Come for fun, stay for love...

The fun thing about being enrolled again as a student at my institution is that you receive all of the specialty student email blasts and announcements from student organizations. Like this one.

SUMMER Speed Date Event

Find your summer love at our next Speed Dating Event! Instant Dating will again be hosting a 3-Minute Dating Event. You will go on up to 50 dates in one night!

Who: All Iowa State students

What: 3-Minute Dating hosted by Instant-Dating

When: Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Time: Starts at 7pm (you may come late or leave early as needed)

Where: 136 UDCC; First Floor Conference Room in the UDCC (below the dining services, down the hallway from the UDA hall desk)

Admission: $7

How it works: Everyone is assigned a "number-nametag" after signing in. You will then rotate every 3 minutes as you go on 'mini'blind-dates (It's like you're on your very own reality Bachelor or Bachelorette show!). At the end of the event, you can choose the "numbers" of people you would be interested in seeing again on a second date. Then within 48 hours of the event, an email will be sent to you containing all of your mutual matches with their name and email address. Good Luck! (NO pre-registration is required)

Take a break from studying! Come for fun, stay for love...

Sounds like a new theme for our first-year seminar and university retention efforts.

Come for fun, stay for love...

Declining access to higher education?

I am fortunate to administer an endowed scholarship that flourishes even in these financial times thanks to careful foundation oversight and recent gifts from our generous donor. It is a partial tuition scholarship and most students also receive significant institutional and federal aid. So, I have concerns when I read that many scholarship providers are pulling back support.

Full cost of attendance at my university this fall (tuition, fees, room, board, books/supplies, personal expenses) is $18,370. The average financial need (cost of attendance minus expected family contribution) of my new class of 100 scholarship recipients is greater than $15,500. More than half of the students have need within 1% of the full cost of attendance.

With less money thrown off by endowments and contributed by donors, scholarship providers must make difficult choices. Should current scholarship recipients have their awards renewed, at the expense of new applicants? Should scholarship amounts be reduced so that the same number of students can benefit? Should the size of awards be protected, but their number cut? ~Jonathan D. Glater

Access to higher education becomes even more important in challenging economic times. Here’s hoping that scholarship providers can keep their focus on priorities.

Bonfires of Vanities

Joined the rush to get my new Facebook vanity URL of http://www.facebook.com/DebraSanborn. Regretfully, I cannot set one up for my scholarship program or student exchange program groups as I do not have a fanbase of 1,000 or own trademarks on these names. Hope that Facebook will soon see the advantage of allowing all groups and pages to customize their URL.

Some choices we live not only once...

Our university town has been struck with two tragedies in the last week. The circumstances of these events were live changing and in one case, life ending.

The first, an out of control post-high school graduation party, resulted in a local all-state football star disarming a police officer. The 18 year-old, a recent graduate, now faces four felony charges. The second incident involved a 19-year old visiting friends in a high rise apartment next to campus. He fell seven floors to his death in an elevator shaft.

These situations were framed with bad decisions, wrong choices; choices that could likely have been avoided. In student affairs, we work with students every day who when faced with opportunities to self-regulate independence, do not have the experience or maturity to make wise decisions. Decisions that follow and frame their lives.

Sadly, I guess that is part of what keeps us in business.

Some choices we live not once but a thousand times over, remembering them for rest of our lives. ~Richard Bach