The Road to Readiness: Pathways for Success after High School

001foreign good good evening everyone my name is gina wilson and i'm the family and civic engagement coordinator for the district and i want to begin by thanking everyone on our call this evening the town hall for this month is the road to readiness pathways to success after high school so we wanted to bring some opportunities to our students families and community and offer supports and information on what is to come after graduation um i want to encourage our audience to participate if you have any questions to please add them to our youtube chat you can text any questions to 216 770 and we will be sure that we answer them in the order that they um come in so i want to pass it over to our dei consultant miss yolanda hamilton um for an

002introduction and thank you again for joining us tonight yes thank you to everyone for joining us again my name is yolanda hamilton i'm the diversity equity and inclusion consultant with the garfield high city school district i just want to also thank our director of technology miss sherry bailey for making this event possible tonight i'm so excited about this opportunity for us to bring this equity town hall the road to readiness past what pathways to success after high school we wanted to provide an informational opportunity for those in our district to learn more about what are the things that we need to prepare for that can create successful opportunities for us following um high school so we're very excited that we have representatives from community organizations that provide supports to our students and we have some

003individuals that are college rep recruitment representatives from various colleges not just from northeast ohio but also from michigan and so when that time comes to the program i'll allow those individuals to introduce themselves but i just want to thank everyone for taking the time out for this meaningful program at this time i would like to start off our program by introducing miss amanda collins who was with ohio means jobs who's going to share some valuable information with us about the organization and how they support students our high school graduates all yours excellent thank you so much for having me this evening the ohio means jobs cleveland cuyahoga county office is located centrally at 1910 carnegie and that's downtown cleveland ohio 44115 inside of that building we have our young adult resource center and our young

004adult resource center at ohio meets jobs cleveland cuyahoga county basically helps young people in cuyahoga county achieve career success through online resources through on-site services and our referral pipeline and our yrc and that's just an acronym of it acts as a doorway i want to say to a network of employment and training programs in greater cleveland and through the young adult resource center our yrc young adults get the opportunity to get connected to services like job placement help job readiness and vocational training because there's a lot of occupations that are coming up in the trades and the young adult resource center at ohio means jobs really want to keep that pulse and that network of those employers that are looking to hire individuals into those industries we also offer paid work experiences for a lot

005of our young adults because it gives them the opportunity to see if this is the industry that i would like to see myself in a sustainable career with so giving them that opportunity through a paid work experience they kind of get a two-for-one deal first of all they actually get compensated for being a part of this activity and kind of getting their feet wet in this industry we want to assist them with career as well as life coaching because we understand that a lot of our youth and young adults they may experience certain challenges or how do i make that decision in regards to a career and be able to deal with those life challenges that may come my way we definitely have to provide some goal setting because we don't want to uh deter

006them for any goals they may have but we got to pull a lot of our young folks out of the clouds and say what do you really want to be when you grow up so we have to have those goal-setting conversations with them and offer that career planning help we do provide them also with a lot of our ged services with tutoring as well as classes and dropout recovery services too with some of our youth and young adults there may be some case management that may be needed we do have case managers that's on site monday through friday our doors open up at 8. we usually close about 4 30 and with those case management services there may be some parenting because some of our youth and young adults they come with children and we

007want to provide a holistic approach for that service and that's a lot of our resources too where we'll be able to refer those individuals to some of our community agencies and partnerships with information to help them address those needs and some of those challenges and believe it or not all of our services are free we do not want any of our youth or young adults to have to take out any kind of student loans for their education or training because ohio means jobs cleveland cuyahoga county we are funded by the us department of labor so that allows us to offer free training services to our youth and young adults and we have a really strong collaboration with a lot of training providers throughout greater cleveland uh tri-c polaris cleveland state just to name a few

008but if there's a training program that any youth a young adult may be interested in participating in nine times out of ten we have a partnership with that training provider where we will pay that cost for that student because we don't want our youth or young adults to contribute to the national debt at all when you have services that are paid through the u.s department of labor we're really pushing this year i want to say to look at the in-demand occupations what is that glad you asked in demand occupations are in sectors that are in high demand where we're connecting young adults to high demand career pathways here in northeast ohio our workforce is aging out where we have employers now that are looking for young minds and willing bodies to be able to fill

009these positions to keep the economy going and believe it or not to have a very good paying wage these are in the industries of manufacturing constructions health care and i.t is creeping up very fast with a lot of these are coming into trades we want to dispel the myth that manufacturing is a dirty job because it's not i mean this ink pen that i'm holding right here this is manufacturing okay a lot of manufacturing companies they have an actual clean climate um process now where you're coming into these centers or these warehouses or these workplaces and believe it or not the surrounding or the environment clean air is highly highly highly enforced there you would never believe that you're in a manufacturing site it's different from the grandfather days where you came in and you

010had dirt underneath your nails no no no no no because there are health factors and there are climate control factors that a lot of manufacturers are going into so we're dispelling that myth that we're providing tours and those work experiences with those industries to show a lot of our youth and young adults this is where you can start and this is where you can go with a lot of the trades so in a nutshell how to get started glad you asked basically we're asking everybody to contact the yrc 216 area code 777-8222 we're making it very simple we have a brief registration orientation because we want to expedite the process we'll offer one-on-one consultation to find out what do you really want to be when you grow up and we get you referred to any

011of our youth providers we collaborate with about seven strong youth providers in greater cleveland and is connecting the dots getting them to that provider to get them on that career pathway either into training or employment um that's about it i'm open for any questions that anyone may have to see how we can get you along that career pathway okay so we just have a couple questions for you um one um i can't could you unmute yourself i'm sorry we do have one question for you um how does ohio means jobs provide support for high school graduates with disabilities excellent one of our partnerships that we have with ohio means jobs is ood and that's the office of opportunities for individuals with disabilities we have on-site representatives from east side west side of cleveland where those

012individuals may come into our doors and they may share that information with us so they have i don't like using the word disability i'm going to say a challenge okay because challenge can be overcome and so with that being stated we will actually have them have a one-on-one right there on site with one of our disability space specialists ood is the new word for bureau of vocational rehabilitation and with ohio means jobs we have to have a mandated partner on site to be able to address any individual that may come into our doors with a challenge be it a young adult or the adult they're there to serve them and they will be able to assist with case management counseling services any type of special accommodations they may need for that job let's say it's

013a visual impairment they'll be able to provide them with those services no cost again to get them a screen let's say if there's an office position that they're going for they need a particular screen bvr ood have been very helpful with providing those type of services let's say that there may be a physical challenge where the individual may need a certain shoe or a certain brace for his or her back they've been very helpful with being able to help them get those type of services and even through that interviewing process too because sometimes some of our individuals they kind of know what they want to say but there may be a comprehension situation or maybe an iep situation so they'll do that coaching to actually help them navigate through that interview and actually do some

014follow-up once they get hired with that employer to see how they're coming along so they give front-end supportive services as well as back-end supportive services and some of those financial services too thank you so much and so again we are we are a district that really values inclusion and so it's important that we make sure that all of our students feel supported and that they have equitable opportunities to succeed after graduation i want to thank you for that and of course if we have more questions come in towards the end of the program we will present those to the individuals who are on for those that are just joining us we are having a good discussion about resources that are available to support our graduates after graduation on their pathway to success and at this

015time i would like to turn the floor over to our representatives from college now who are on um the chat tonight that's going they're going to provide some valuable resources in terms of what their organization offers and how they can be a support to high school students as well um sure thank you so much frank for having us tonight my name is helen rusinski i'm at college now i'm a site coordinator and advisor at garfield heights high school so you'll see me leading the act impact program in the afternoons and then beginning in december i'm going to be doing individual advising appointments during the day with students as well i'm so you'll see me around the school then i'd also like to introduce my colleague emily emily would you like to introduce yourself sure hello

016my name is emily petrus i am a program coordinator at college now so i help assist with all of our lovely programs like impact thanks emily um so we'll begin by talking about our agenda we'll give an overview of college now who we are and what we do we'll talk about the college preparatory exams act and sat and why taking the exams is still important and we'll also talk about financial aid and how to finance a post-secondary education so first a little bit about us so college now is the national leader in college access organizations it's actually the first organization of its kind and the largest college access organization in ohio and also one of the largest in the us in this field i mean it's also historically served as a model for other organizations

017in this field across the country our mission is to increase post-secondary meaning after high school educational attainment and we do this in a number of ways that's through college and career access advising through financial aid counseling and through scholarship and retention services and we provide our services to school-age students generally middle school and high school students through a variety of programs including our impact program which is currently ongoing at garfield high school and we also provide our services to adult learners as well um so to talk about the college preparatory exams the act and sat um you may have been hearing that some colleges have been waiving the requirement for the s.a.t and act in this past year particularly because of cobid and the situation surrounding that we still encourage students to take the act

018or sat for a number of reasons um there are still still schools that require it for admission there are also schools that consider it within their scholarship decisions it may be helpful in placing out of certain courses so at some schools they use your high school gpa and your test score to determine your placement in college courses the act and sct are also used as predictors of college readiness so some research indicates that if you score an 18 or higher on the ect then you're likely to maintain a b average in college um so that's used as a predictor of whether or not you're ready for college um and it's also just another data point that is used in admissions factors so to break down both the tests the act is in four sections the

019max composite store is the 36 it covers four different topics math english reading and science the sat is in two sections so it only covers math and english and the next score on that is a 1600 we recommend that students take one of each type of test even though the tests are similar students might find that one format is slightly they may do better on on one format over the other so we recommend that they take both and to register for the act and sct there are fees for both of these tests for the ect um you can register at act.org and the fee is 55 for the sat you can build visit collegeboard.org and the fuse 52. juniors and seniors may qualify for fee waivers um college now does provide those we provide two

020per year per student um so you can check with me or your school counselor school guidance counselor to see if you qualify and last we'll talk about um in the section we'll talk about test prep resources um so as i mentioned i'm leading currently a free eight week test prep program at garfield heights high school um we're just finishing up the fall program um participants do have an incentive for this program so if they successfully um participate in enough sessions they will earn a stipend of 200 um and if your student is interested you can register for the winter 2022 session at the link that's listed there all right i'm going gonna take over the financing college section of this presentation so um with college obviously comes costs and i'm gonna review some of this

021information pretty briefly um so there are different ways you can earn college credits or save money while your student or you as a student are in high school so the first two on here are ccp which are college credit plus programs this is formerly known as psop but essentially this is free college that you are able to take while in high school typically you have to have certain scores or certain gpa to get into the program but it is really beneficial because you can save a lot of money by doing this usually it's basic math and english classes like english 101 and then you know there's ap classes which are advanced placement courses and these courses are usually offered within your school um i'm not sure exactly how they're offered at garfield but if they

022are offered here um they usually at the end of the course you have to take a test and if you score a certain if you score high enough on the test you're able to get college a college credit essentially so those are both ways you can start earning college credits while in high school and then a way to start funding your college education in high school guardians can open a section 529 prepaid tuition plan so this essentially is a savings account for students and it's tax free and it can grow over time the reason you can open this is just to you know help students pay for their college tuition but also the earlier you open this the better anytime you can open one if you would like to um it's just helpful for your

023students so um and then another thing that students can do during their while in high school is apply for the fafsa so senior year we would love all students to you know do the fafsa if they are wanting to go on to post-secondary education it opened october 1st so uh helen is available for help in december if you need help with that um and then also so that was kind of in high school what things you could do while you were in high school to help with your college you know tuition or college credits while you're in college um after you you know fill out your fafsa you do have to fill out the fafsa every single year to determine how much you have to pay for school but after that's filled out the fafsa

024will tell you if you have any grants if you're eligible for any grants if you're eligible for federal student loans or work study money so grants and scholarships are free money that you do not have to pay back those are the best types of things that we can recommend you know after you fill out the fafsa it'll tell you if you're eligible for specific grants but something that we talk a lot talk a lot about is the pell grant or there are a few other ones that a lot of students are usually eligible for and then scholarships a lot of them are merit based that come right from different schools so that usually depends on act sat scores in your gpa and then of course there are federal loans which may seem scary to take

025out but i think a lot of people have loans nowadays i know i can speak for myself i definitely have some student loans but the less loans we can take out the better if possible and then work study money this essentially when you apply for the fafsa we always recommend for students to always say always apply for work study so work study money is just money set aside for students to work on campus essentially this money is used the basically the paychecks that they make can be used towards any educational costs so that could be tuition room and board whatever it may be but work study money is nice because you can if you can get an on-campus job with it they cater to students hours so you won't be working 40 plus hours a

026week you'll be probably working you know 15 and it'll be around your school schedule and then other things to do earn while you learn gain experience and build your resume through co-op programs and internships just to gain experience and then tips for finding scholarships so um there are really big massive scholarships out there like the stop the hate scholarship is a really big one that's very exciting and there's essays involved but it's it's large and lots of people apply to it so thinking local is usually better so nonprofits like the cleveland foundation they have tons of scholarships available college now we have scholarships available which i'll be sharing some more information about soon unions are a good avenue to go through sororities fraternities even grocery stores no money is small money so like five hundred

027dollars may seem maybe not like a lot in the grand scheme of a college tuition of you know thousands but any type of money will help even if it's fifty dollars it can go towards one book uh because books are expensive in college and then look to the institution so most aid like i said previously comes from the school so it's really lots of aid usually comes from scholarships specifically come from merit so you know your act and sat scores or your gpa there are other scholarship avenues like sports and other things like that but if we can get good scores on things that will help us as well and then also apply to many and apply as often as you can so you know apply to as many as you possibly can i'm going

028to be talking about some different resources to find scholarships as well so the college now scholarship is one the application is now open the requirements are a 2.5 gpa is the minimum and then you have to have an 18 on the act or a 960 on the sat you also have to be pell eligible and that is determined by the fafsa meaning you have to have your fafsa completed and then you can see how long for more details on this but if you are eligible to apply i recommend applying and then we also have um a scholarship database it is under construction right now we're we're adding more scholarships and updating it but it should be done very soon it's a really nice resource because you can narrow down things based on you know if

029you want to write an essay you can look at different essays that are out that you're eligible to write and stuff like that so it's very helpful um does anybody have any questions i i have a couple of questions um thank you for the information that all that information is very useful and i think our seniors and families could find this information very beneficial a couple of things i know the impact you guys spoke about the impact program and we're just coming to the end of the fall session and i was able to grab the um link for the um the winner session when should students is this something that students sign up for families have to sign them up for when should they be looking to sign up for this winner session so they

030don't miss out on the opportunity the link is available so if you wanted to sign up now feel free to to kind of secure your spot because sometimes the program does get pretty popular so um yeah secure your spot now and we'll have you on the registration before program opens up you'll get an email a week before with information of where to go and everything like that awesome a second question that i have was regarding scholarships um they can be super helpful in helping pay for college tuition but i know from past from my personal experience they can also be a bit overwhelming when trying to look for them apply for them not knowing if we're putting the right information to ensure that we're trying to give ourselves the best opportunity to obtain these scholarships

031is there any type of helen would you be someone that students can come to as a resource for applying for scholarships or if they have questions regarding how they can apply for scholarships and moving forward in that nature um yes absolutely so um i'm leading the after school program primarily right now but i am planning um late november um you know hopefully and then if not definitely early december to start doing individual appointments with students um there will be an online sign up link um i'll be speaking with the guidance counselor to get something set up so that way um students that go into her with questions um will be able to sign up for appointments with me um through an online sign up and then um we'll be able to go through scholarships together

032awesome thank you great and i just wanted to um to mention you know to the families you heard this resource and so get encourage your seniors to sign up for the winter session and i mean hey after completing eight weeks to get two hundred dollars that sounds like a good deal so at least you know you're starting off with something to go towards that that college expenses and then also the fafsa just opened up october 1st is october 21st tonight so you have the opportunity to get in there and try to complete that as much as possible because the application process will be closing out towards the when next semester comes and so we want to just encourage you to take advantage of that so at this point of the program we're going to move

033into um engaging a bit with our college reps that we have so what i'm going to ask of our reps if you could just take maybe like three to four minutes to introduce yourself your college university institution and then we have some questions that have come in specifically for your universities and colleges we also have um another organization the hbcu alumni cleveland council of black college representative with us is also a part of this dialogue to share some valuable information on exploring hbcus um also as an option for the college experience so i wanna i'm just gonna go on the order of how i see my screen so we can start off with um sarah mccord hi everyone so nice to to be on this call my name is sarah mccord and i'm an admissions

034representative at ursuline college so a little bit about ursuline we are located on the east side of cleveland in the beechwood area we are a pretty small place we've got about 1 200 students on our campus but that really creates a tight-knit community of students and their mentors so our average class size is actually only 11 so our students really get to connect with those professors for homework help internships and careers once they graduate ursuline college ursuline college is also a women's focused institution we are the only one in ohio which means that more than 90 of our undergraduate students are women so we do accept men into ursuline you know they can still live on campus and participate in all the same activities but our main focus really is empowering women and creating the

035education and the career goals that they would like to achieve um kind of talking very briefly about scholarships and financial aid we do offer merit scholarships to our students everyone gets at least sixteen thousand dollars and it only goes up from there based off of that a ct score and the college or the high school gpa um we have a number of scholarships for first-time first-generation students and students with alumni members at ursuline college and we are also a ncaa division ii athletic school so we have 12 different sports for women and we are able to give out some scholarships for those as well that is a little bit about ursuline thank you okay we'll go to cooper hello everyone thank you for allowing me to have the opportunity to be here i'm one of

036the admissions counselors at marietta college located in beautiful marietta ohio right along the ohio river to give a little background about marietta our campus size is around 1200 students and that gives us an average class size of around 13 to 14 students we are a private liberal arts college and there's just many opportunities for students on those campuses to also speak a bit about scholarships students can actually go online and just go into google type in merit to college scholarships input their gpa and see which one of those tiers that they would fall into and of course we're always ready and willing for any questions that students might have about those resources now also with our sports program we are a division three school in the ohio athletic conference and we have 22 varsity sports

037both men and women's available for students that like to pursue that student athlete life so that's kind of a quick glimpse into you know marietta college thank you okay next we're gonna have ryan and um i'm a ut rocket alum and so um have a little bias tonight but awesome thank you so much go rockets well hello everybody my name is ryan chernick i'm one of the admissions counselors at the university of toledo we are one of the public research universities here in the state of ohio up in the northwest corner we are what you call a mid-major as far as size goes so about 14 000 undergraduate students about four thousand more in masters doctoral professional programs uh we're a comprehensive school so over 120 different majors and programs an excellent college of business

038college of education college of engineering um college of arts and letters you kind of get the idea a lot of different programs you can specialize in through the university of toledo we have long been a very diverse campus as well so we have students come from all over the country all over the world to the university of toledo they love calling toledo their home love being in the glass city we are a campus of pretty diverse interests as well over 400 different student organizations we're a division one university with athletics we compete in the mid-american conference the max we play our friends over another side of ohio in kent state and akron and ou and all those great schools um we've always been a very uh access focused institution so when it comes to our

039application process for my seniors here today we are test optional so students can apply with or without their sat or act scores when it comes to your merit scholarship that's actually test blind and so that means that we'll review you only based on your gpa from high school so even if you submit test scores we'll only review you for merit scholarship based on that gpa there's plenty of other awards you can go after through the university of toledo there's a very useful tool called the scholarship search that you can find on our website utoledo.edu that really kind of lays out your specific scholarship opportunities through the universities you put some of your information in there it can be a very useful tool but the best tool is us in the office of undergraduate admissions and

040all of my colleagues here today from the various universities you know our offices really are here to help all of you so whatever school you're interested in reach out to your admissions counselors at those institutions because we are here to help you through that whole process so you're not in it alone you know we are really here to be a great resource for you on the campuses but that's a little about the university of toledo and i appreciate your time thank you and miss tia marche hello everyone i'm tia marshay johnson and i represent the cleveland council of black colleges and i am the chair of this year's 19th annual hbcu college fair um it's being held saturday november 20th at warrensville heights high school and it will be an in-person and virtual event so

041i'm excited to kind of talk about the different colleges that'll be represented of course you know here in ohio or maybe you don't know we have two hbcus which is wilberforce university along with central state university but at the college fair we invite there's a total of 105 hbcus across the country and i guess i should have started out in case you don't know what hbcu is it's a historically black college and university so what our goal in mission is is to help our students learn a little bit more about what an hbcu experience is it's not quite like the traditional college experience it's a little different and you know a little unique and that's where the college fair has an opportunity to kind of give you a little taste of what hbcu campus life

042is like and also get an opportunity to meet with the recruiters at the college fair we do on-site acceptance and we also have the ability if you register which is free for you and your parents if you register you'll get access to the common black college application that allows you to register to over 65 hbcus across the country at twenty dollars but we weigh that twenty dollar fee if you are a registered participant in the college fair so if you're interested in applying to say hbcus learning a little bit more about some of the universities uh that are represented and i'm talking universities like howard university spelman morehouse clark atlanta hampton university north carolina and t there's there's quite a few all across the country that might pique your interest and have something that is

043designed just for you also on my other hat is working a little bit with the united network college fund and for those students who are interested in scholarship opportunities i want to encourage you to visit uncf.org once you create your scholarship profile there are thousands i'm gonna repeat thousands let's say one more time thousands of scholarships that are available to you if you decide to attend an hbcu and even if you are not going to attend to hbcu so there are tons of scholarship opportunities a lot of times those dollars sit because students don't take advantage of them even though they're qualified so i want to encourage you to go online complete a profile for the uncf.org scholarship and i'll make sure i share all the links with miss hamilton so that she can share

044them with you along with the registration for the destination hbcu college fair that's going to be held on saturday november 20th at lawrenceville heights high school we also have internally uh with the cleveland council black colleges we do have some local scholarship dollars that are designed just for our students here in northeast ohio so there are some scholarship opportunities that will be made available we just closed our recent scholarship but it will be opening back up in the spring so for you seniors if you are interested we have one that's focused on the performing arts we have one if you're just attending an hbcu and we also have another if you are attending morehouse or spelman college more houses are all male school and spelman is the all uh female school so we have tons

045of opportunities i hope some of you can join us at the hbcu college fair in november and i'll make sure i put all the information in the chat and share with ms hamilton so that she can share with you thank you so um we're a bit intimate tonight and we do have the opportunity to give all of the institutions represented the opportunity to address any of the some of the questions that are coming in and so one question is what academic program attracts the most students at your university so in other words like what is your school kind of like known for in terms of their most um the academic um program that attracts the most students so for the universe you go first sorry for the university of toledo um it's going to be

046either the college of engineering which i think gets the largest number of students in one academic college but then also the health sciences uh attract a lot of students though that's kind of spread out through campus so pharmacy students there's a direct entry nursing program there's a med school that we partner or we own the med school and we have pathways into it pt ot physical therapy occupational therapy physicians assistance school respiratory care so medical sciences and engineering probably ours is absolutely nursing we're actually one of the second colleges we've been ranked for nursing in ohio we do a number of our partner clinicals with cleveland clinic university hospitals and then we also have three separate simulations uh on our campus for our nursing students so nursing is absolutely our number one we actually have

047pathways all the way from rn to doctors in nursing so that's definitely our number one our other kind of biggest draws our art therapy program our education four plus one which is four years in undergrad and then one years in our master's program so that students can get their masters in five years and then we also have a historic preservation program which is one of the only ones in ohio and for those of you who may not know what historic preservation is it's essentially studying how we can incorporate architecture and engineering and design to keep our old buildings and old public places preserved in our new architecture and engineering i would say at marietta are definitely one that we're most well known for is our petroleum engineering department of course being a private liberal arts

048college being having an accredited petroleum engineering it's a phenomenal opportunity for the students as well as our education program from early childhood to all the way up to high school or any kind of discipline in between that students might have an interest in as well as our physicians assistant program our sports med program which will lead into our athletic training graduate program as well as our sports management side section as well all kind of have student interest pulled to them and are some of the top ones that we're seeing students go towards right now okay tmr can you describe like the additional support that the hbcu alumni cleveland council of black colleges provides for students as they are preparing for their college journey oh absolutely we have quite a few programs wraparound services that we

049do for our seniors and also for honestly from middle school all the way up to high school so one of our biggest programs is our student send-off that's where we any student that is getting ready to attend in hbcu we give them a locker and we stuff it and we fill it full of everything that you're going to need for dorm life and that's kind of our student-centered love that we do every year uh on top of the scholarships we also do student workshops and parent workshops as it relates to getting prepared to financial aid what campus life is like what to expect and then also financial aid is is really is really essential because of what we don't want and we talk about it all the time is the debt the debt to debt

050and so we want to look at scholarships we want to look at the grants so we really dig deep and say what you'd be surprised on what you can get a scholarship for if you write poetry if you like to sing if you like to dance if you like collect post postage stamps there's a scholarship for you so we really explore the opportunities that are out there so that you're not just reliant on getting a you know relying on a pell grant and then you know sally may or saw something else now so we do a lot of workshops throughout the year uh specifically our next one is coming up in february um and that will be an opportunity for juniors and seniors to participate in a workshop in order to do kind of college

051prep what you should be preparing for what schools are waiving s.a.t a.c.t what schools are not and getting you know even help with writing your essay because a lot of times that is a difficult challenge so we even work on you know your essay writing skills if that school requires something like that thank you okay i want to get more into like the typical day-to-day like what is campus like like right so you know a lot of seniors have like anxiety or just are curious about like what is it actually like to be on a college campus and because of you know the situation with the pandemic some you know they didn't have the opportunity to do tours last year and so one the first question is you know is your institution allowing tours this

052year and then second is can you kind of just describe like some fun aspects of your campus life like what are some of the student orgs what are some of the amenities at your facility like what would you say to someone who was really like considering from this call wanting to attend your institution i can speak first to that so i think that students coming and participating in campus is one of the most valuable parts of college the the friendships you make the networking you do and even the skill building that you'll do outside of the classroom is so paramount to becoming just a really well-rounded graduate so first one like i said before is a smaller place but that gives us a very tight-knit community that our students really enjoy we do have about

05380 percent of our first year students living on campus so we have a number of dorms on campus but living is not required on campus so if you wanted to commute or if you wanted to kind of get a group and get a house off campus that's totally totally allowed and the parking passes are actually included in tuition so you can drive in and out of campus as you please but like i kind of mentioned we are a big athletic school so there's always a game that you can go to attend um being right outside of cleveland you know you kind of have your own personal uh campus where it's small tight-knit peaceful you feel like it's your campus that you know everything about it but then you can also go out and explore everything

054that cleveland has to offer and everything in the surrounding areas which we think is really valuable for our students especially when it comes to things like careers and internships and things like that as far as student organizations we really have quite a number of them for being such a small school we have a theater troupe that actually has their own little theater on our campus we have a number of organizations that are very service focused and service related as and some academic ones as well for each of our majors and our societies and things like that if there is an organization at ursuline or you don't you don't see one and you'd like to create one all you need is four of your best friends and you've got yourself a student organization so we're really

055receptive to our students taking leadership and initiative and kind of creating groups that they they want to be a part of on campus yeah so for the university of toledo like i said earlier we're sort of that mid-major school so you kind of get that bigger campus feel um so u-toledo is its own block of land um it's not cut in by any part of the city or any part of the community around us so the campus itself is this beautiful very very much plenty of green spaces a very continuous architectural design and i know that sounds real hoity-toity uh but what it means really is every building kind of looks like it matches which is really neat because it's sort of that classic college feel that you see in the movie so you walk

056around campus and you get kind of that grand feeling of wow this is like this is a this is a big school but you always can kind of find your place in that big school which is also a nice thing and i said earlier there's over 400 student organizations so there's always stuff going on there's stuff to do on campus um so whatever you're looking to be a part of whether it's a fraternity a sorority a religious organization student government a cultural group on campus um the arts theater athletics there's always kind of a place for you to find your spot and i know 14 000 people is a lot of people and especially if you picture them all in one place but that's not how campus is it's spread out through a whole bunch

057of different buildings and you kind of find your little spot in that ecosystem so you always can kind of work your way into your different clubs your organizations making your friends we're residential campus so we have about 2 800 students that live on campus and call the university of toledo home and then we have plenty more students that live around the area toledo is a great city we're on the other side of lake erie where your neighbors out to the west um so we would love for you to come out and visit we do have all those kinds of opportunities open right now during the week as well as other large campus events toledo as the city has tons of fun stuff to explore i used to live in downtown toledo which was really fun

058right between our baseball stadium and our ice arena we have a fabulous zoo in the city of toledo we're not too far from other great places detroit ann arbor i used to live in findlay ohio so i have an affinity for the oilers down there and deets candy and chocolate so if you love ice cream that's a great spot to check out as well but between your drive from cleveland out to toledo you will see there's plenty to do up here in the northwest corner of ohio so to talk about some of the opportunities at marietta college first i believe all of us on the panel will agree that the best way to get a real feel for college to make sure it's the right fit is to go on those visits to make sure

059you know you're walking around that campus you're meeting those professors and having those opportunities so we're able to provide those in-person visitations to students and their families you can have a meeting with an admissions counselor because i mean we're pretty cool why would you not want to sit down and talk with us for about 30 minutes you can also take a tour of campus sit in on certain classes meet those professors and you can even meet coaches and members of those different sports teams organizations that you'd like to you know pursue or be a part of to talk real quick about some of the student life or just other activities for students as i mentioned marietta we have a real close-knit community so we have over 60 plus clubs and organizations for students everything from

060gardening equestrian outdoor skiing even dungeons and dragons so anything you might have an interest in we might have it there on campus and if not you can you know make it another club organization that we kind of have those opportunities uh combine that with those sporting events that i mentioned earlier as well as our theater productions vocal ensemble and instrumental ensembles that are always happening around campus there's usually always something for students to be involved in and kind of explore and see what their fellow students are working on kind of showcasing those crafts that they've been doing two of the days i always like to point out to prospective students we have duda day in the spring which is pretty fun to say but it's a celebration of spring before the final semesters kick in

061and it has a lot of outdoor games music and different events and social activities as well as a hot air balloon actually comes to campus and students can take rides in that now i'm not the biggest fan of heights but it's still pretty cool to see in person and one of the other days i always like to point out is de-stress with dogs it's actually an event that happens periodically throughout the semester what better way to kind of have a break from studying or getting ready for exams than to just go outside and kind of play with the dogs that students and other community members like to bring onto campus so those are just some of the key aspects you always like to point out about what's going on in marietta thank you and before

062i um i direct some more questions to amanda um tia marcia and the college now team i just want to say like one thing i remember about my experience at the university of toledo i love the midnight pancake breakfast is they always came at the right time when your meal plan was writing out and you knew you could go and get a free meal i actually lived in the international house the academic house international house and then um the university of toledo had purchased some apartments that they would rent out which would still consider on campus housing but i wanted to know like my question was what is the food like what are my options on campus the freshman 15 is a real thing and if i wanna you know maintain a healthy lifestyle and

063i'm not getting my mom's home-cooked meals every day what are my options on your campus to have like good tasteful healthy meals yeah so we do have um on our campus we have a main dining hall and then we also have a cafe in the library uh and that main dining hall does have um a variety of different foods we've got a grill that's always doing fan favorites like pizza and burgers and chicken nuggets we have a salad bar and a vegan station that's always doing you know salads sandwiches made to order things like that and we also have kind of like a home-cooked foods section so meals that you might remember from home or you know we got like food that tastes like mom's cooking um we actually do even have mom's cooking if

064you bring in a homemade recipe or like a recipe card from a meal that somebody you love makes our dining hall will actually make it for you so they'll make not only they'll make um so i'd be the example we'd like to give is lasagna so if you bring in mom's lasagna recipe the campus will choose a day and they will have lasagna and they will make lasagna in a big batch for you know all of the students but then they will make sure to make a specific batch following that exact recipe for you so we literally have mom's cooking on campus which our students really love and then you can kind of bring your friends and be like this is my mom's lasagna and that's always a really fun part of campus as well

065um and then we also have that cafe which has coffee you know snacks ice creams microwavable meals for the go so our students really have a lot of options um our meal plan we do have a swipe-based meal plan with kind of some auxiliary points so you get you get a certain amount of meal swipes every semester that you can use however you like throughout the semester and then you have some points that you can use on the side for you know snacks coffees things like that so our students really like the food um it's it's really fun i think mom's cooking is my new favorite thing i've heard a college rep talk about and i thought dude a day was not going to be topped in my new favorite things about a college i've

066learned in ohio but mom's cooking that's incredible well the university of toledo certainly has a lot of fun options like yolanda talked about earlier they do all kinds of fun food themed things throughout the semester but on a normal day regular day of the week you certainly can find great options all throughout campus um inside of our student union we've got a lot of little uh shops and restaurants so you can find like a chick-fil-a in the student union there's a pizza place a sushi place a taco place there's a nice little cafe they just opened up as well there's a starbucks for those big starbucks fans in the library right next to the student union there are also two all-you-care-to-eat dining halls so if you go to those buildings you can get in and

067it's buffet style so you have as much you'd like stay as long as you'd like they have like a rotating menu and they have all kinds of different options throughout those places as well so if you have a specific taste for something that day you of course can check the menus for those dining halls or you can go straight to the chick-fil-a like i think so many of my students do every single day or try out some of those new places because they are changing every couple of years so um that new uh kind of what's it called uh that's how new it is to campus um frogtown cafe um i had to pull it up that is something they just put inside the student unions there rotate and those shops to kind of keep

068it fresh and different for the students who come back to campus year after year and then i cannot underscore the food in toledo enough so as much time as you'll spend on campus eating the things on campus there are some amazing restaurants throughout the city of toledo it's a city with tons of really good food shout out my favorite pizza in the city it was home sliced pizza that was the place to be it's in downtown it's super fun if you like thin pizza if you don't don't talk to me but that place was really the spot to go to get an excellent slice of pizza so in myriad of we have six main dining options the seventh one is actually a grab-and-go cart in our ricky science center so you know you're in between

069classes you might want to you know a little pick me up some fruit cup or sandwich or something that's your main go to uh the few other key ones that i'd like to point out is our gilman dining hall that's kind of our main dining hall area the first section of it has kind of a revolving menu of different dishes from around the world or different cultures represented as well as on the second half of it that's where our pizza salad and dessert bar are so you can see you know where the popular sides are and of course at any of the dining options they're always willing to meet any sort of dietary restrictions or accommodations that students need right above our main dining hall in gilman is actually upper gilman which is where red

070brick barbecue is so if you have the hankering for some nice barbecue dishes or anything like that that's kind of the main spot to go we also have izzy's which is what you think of kind of uh typical on-the-go foods you have sandwiches wraps salad fries anything like that you might want to just kind of go about maybe go outside enjoy the nice weather when it's out and as well as a few options within the residence halls pit stop is one of our latest open dining options so you know you're late studying maybe need to pick up another snack or maybe a bottled water gatorade or something like that you can go there and kind of fuel back up and get ready for the next study session so there's plenty of different dining options within

071the campus as well as the city of marietta we're always about shopping small and supporting those local businesses so there's many restaurants from uh more fine dining to predominantly breakfast foods pizza pizza shops everything you can imagine there's likely something that can you know fulfill those uh late night hungers that you might have thank you so much and so i want to just um provide a question to amanda that came up if um for the those that are interested in maybe more of a voltec path and engaging in the resources provided by ohio means jobs what if transportation is a barrier can ohio means job you know support students if transportation is a barrier for them accessing your programming yes it is very good question one of the things that we offer through our program

072is something we call supportive services and supportive services are services that we offer to any youth or young adult to help them to be successful in their vocational education training uh their credentialing training short-term training with a lot of universities here that we also fund and with those supportive services it will it can range i want to say yolanda from a bus ticket for that time or let's say a lot of our students may be using gas cards so we will assist with that as well we just want them to be able to get to their course get to their class again and finish their program so we have embodied those supportive services that are available to them oh that's awesome that's awesome so um with our college now and um tia marche you know

073you mentioned the numerous scholarship opportunities can you kind of speak to what should students be like what should they be doing to make sure that they have a very competitive um scholarship application for example you know like most of the time you know scott the deadlines come up and you're like scrambling to write like this essay but what are the things that they should kind of begin um you know keeping track of or be prepared for that are requested with those scholarship application processes uh volunteering is important uh extracurricular activities are important i know a lot of times we focus on that gpa and that s.a.t and the act scores but truly you know everybody waits things differently but colleges and i'm speaking for the recruiters but colleges want a well-rounded student you know they

074want to bring that diversity and that interest into that campus life and and besides you know your nose in that book we we've come to realize that when a lot of sponsors uh corporations are looking to provide scholarships to students they're looking at a well-rounded individual so it's not just about the the test scores i mean that's important and your gpa is important but it's also about what do you do in your free time you know so if you're if you sing in the choir if you um are part of swim club i would say look and invest some time into something that interest hopefully it interests you you don't want to join something that has no value to you and that you're really not going to be passionate about because at the same time

075when you go to when you when you're on campus you know you don't want to join an organization that you feel is going to benefit you but you're not going to benefit it and that's a lot of times a good caveat to to keep in mind when it comes to being part of greek life you want to be bringing something to the organization they want to know what you're going to bring to it just like because you're going to be looking to get something out of it so that kind of thought process should start now is look at opportunities to volunteer to give of your time talents and your treasure and then join an organization and be involved in an organization that you can find a little passion in i would have to agree with

076everything tia marche just said um for scholarships it's so great to have a well-rounded student and you know there's essays available obviously there's act sat gpa stuff but um something i'd like to plug actually for the impact program that helen runs we have an internship opportunity so we have three sessions a year so um before we had just talked about how we're finishing up the fall session the winter session and the spring session will both have different interns so if you complete the program you can you're eligible to apply to become an intern and it's great to put on a college application we also provide volunteer opportunities throughout the year as well so those are things that we try to provide students so they can you know put it on an application of sorts or

077you know as well we help with you know applying for scholarships so thank you um and i was thinking also they might want to have an um in mind record who they can go to for recommendation letters because i know that sometimes require as part of the scholarship process as well um miss amanda really quick can you this can when we talked about what we need what the students need in order to prepare for to have a strong scholarship application what documents should they have organized to bring when they come for their intake very good question pretty much we just asked for them to bring their photo id um their photo id some of them um who carries around the social security card in their pocket right so if per chance they have that that's

078fine but photo id and if they don't have that that's okay because there are certain things that we can do called self attestation that will be able to make the process easier for that individual to receive services and very good question because one of the things we want to do also ms hamilton is to offer tours to these youth and young adults um one of the things that we're doing and we would like to offer it to your graduating seniors uh we're providing tours and career readiness sessions where we're actually setting up a session just particularly for your students to come in and let's look at some work readiness opportunities and also talk about some of the things that employers are looking for and some edge in regards to their vocational training and we're doing

079that with all graduating seniors so we wanted to open that up to garfield heights graduating seniors to come down let us have a tour let's talk about uh different career opportunities and short-term training programs that are available to you and let's actually introduce them to a career coach now so that once they're graduating they'll have that connection to whatever their opportunities may be in regards to employment career pathways or training thank you so much so at this point we do have two students and we wanted just to invite some students to share testimonials about their current um college experience and following the testimonials we'll wrap up with any um closing i know if some if any of our reps have to go we we understand due to the time constraint but i just wanted to

080first introduce mr cam crawford who i understand is a student at kentucky state university we just like with you to share with our audience you know what your experience has been like maybe what you're majoring in what year you're in and maybe something um that you would like to you know just in terms of motivating those that might be on the fence about their decision to go away to college how you guys doing my name is cameron crawford i'm currently a freshman at kentucky state um you know some words of encouragement you know coming to colleges is definitely not high school you know um your mom and dad's not going to be there you know to wake you up to tell you to do your work you really got to kind of motivate yourself to

081do it you know you gotta want you gotta wanna um i'm majoring in mass media and communications so um i wanna be a sports broadcaster so um that's what i'm using um what i would say you know what i uh learned when i came to college is you know um it's really you know it's it's not hard but you know it's it's not high school you're not gonna be in class all day it's a lot of free time you know it's you're going to get distracted so you know you want to stay on the right path you know have fun too don't just all be about school because you know get you to get you burned out but um definitely take advantage of everything that the school offers and stuff uh that's really all i

082have to say for you thank you and also me shay boy did i pronounce your name correctly okay if you can share with us hi everyone my name is maisha boyd i'm a senior at walsh university my major is communications and digital media um some advice that i would give for those like going into the freshman year of college for me the most important things for me was to be involved on campus um for me to enjoy my experience and then also have like a planner or being able to to write down like when you have assignments due or when you have meetings with like professors or counselors or something like that just so you can kind of stay on track for everything that you're doing because like cam said that your parents aren't here

083the professors aren't going to remind you when you have assignments due it's just the do the due dates going to come up and if you don't have it done you don't have it done and extra credit is not really a thing in college so i would say just be mindful of that and involvement in campus is very important to enjoy your college experience it was very important for me coming in my freshman my first semester i didn't enjoy as much as my second semester because i didn't get involved in anything i just was straight to class straight to work straight back to my room studying and it kind of put me in a bubble to where i wasn't really exposed to a lot of the things that was happening around campus i didn't know of

084any of the organizations that we had i didn't know that we had a black student union um and then when second semester rolled around and i started seeing like all these people were doing stuff on campus they were going places i'm like well i want to get involved so i ended up joining the board of black student union as their social media coordinator for my school and then ever since then it's been it's been a fun ride i've enjoyed it and i'll be graduating in december so okay no great great let me ask the both of you what is something that you what is some advice that you wish someone would have told you to make you better prepare for your college experience any thoughts my main thing was the involvement on campus um when

085i came into school i came with the mindset of i'm only here to get my degree make a few connections for my my job like the career for what i want to go into and get up out of there i'm not really here to make make friends so that was my mindset and then when i got here and i kind of stuck with that my first semester it i didn't enjoy anything and i was contemplating on whether or not i wanted to stay it was it was a ball of emotions that i didn't know why i was having it or what was going on and after i spoke with um i actually went to the counseling on campus because i was i was sad i was like i don't know what's wrong like why am

086i feeling this way and they told me like well do you have any involvement going on on campus do you have any friends do you like you talk to people with my classmates but you know that's about it so just being like open-minded when you go into school and also and also when you come in it's okay to not know what your what you want your major be a lot of people to come into college and they think well i want to go into nursing so i have to stick with this and a lot of my friends when we came in that chose nursing they didn't really enjoy it so they did two years in a major and they were stuck with these classes and they're like well i don't want to do this i'ma

087have to switch and then they had to stay in school longer so i would say just be a little open minded your freshman year take a look take courses in almost like every subject you think you you might be interested in take a marketing class take a business class take a communications class take a science class to see if you really if what you thought you wanted to do is what you really wanted to do because you would completely change your mind that's great advice that is great advice how about you cameron um i kind of wish you know somebody would tell me like you know being an athlete at college you know you really aren't gonna have a lot of free time for you know do you so i kind of wish somebody told

088me that before i came but you know i'm getting used to it um i i will do um give some advice you know if you're happy you know please please get your work done you know study as much as you can because you're at practice a lot and it's not a lot of free time for you to study a lot so when you got that time please study like for real yeah i think one of the best things someone told me is to walk past the people trying to get you to sign up for credit cards and that can be really alluring right and so i had some friends that didn't listen to that advice and they're probably still paying for it today but um that's really good i wanted to ask you also um

089cameron where did you graduate high school from where i graduated from warrensville heights high school okay and miss shea where did you graduate garfield heights high school okay so you're a garfield alum yes and so thank you you know so much for sharing i know that when it comes to you know this is a different stage of life for our juniors and seniors and thinking about you know life after high school and it can be a little intimidating but it's great to see you know models representing your district such as yourself to share the positive experiences that you had and how successful you've been um in in your during your collegiate years and you know one thing i would say is that you know the college experience for me it was a very good experience

090with just developing meaningful relationships with people that i still connect with to this day and again um as i mentioned you know with my undergrad experience i also went on to um graduate program with the university of illinois urbana-champaign and prior to that even through my experience being a university of toledo alum it provided me the opportunity to study abroad where i actually got to study at the autonomous university of guadalajara in mexico so just to encourage those that are you know tuning in tonight there are the sky is really the limit and there are so many opportunities that can come out of your collegiate experience that can come out of your professional experience whether you're going straight into the workforce or creating a trade um at the time that i was doing my undergrad

091at the university of toledo i was majoring in international business which was a new major in the college of business and also minor in spanish and with that it sort of it prepared me for a career path in diversity equity inclusion which really did not exist back when i was in school and even now you know being an entrepreneur having that those skills that i developed during my time i'm studying at the universities and so really you know to your point mache like you might start off not sure about your major but exploring different options and what your interests are and what you're passionate about and it can definitely evolve your career path into something meaningful and maybe even a path of entrepreneurship um i wanted to miss amanda you had your hand up you

092wanted to add something uh one of the things that thank you guys so much for sharing your stories uh to our young scholars uh we've had um individuals like yourself who've come through our doors and it just made me think of a success story with a young lady and she was interested in the nursing field and miss hamilton she came to us to figure out like do i really want to do this or not so she started at cuyahoga community college and she was involved with their alpn program and she did very well and we were able to help her throughout that education piece where of course her least worries we want not to be financial and then she says you know what ohio means jobs i i think i know what i want to

093do i enjoy the lpn track and i want to transfer and go to cleveland state and so she started at that community college level and then she wound up at cleveland state university and we have a collaboration with cleveland clinic so we're saying hey we have an individual came through our program where the jobs and so cleveland clinic said well how can we network with bringing this young lady in so we were with her from the beginning with tri-c and seeing her successfully now as are in at cleveland clinic yeah i am so proud of her so it's not about where you start is where you win so kudos to what you guys are doing and just look at all the options from different aspects yes and i just thank you so much for sharing

094that and again we hope that this was a meaningful um information for our families i really enjoy our time together this evening i want to thank everyone again for taking the time out if i can ask miss bailey if you can cue our informational slide for those of you that might be tuning in not at the beginning or midway we have all of the contact information listed here for all of the participants and presenters so you can reach out and email any of them to schedule um conversations more about the college experience learning about scholarships or even to set up tours if i'm understanding correctly also for our representatives we are um welcoming individuals to come into our district for informational night so if that is something that you are interested in please feel free

095to set up that with myself or miss gina wilson you have our contact information and again for our um our individuals who are away at college at kentucky state and walsh we also welcome you to be a part of our student programming and we would love to have you come back and share your success story with some of our students about what your college experience has been like and to answer any questions that they may have so again um we are so grateful for you sharing all of this information tonight and we ask you to you know do the replay we know we went through this time pretty quickly but the information will be here live on our youtube page and again thank you all so much for making time in your schedule to tune

096in tonight and if you have any other questions or concerns you can reach out to myself or miss gina wilson and miss wilson do you have any closing words yes um i just want to thank everyone who our audience who are watching tonight also everyone who was on the call today there was a wealth of knowledge that was shared today and i strongly encourage just like ms hamilton stated to play the this video back gather the information um contact some of our contacts on this line for for information we talked about things as career coaches employment um trades opportunities college applications scholarships fafsa we covered a large array of topics and i want to thank the students also on the call for sharing their experiences because it means something different when it's coming from your

097peers and students and taking that those tips in in in recommendations on what we should do um entering our freshman year so i just want to say thank you to everyone on the call um please feel free to reach out to me at any time if you have any questions or you want follow up and we will be continuing to put out information as we get it from college now and how many jobs and any colleges and universities that we want to partner with and making sure that we're getting as many resources as we can out to our students and families so thanks again and have a wonderful night thank you good night [Music] you