there anything better than cake for breakfast? I really don’t think so.
This morning we had two birthdays (Jen Jauron’s and Terri Curry’s) in the admissions office, and we celebrated them by eating a well balanced breakfast of fruit and… cake. After eating a large portion of cake and washing it down with a refreshing Coca Cola Classic I remembered that I needed a subject for my blog today. Realizing the birthday party would be something to talk about I ran to grab my camera so I could have pictures of the event to go along with it. I attempted to take some pictures of the party, but once the flash on my camera went off the first time I lost the element of surprise and everyone scattered like cockroaches when the lights come on. A few of my initial candid shots ended up being banned from publication by my colleagues, but below are three I managed to sneak by them. :)

Counselors enjoying the food and sharing a few laughs.

According to a few ladies in the office... the cake I mentioned above is "coffee" cake... so I guess that makes it acceptable for breakfast.

Mack caught a little off guard.

To go along with today’s “unplanned” theme of parties, surprises, and catching people off guard I happened to stumble upon a cool video and blog post I’d like to share with you, “The Power of the Unexpected”. The post is about doing things that are unexpected, and how powerful as well as entertaining and enjoyable they can be. (Be sure to check it out by clicking the link in the previous sentence.) The video in this post also happened to remind me of all the weddings my wife and I still need to attend this year. We have about every weekend from now through October booked with weddings of our high school and college friends; one of whom happens to work in the office… Jeremy!

Quick Update…
In the last couple months I have pretty much introduced you to our entire admissions staff, except for one person… me! Next week I’ll try and write a small post about me and my role here in the admissions office. I’ll also go into more detail about Iowa Private College Week which will be taking place on campus August 3-7, and discuss the future of this blog; what I plan on discussing in my posts in the months ahead.

ONE MORE THING…
I have recently set up an automatic email update using feedburner. By clicking the link below you can subscribe to my blog and you will receive an email update whenever I publish a new post. It’s the easiest way to follow The Mside Admissions Guy!
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Thanks for reading, and I hope you decide to follow the blog.
Take care!

Filed under: Just for fun

Meet Steph

Every campus has its share of buildings named after famous alumni or people that played important roles in the history of the college. Morningside has Dimmitt Hall, Lewis Hall, and Roadman Hall just to name a few. The person I will introduce you to today may not have a building on our campus named after her (yet), but she does have something that bears her name…

While Morningside’s official address is 1501 Morningside Ave, there’s a particular street you have to turn on if you want to reach the heart of campus. The street is not “actually” named after her, but sometimes I think it should be…

Meet Steph Peters
Co-Director of Admissions / Admissions Counselor

Steph has been working at Morningside for 9 years now in the Admissions Office and has established herself as one of our best Admissions Counselors along with Amy Williams, our other Co-Director. Steph is a ’99 graduate of Morningside and as a student Steph studied business and economics (by the way, business is one of our top majors here, along with education and nursing). She was also a member of our softball team.

Steph has been an Admissions Counselor since she’s been here, and the way she works with her students and their families is a great example for everyone in office. Steph doesn’t just tell her students about Morningside, she really takes the time to get to know them more personally. In fact, I was up in Steph’s office last week, and the mother of one our incoming freshmen called. I decided to sit down and wait until the conversation was over… 25 minutes, and half a bag of chips later (… Steph always has snacks around), the conversation finally ended. As Steph hung up the phone she told me that was ____’s mom… “she had some questions about ____’s roommate, and then we just started talking about ____’s upcoming softball game.” Steph paused, gave a big smile, “I love them.”

As an admissions counselor It really makes us feel good when we know we helped bring a student to Morningside that is going to absolutely love it here – the phone call I mentioned above was with the mother of one these students.

Steph has a typical office… a desk full of papers and to-do lists as well as numerous pictures of her family and friends… but there are two things that really stand out about it… For starters, she has a maroon couch (which is really comfortable I might add). She also has a few display boards FILLED with senior pictures of the students she’s working with and thank you cards she’s received from them. These things are great evidence of the kind of relationships Steph has with her students, as well as the level of customer service she provides them.

A few other things about Steph…
She’s addicted to working out over the noon hours, loves listening to a variety of different music, and aside from being an amazing Admissions Counselor and Co-Director, she’s a great friend, AND a NEW mom!
Steph has been known in the office as “Ma” for quite some time (It’s kind of an inside joke), but as of a three months ago she’s now the real deal to her baby boy, Koen.

Koen Michael Peters

If you want to see more pics of Koen just become friends of Steph on facebook… she’s been pretty busy putting up lots of photos of the little guy. (In fact she got a new camera for it!)
Steph’s Facebook Profile: http://facebook.com/msidesteph

Finally, I’d like to dedicate the videos below to “Ma” and Koen.
If Koen’s anything like his mother… look out world! :)

Want to know even MORE about Steph?
Click here for Steph’s contact information and view her counselor profile on the Morningside College Website.

Thanks for reading!

“Ma”

“Koen”

Filed under: Office of Admissions

Meet Char

While I was watching The Simpsons last week I heard a phrase that reminded me of someone in our admissions office. In the episode (“Midnight Towboy”) Marge hires a counselor to help her with Maggie who has become a bit too clingy. When the counselor talks to Marge she tells her “hugs are drugs and Maggie’s addicted!” I thought this was pretty hilarious and it made me think if hugs really are drugs I know a person at work who isn’t only a “hug addict” but also a “hug dealer”…

Meet Char Jorgensen
M.I.S. Manager (Management Information Systems)

Char has been working at Morningside for over 20 years. She does many different things for our office, but her main responsibilities are processing student applications, entering important information like students’ ACT scores and transcripts into our data management system, and with Colleen’s help, she manages various projects for our student ambassadors.

While Char’s role in our office doesn’t grant her the opportunity to meet many NEW incoming students like our admissions counselors who work with them year round, she is able to develop extremely close relationships with current Morningside students who become student ambassadors. (Student ambassadors are current students who work for our Admissions Office during the school year. Their main role is giving tours to our visitors, but they also perform other tasks around the office.) Many of these students tend to think of her as their second mother, and often go to her for advice on just about anything ranging from homework to relationships. Char may not be our school counselor, but she is a very close friend to them, and a lot of times that’s all they really need. I’ve personally witnessed a few of her talks with these students, and I’ve had my own share of talks with her. Most chats with Char begin and end with a big hug which helps brighten your day.

Char is one of the kindest people I have ever known, and she also happens to be one of the most selfless. She truly enjoys giving back to her family and friends, her church, and her community at any time, and in any way she can.

I need your help…
In honor of Char and her charitable deeds I have put a SocialVibe widget on my blog which you can find on the far right side; it’s in bright orange, you can’t miss it. I don’t completely understand how SocialVibe works, but apparently the organization you choose to sponsor (in this case I chose Upper Deck) will donate money for your cause based on how long it is displayed on your blog and how many people click to help your cause. I chose to support the fight against Cancer. Please take a moment to click the “Help Now” button and help in the fight against cancer. (It’s Free!) Thanks so much for doing this!

AWKWARD man to man hug.

Finally, with all the talk of hugs in my post today, I’d like to end this post with an educational video lesson on something that in theory should be easy to do, but in reality is one of the most difficult and awkward things a man may ever perform… The man-to-man hug. While I have had my share of “awkward” man-to-man hugs in my life, I’m proud to say I’ve never given a “floppy half hearted attempt.” Don’t ask… just watch the video below to see what I’m talking about. :)

YOUTUBE VIDEO: How to give the perfect man-to-man hug.

Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Filed under: Office of Admissions