What does the Student Life guy do in January?

I know, school doesn’t start until January 17^th, but people often ask me “what do you do when students are not around?” It’s as if people think because I work at a college, there is never any work to do when students are not on campus. The week has actually been very busy…

As a side story, my wife and I are expecting our first child sometime later this month. While that is certainly exciting and something we are really looking forward to, it’s putting the pressure on me at work to make sure everything is ready to go for events in the months ahead. This week has been filled with a little bit of everything. We’ve received some new promo stuff in the mail including t-shirts, sunglasses, headbands and bandanas for upcoming theme nights for the basketball games. To promote those events, I’ve been working on the posters and other advertising so students will know about these events. For other events such as a musician or comedian, I’ve been signing contracts and booking the space on campus to host the events.

Each January & February, I’m fortunate enough to prepare and lead students on two different trips off campus, a trip to Des Moines and one to Washington DC. With the baby on the way, I’m not going to be leaving the Cedar Rapids area this year. With that said, I’m working this week on schedules, dress codes, and information for the students so when they do travel off campus, they can be the best representatives the college can have and show respect to the other advisors in attendance.

So is there one main thing I do before the students get back in January? No, but the truth is, there are several little things that need to be done. So far, it’s going well – I’m almost far enough ahead on some things that the advertising, promotion, and contracts for events are about 95% finalized between now and the end of February. I know one thing’s for sure – it’s going to be a GREAT spring semester!!

WOW - Fall is over?

It happens every time I blog. I write a novel and claim I'll do better at staying on top of it. I'd like to say it will be this year's New Year's Resolution, but I'm not that confident. I'll try, but we'll see.

So it was June the last time I blogged, we had just moved into our new office, and we were busy planning our Fall Tour of events. With the close to 50 events we provided, I believe most of them were a huge success. Now as we plan our Spring Calendar, I hope for similar results. We'll get to the spring hopefully in the next blog, but for now, let's look back at a few highlights from the 2011 Fall Tour:

• For the first time, we started the Fall Tour before classes even began with a President's Cookout & Outdoor Movie Night the evening before classes started. We didn't know what to expect, but were pleasantly surprised with more than 800 students in attendance. Definitely something we'll look at doing again.
• Movin' & Shakin' was another success with an estimated 2,000 students in attendance followed by another standing room only crowd (450+) for Hypnotist Brian Imbus later that week.
• With the remodeling of Iowa Hall, we have a great new area for live music, Bingo, & more. Our daytime events near Sammy's Cafe all went well and had several students participate.
• September consisted of many educational and informational events, mixed in with some comedy, athletics, and community service.
• October brought Eagle Spirit Day, more community service, movies, & music, and a huge crowd for the Halloween Bash.
• November started off with a new event, "Sammy's Birthday Bash" where we gave out more than 320 pieces of birthday cake and ice cream to celebrate our school mascot's 35th birthday. The month continued with a fundraiser for the United Way, the annual Glow Party, and more.
• December has been a short month with finals and a handful of activities, but was highlighted with the 441 Angel Tags that were filled, a new record at Kirkwood (and community wide).
• In all, close to 50 events provided a wide variety of fun and excitement, several great community service projects, and another Fall Tour in the books. Now we get to start the planning for next year :)

Have a great holiday season everyone!

Student Life and the new "digs"

Impressive right? 2 blog posts in 2 weeks!

As promised, the topic of this blog is our new “digs.” Today, we are officially moving across the hall to our new office. The “new” is part of the Iowa Hall renovation which includes a new Admissions office, a new space for Sammy’s Café, and some major upgrades to our general seating area (our “student union” feel).

Thanks to a great president, great vice-president, and numerous others, we truly got everything we could have asked for (and a whole lot more) in our new space. Gone are the days when our student employees fold t-shirts and make flyers on my desk – they now have plenty of room to themselves. We have roughly three times the space, an extra office, and enough storage that we can finally start to have everything in one place. For the past several years, we’ve had 3.5 storage closets and a little of everything spread across campus. Now we have almost all of it in one spot.

There are still some minor details to be finished up in our new office and the construction outside the office is still in full swing, but we’re certainly excited about today, and excited for everything to be finalized in the next few months with the new seating and new Admissions office.
As for us, we’ve got Mary in the front, and in the offices we’ve got Nick (Admissions Advisor), Sharon (Housing Coordinator), and myself. As for the view in the new offices, that’s not bad either (see below). So when you get the chance, stop by to say hello and get the grand tour.

Mary Huffman (Office Coordinator) in the new reception area

A view from one of the new offices

I'm Back!

It hits me every few months, that feeling that I’m a few months behind on my blog. Every time I post I think “I need to do this more often.” Now, I’m going to actually commit myself to that. Do I have anything big to write about at the current moment? Not really, but I get the question numerous times each summer, “you get the summers off right?” or “so what do you do all summer with no events going on?”

With that, I’ll tell you what my job consists of as the summer rolls along. Though we don’t have any events scheduled or clubs meeting over the summer, there is still a lot going on. Most of my time is spent planning. This “planning” stage would likely be boring for anyone else, but I enjoy it. Whether it’s planning events for the fall, or updating club forms and policies, I try to get as much of this work done over the summer so when the new year starts, I don’t have to worry as much about the paperwork and planning and I can spend more time on making each event and each club the best it can be.

I also see several incoming students and parents each summer as I help with orientations across the campus. From one of a few big orientations on campus for specific programs to the 5 orientations a week for our liberal arts & transfer students, I’m often showing parents around and giving them the overview of what life at Kirkwood is all about.

The recent (and upcoming) excitement with my job is relating to our new office space. Minor construction and moving of offices started more than a year ago for us, and a little more than two months ago, construction of our new area began. Sometime within the next two weeks, we will officially move into our permanent home. I’m sure that will be the topic of my next blog (hopefully with a few photos as well) so stay tuned J

Yes, that just happened!

If you haven’t heard by now, Kirkwood’s women’s basketball team lost to DMACC in the regional tournament in Boone last night. The loss ends Kirkwood’s season and doesn’t allow them to reach the National Tournament. It also "dropped" Coach Muhl's record against DMACC to 44-2 all time. The title “Yes, that just happened” isn’t referring to the loss, but rather the unbelievable run that Kirkwood has just finished. This isn’t a look at what went wrong yesterday, it’s a look at what had gone right for the past decade.

The following examples will put this into perspective. The last time Kirkwood did not win their Regional Tournament and make the National Tournament:

• I was still in high school. This was before my eight majors in college, and six years before I even met my wife.
• Nobody owned an iPod (or ever even heard of such a thing). It hadn’t been invented yet.
• The number one song on the Billboard Top 100 was “Stutter” by Joe feat Mystikal. I had to YouTube the song to even know what it was because I couldn’t remember it.
• Speaking of YouTube – The first YouTube video was still four years away.
• Facebook? Nobody had ever heard of it. It was still three years away.
• The price of gas was just $1.52 a gallon (and we thought that was high –it went back down to $1.19 later that year – what we considered “normal”).
• George Bush had just been inaugurated and was two months into his FIRST term as President of the United States.
• The World Trade Center Towers were still standing.
• NINE members from this year’s team were still in third grade.

So what has Kirkwood accomplished during that span? Here are a few stats:

• They won NINE consecutive Regional Championships!
• They won FIVE National Championships, including the past FOUR!
• They made it to the Final Four NINE consecutive times! (The statistical odds of it happening even 6 years in a row is 1 in 1.2 Trillion. Sadly my calculator couldn’t figure the odd of it happening the full 9 years in a row).
• They had conference winning streaks of 106 and 76 games!
• During one span, they won 183 of 184 conference games!
• During a FIVE Season stretch, they had a 29 game post-season winning streak!
• (All six of these statistics to my knowledge are NJCAA Records)
• 49 Kirkwood players have transferred to continue their basketball careers at four year schools. 30 of those were to NCAA Division I schools.

The title of this blog is “Yes, that just happened.” Again, I’m not talking about the recent loss, I’m talking about the run of 320 wins, a Head Coach getting selected as the first active coach to ever be selected to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, and a magical run that nobody will likely ever come close to. (I say “likely” rather than “ever” because I wouldn’t be shocked to see Kirkwood do it again.)

So this blog started by talking about the things that happened (or hadn’t yet happened) the last time Kirkwood didn’t make the National Tournament. So what happens next? We’ll, after not making the tournament in 2001, they came back in the next season going 33-3 and winning their second NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP! Let’s hope history can repeat itself again.

Go Eagles!

Welcome to Spring Semester - 2011

Our Guinness World Record certificate arrived last week, it was framed, and now it’s hanging on the wall. What does that mean? It means the fall semester of activities is officially behind us as we’ve opened up the calendar for the spring of 2011. No worries though, there is still PLENTY of fun going on around campus.

The fun starts THIS WEDNESDAY when we attempt our first ever BLACKOUT event for the women’s and men’s basketball games vs. Iowa Central. We’re encouraging all fans to wear black and even helping the students out by giving away free t-shirts to the first 150 students in attendance. The women tip-off at 6pm with the men’s game at 8pm.

That fun continues in similar fashion next Wednesday for the WHITEOUT against DMACC. No t-shirts this time, but plenty of WHITE Rally Towels to hand out. Another double header starting at 6 & 8pm.

Though we start with some sporting events, we have a variety of other events this semester. A handful of Movie Nights kick off on Tuesday, January 25th as we show “Life as we Know It” staring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. More to follow in February with the final movie “Little Fockers” at the end of March (subject to availability). We’re also hosting more Bingo, Jeopardy, and LOTS of live music over lunch. Music from three of Kirkwood’s very own groups while two musicians are from off campus, Kate Klim (funny piano player) on February 22nd and Jared Mahone (Beat boxer) on March 30th.

A handful of other events (including the 4th Annual Talent Show on March 8th) will keep you entertained before our annual Spring Fling Week at the beginning of May. Sandwiched between all of that though will be our 14th Annual Kirkwood Awards Banquet put on by Student Senate. The annual formal includes dinner and a dance planned around a night of recognition. During the awards presentation, more than 30 students, clubs, teams, advisors, and more will be rewarded for their outstanding involvement and memorable events throughout the year. The event will be held on Friday, April 15th (starts at 6:30pm) and will be held at the Kirkwood Center (Kirkwood’s Hotel & Conference center).

In addition to the Student Life sponsored activities, there are two plays put on by our Theatre Department (Feb 11-13 & April 8-10), numerous Concerts, and more sporting events (Basketball, Softball, & Baseball). Add that all together and you have well over 75 events that you can attend for FREE!

Don’t just attend class this semester – take it a step further and get involved with your education both in and out of the classroom. LOTS of events and more than 60 Clubs to be a part of. GET INVOLVED and have a GREAT Semester!

Fun times and community service

Where has the time gone? It seems like yesterday we were gearing up for the World Record Attempt with our bubble gum bubbles, and here we are – December!

So to catch you up to speed on all of this fun… The record attempt was a success (pending approval from Guinness World Records), we had 356 participants attempt bubbles with 304 successful bubbles that lasted the required 30 seconds. It was a great night that included a big 3-0 win for our volleyball team over a Division I rival, and most impressive – our Dig Pink Campaign collected more than $2,700 in donations to support the fight against breast cancer. We joked back in August when we were setting some Student Life goals that we wanted to do something so big, it made the local news. Turns out, we took it one step further; we made not only the local news in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, but were on TV stations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and even Little Rock, Arkansas. (Too many links to post but do some Google searching if you’d like)

The following night, we had 275 costume dressed college students in Iowa Hall for our first ever Halloween Bash. A dance, a costume contest, and a LOT of fun!

The month of November started when I took 11 students to the APCA Regional Conference; an opportunity for students to gain some valuable leadership skills and help determine the future entertainment at Kirkwood. A total of 42 schools were represented from across the Midwest totaling a few hundred students that were given the opportunity to network and learn from each other.

The fun on campus continued while leading to the annual Glow Party on November 18th. It’s not just another event, it’s now an annual success! Thanksgiving gave students a much needed week off from classes and a chance for those of us in Student Life to recharge the batteries and start the process of planning the fun for the spring semester. Some live music, bingo, and jeopardy has kept us busy on campus since, with a Rough Riders Hockey game in Cedar Rapids providing fun to about 200 students last Friday night.

As of noon yesterday when our Kirkwood Jeopardy ended, our Fall Tour 2010 officially came to a close. From Movin’ & Shakin’, the Outdoor Movie, and Hypnotist Brian Imbus drawing record crowds the first week in August to all of the community service and fun we’ve had since – it has truly been one of the best semesters I’ve ever been involved with. If you want to see some of the fun we had, check out this 4 minute video we put together... http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=822913986780&oid=133879226651339&comments

The next step for us is getting our spring calendar put together and determining what fun we will get to have next semester, but before I move on to that task for the day, I wanted to mention a few things we did outside of the “fun.”

There have been blood drives, breast cancer fundraising, Salvation Army Bell Ringing, and so much more. Sharon Blanchard (Housing Coordinator) led the charge with the area apartments and with the help of many, we were able to donate 1,770 pounds of food to a local food bank! Recently our Student Senate lead the charge on a campaign for the United Way of East Central Iowa and were able to make a donation of close to $1,000.

Finally, just yesterday we realized the Angels walking among us on campus. Mary Huffman in our office has helped coordinate this for the past few years and every year we seem to do it again. The idea is simple, we put up some Christmas trees on campus and place tags on the trees. The tags include information about a child in our community. Boy or girl, age of child, and three things on their Christmas wish list. Anyone (student, faculty, staff, etc) can grab a tag, do a little shopping, and return the tag and gifts to our office. We then get those gifts to the Tanager Place here in Cedar Rapids for them to disperse to children in our community. Two years ago (down economy, flooding in town) we planned on maybe 250 tags – we were shocked when 375 Angel Tags were filled. Last year, 400 Angel Tags, and this year, I think Mary called about every other day asking for more Angel Tags. When the folks from Tanager came yesterday to pick up the gifts, we had 440 Angel Tags filled and packed a U-Haul truck full of gifts. It was truly a campus-wide effort that brought hundreds of smiles to the faces of children in our community and brought tears of joy for those of us involved. If you were one who helped make a difference this year, THANK YOU for being an Angel! If not, we’ll need your help next year (let’s fill 500 Tags!)

Student Life Work Study Students sit in the middle of more than 1,000 gifts collected for children in our community.