The all-day free event is open to juniors at the three high schools. A permission slip is required and must be turned in no later than Friday for the county schools and today for the Cleveland High School students. The event will be held March 9.
“It’s to kind of kick-start their senior year, so that every junior can hit the ground running, and when school starts up in August they will know exactly what steps they should be taking,” said Cheryl Janzen, WVHS college and career counselor.
Mandy Rominger, CHS School counselor, said the conference will help students have less anxiety about the college process and gain a better understanding of what they need to do.
Melissa Presswood, BCHS college and career counselor, said the group had been talking about holding the event since the fall semester.
Last semester, the registration fee colleges paid to be a part of the fair covered the student cost of the event, and from that there was money left over. This is what will be used to pay for this semester’s event, according to Presswood.
“With the college fair we were able to have money left over from that for the busing of students, so we wanted to do something with the money that we had, so we thought, ‘Well, let’s take them to Cleveland State,’” Presswood said.
Janzen and Presswood said Cleveland State Community College offered to host the event during discussions in November. The event will be run conference style with each student having the opportunity to attend six sessions.
Topics will include resume writing, paying for college, ACT prep, types of institutions of higher learning, choosing a major and a panel discussion with current CSCC students.
Presswood said she hopes the students will have more of a plan of what they want to do after graduation because of the workshop. Janzen said the workshop will be beneficial because it is happening 11 days before the students will take the ACT. New requirements for an honors diploma require students to reach certain benchmark scores on the ACT in order to qualify.
Suzanne Bayne, CSCC coordinator of recruitment, said the sessions will feature a variety of speakers from the high schools, Cleveland State and the community.
“The Winning Resume (session) is actually where we have branched out to the community. We’ve got somebody from Amazon coming, and we have ... someone from Gateway staffing agency,” Bayne said.
Questions for the college panel discussion will be collected from students and submitted to the Cleveland State students ahead of time. Some CSCC faculty and students are giving up part of their spring break in order to participate, Presswood said.
Janzen said the planning committee has appreciated the work CSCC has put into the event in becoming a partner.
“We were just hoping to be able to host it here and they have just really come alongside and done so much with the planning, organizing and the T-shirts (for participants),” Janzen said.
Bayne said she hopes the event will show the students all of the options available at Cleveland State.
“Its more than just a two-year college,” Bayne said. “There are so many lawyers and doctors and professional athletes that have gotten their start at Cleveland.”
The college is also providing take-home information for the students. Janzen said the schools hope to make the fall college fair and the spring workshops annual events.
