It’s quiet… a little too quiet. Oh yeah, I forgot, it’s the first day of Fall Break. Our students may be gone until Wednesday, but the rest of us are still slaving away in the office as usual… or are we? Anyway, in today’s post I’ll tell you about a couple college fair events I attended last week and the emergence of a new “triple-threat” of great colleges out there for you to consider visiting if you’re a prospective student, and I’ll also inform you about an event our campus will be hosting all day tomorrow.
This is the only image I could find for "triple-threat"... And in case you were wondering... yes, I watch professional wrestling from time to time... my favorite wrestler? Chris Jericho
College Fairs and the NEW Triple-Threat
Last week I attended two college fair-like events with a couple of my co-workers from the Admissions Office. On Thursday I attended one held at the Convention Center here in Sioux City with Jen Jauron, and on Friday I traveled with one of our Co-Directors of Admissions, Amy Williams, to Maple Valley High School for a College/Career Day. At both places I was able to visit with high school students (freshmen through seniors) about their college search, and share more information with them about Morningside; I must say I’d forgotten how much fun these sort of events can be.
While Thursday’s Convention Center visit with Jen was more like the typical college fairs we attend each year – college representatives are given a table which we cover with our school banner and admissions materials – Friday’s visit to Maple Valley/Anthon-Oto High School was something a little bit more out of the ordinary. In the morning all the colleges were separated into different groups to talk directly with the students. Amy and I were in a group with Tisha Lindgren, an Admissions Counselor from the University of South Dakota (USD), and Megan Forey, an Admissions Counselor from Iowa Central Community College (ICCC). We started by taking turns telling the students more about the schools we represented, and then talked a little about what made our colleges different from one another… the most obvious being the size of our schools. Morningside is a small private 4-year college, USD is a larger state university, and Iowa Central is a 2-year Community College.
We tried our best to make it clear to the students that all of our schools would be great choices for them to consider attending to further their education, but in the end they should choose a school that best meets their own social, economical, and educational criteria.
Amy and I really enjoyed meeting everyone; the students we visited with that day, both Tisha and Megan, and of course Mr. Brown whose classroom we used for our session. By the way, we all felt pretty good when the students came up to us later that day and told us our session was one of the most entertaining… let’s just say things got a little crazy from time to time in our session! But I think our main message remained clear… “The only way to find the school that best fits you is to visit campus.” We also all agreed that if a student is unsure of what size of institution he or she would like to attend, it’s never a bad idea to visit one of each. If this is the case for you, I personally recommend you visit the “triple-threat” of Morningside College, the University of South Dakota, and Iowa Central Community College as each of them are great representations of other similar sized educational institutions.
If you’re a Senior in High School, click here to learn more about our upcoming Senior Visit Days!
On Campus Event
Tomorrow, October 20th, our campus will be hosting the “Pursuing Victory with Honor Summit”. The event is hosted by Character Counts in Iowa, and it will bring high school student athletes, coaches, and administrators together for a daylong program designed to strengthen character and encourage leadership. The keynote speaker will be Iowa State University Basketball Coach Greg McDermott. I will be busy helping with the event tomorrow along with many other Morningside staff and faculty. We look forward to hosting this event, and many more like it in the years ahead.
Learn more about the “Pursuing Victory with Honor Summitt”.
I’ll be back later this week with quite possibly the most important post to date, and to all those students home on Fall Break… have fun, enjoy it while it lasts, and while it’s great to be here at Morningside I must say… I’m extremely jealous of you! :)
Oh yeah, and before I forget… below is the latest look of the Spoonholder. I believe it was painted last Friday by Leslie Werden’s Passport class, and as you can see they have a sense of humor, or they’re just terrible at spelling…
Spoonholder 10.18.09 - Leslie's Little Ligers
The back reads: Passport 2009... "we reed gooder"
Thanks for reading and take care!
Jim Braunschweig
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msideadmissions
I love reading your blog & love the photos of the Spoonholder. This post reminded me why I went to Morningside. When I was in high school, the Morningside Choir performed at my school and I liked what they had to say about their school. I had attended a junior high in a large school and high school in a small school and didn’t know if I wanted to attend a small college or a large university. When most other schools were giving a hard sell for their school alone, my admissions counselor at Morningside wanted to make sure if I chose Morningside, it was because it was the right fit for me. It was.