ÃÛÌÒAPP

Shelly Vitanza:

Welcome to the ÃÛÌÒAPP Moment. Thank you for listening, I’m Shelly Vitanza, the Director of Public Affairs at ÃÛÌÒAPP. Each week we showcase the great events, activities, programs, projects, and people at ÃÛÌÒAPP. The big event this week of course is the election and ÃÛÌÒAPP’s been encouraging students to vote, even providing a shuttle to voting locations. We encourage everyone to get out and vote. The second big campaign on campus is the flu shot campaign. The student health center here on campus has sponsored three flu shot fairs and they’re encouraging everyone across campus to get their flu shot. Faculty, staff and students. And we encourage everyone to get their flu shot out in the community. There are two other events out on the ÃÛÌÒAPP calendar that you need to know about. The first one is Big Red’s ride. It’s a classic and antique car show. It will be held on November 7th, from 10am until 3pm at Spindletop Gladys City Boomtown. The entire community is invited to take a step back in time to see an amazing assortment of beautifully restored cars from area car club. Big Red and ÃÛÌÒAPP will be there too, so the kids will enjoy it. There’s no entry fee, it is absolutely free. It’s just a great opportunity to get out of the house. We’ve all been stuck in our homes for so long. It’s going to be outdoors, free, open to the public, and if you stay until 3:30, the gusher’s going to blow and to blow and you get to see the reenactment of the Spindletop Gusher. Of course, masks will be required, and social distancing will be practiced. If you want more information about Big Red’s Ride, you can go to www.lamar.edu/bigredsride. Okay! Another event that you won’t want to miss is a really unique event. It is a discussion with distinguished alumni, Billy Kubbs? and Norman Ballard. It’s going to be in November the 1oth at 6:op, it usually lasts about an hour. It’s going to be on Facebook Live, ÃÛÌÒAPP’s Facebook Live, or you can go to lamar.edu/live and watch it. So distinguished alumni, Billy Kubbs? graduated in 58’ and Norman Ballard in 79’. They’re going to talk about their basketball careers and of course, ÃÛÌÒAPP. It’s going to be very entertaining, a lot of fun. Both of these guys just have a ton of character. They are character’s in and of themselves. They have so much experience with ÃÛÌÒAPP and basketball, and Norman Ballard is still at ÃÛÌÒAPP still making a big difference, he’s the Assistant to the President in Community Relations responsible for the Southpark neighborhood; the nest that we have built in the area, VISD schools. So, it’s going to be a great, great event and a live event that you can watch in the comfort of your own homes at lamar.edu/live. So, we’ve got elections November 3rd, we’ve got Big Red’s Ride November 7th at Spindletop Gladys City Boomtown, and then on November the 10th, we’ve got the discussion with Billy Kubbs and Norman Ballard which will be virtual. So, you know it’s been kind of a rough year. I’m not telling you something you don’t know, but imagine during this year, we were responsible for recruiting 18-year-olds to college, during 2020, when your campus is closed, no visitors can come on the grounds for a tour and you’re role is to recruit students and that is the role of our Welcome Center Director, Tracie Craig, one of the things you do here on campus, right Tracie? So, we are going to talk about some of the challenges and how you guys have overcome the challenges. And really, recruiting is up and so it’s just a remarkable story, how you’ve been able to tackle this year. Let’s talk about what happened in the beginning. Did you just completely freak out when the campus was closed?

Tracie Craig:

It was tempting to freak out at first, but we didn't't’t have the luxury of freaking out, we just had to adjust and move forward. It happened right at the time of our planned admitted student day which we had to turn into a virtual day, which we did. I have next to no technical skills, but I’m surrounded by people who do.

Shelly Vitanza:

That’s when the students come in handy!

Tracie Craig:

They know I can paint the picture of what we want to accomplish, and they have to fill in the technical pieces. I could not be prouder of how my colleagues and my student team just pulled it off. We engaged 441 students through our three virtual events, during the live version of it. And an additional 165 who used the recording of one of those. We covered topics relevant to admitted students and answered all of their questions and we had staff available from the CSI office, advising, and student orientation, STAR services, financial aid and scholarships, housing, and health center. Every question that a parent or an admitted student might have, they had an opportunity to live chat with…

Shelly Vitanza:

…residence life, what’s going on on campus, student organizations, all those things. Okay so, you had this big plan where students were supposed to come on campus and get all of their questions answered about living, breathing, and studying here on campus and you had to make that completely virtual. So, was it this gigantic zoom call?

Tracie Craig:

Yes, that’s exactly what it was. I had joined zoom meetings, but I had never planned and managed. It was fun and again, I could not be prouder of our staff. We practiced. We all jumped on a pretend zoom meeting and we had our talking points and we just had one of just us. And so, we knew we were going to be ready for our guests and we did it and it was great.

Shelly Vitanza:

That’s amazing! So, what was great about it too was, that’s kind of meeting the students where they are. Because you and I, this generation, the zoom calls, it’s not our thing. We would rather meet face to face. But our students, they are cool with it right?

Tracie Craig:

Yes and another thing we’ve learned that has helped us make changes and how we do operations and moving forward is we’ve learned that the anonymity of being on the other side of the computer screen opened up more questions. Sometimes, when they come on the tour, they are timid about asking questions, but when they were chatting, they would ask more pointed, more specific questions, because again, like you said, they are more comfortable in that arena. It was very natural for them to live chat.

Shelly Vitanza:

Mom and Dad would normally come with a student, but were Mom and Dad on the zoom call too?

Tracie Craig:

They could be. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t, but they were invited to join if they wanted to.

Shelly Vitanza:

So, that was the launch of the virtual program and then you had others?

Tracie Craig:

Yes, we did three of those, and they were more and more polished as we went along, we learned. We even did one in Spanish, which I think is pretty exciting for us. And from there, we thought, okay people like the virtual arena, so we thought, let’s target specific audiences who are interested in a specific subject matter. We launched a series called a Major Discussion and we admitted admits, applicants and even prospects who showed an interest who showed an interest in a particular area of study, whether it was art, education, or a specific engineering and we had faculty and a student from that discipline who was available to live chat. They did presentations and they did a live chat for the students to ask specific questions like, “what does my first year of classes look like? What