Working a Saint Joseph's Open House <- Sean Forman <- You Are Here
|
These are purely my impressions of the event and what you can do to make it go well. I have only worked two of these events, so I'm not probably not the most experienced person. This will likely be most informative for people who have not yet done one of these events. Comments below refer primarily to the Fall 2002 open house.
The students attending are typically high school juniors and seniors. Since SJU has rolling admission, some of them are already accepted to next year's class. They are usually there with one or both parents and often a younger sibling. It is interesting to see how the parents and kids interact. Some kids ask all of the questions and some parents ask all of the questions. You will have both students interested in math and cs and also students who are not going to be math or cs majors but have some other question they would like answered (most likely placement credit).
I believe we've had about 40-50 student/parent groups stop by our table each time I've done this. Overall there were about 600 students and 2000 people total at the event.
For the first hour, we had two faculty and a student and then for the last two hours or so we had a faculty member and the student. Since we man both the math and cs tables, you have to have two people there. A student is helpful because the parents like to see this well-adjusted college student we'll turn their child into, and they can answer many questions as well. I think we were the only department with a student there.
The open houses are held in the fieldhouse. Wear comfortable shoes because you'll be standing the whole morning. They provide a nice spread with coffee, orange juice, danish and bananas. They provide a table for CS and a table for math. These are the typical three feet by six feet folding tables commonly seen at large functions. They also provide a sign naming your department and some of their brochures. Dress varies, some departments come in jeans, some in suits. I think most people just wore what they would wear to class. The admissions office will likely give you a parting gift as well (aka SJU pen set).
I believe almost all of them are from 9-12, however, I would show up early. The tours start at 9, so many students and parents were there before 9 waiting to go on their campus tour. If you are there by 8:45, you'll be in good shape and won't have to worry about where to park.
We took a large amount of stuff and all of it was helpful.
5-year program. There was some interest in the five-year program with a Masters in Education, so I would push that for people looking at teaching high school. We are one of the few local universities with that program.
Class sizes. How big are the classes? Any T.A.'s, etc? You know about this. We do have some T.A.'s who help out the programming class, so this is actually a plus for us.
Programming. How much programming do our students do? I told them "a lot." I hope that is correct. ;-) I also pushed BL 225 and mentioned we have both linux and Windows installed, so they get a feel for both. We may also want to mention the MSDNaa in the future since it is a nice benefit for our students.
What can you do with a math major? Probably the number one question. As above, Matthew Brink in the career dev office was very helpful and sent over a list of five or so recent grads from math and from CS. I made up a sheet listing where some recent grads are working. I had intended only for the visitors to look at it, but in retrospect it may have been useful for them to have a copy to take with them. I also tried to stress that the critical thinking skills we teach our students are highly valued by employers. We teach our students skills not facts.
Internships? Math students have done internships at Merrill Lynch, PMA Insurance, Aspeon Solutions Inc., Orga Card Systems, American Red Cross, Merck & Co, SmithKline Beecham. Rick might also have a binder the students did for an internship which might be nice to show off.
AP credit? A lot of folks wanted to know what they needed to get out of calc I or calc II. For pre-calc students have to pass the placement exam. For calc I, they need a 4 or 5 on the AP exam. I think a score of 4 or 5 on the BC exam will get them out of calc II as well. So that is something to check. Any other ways to pass out of those classes? Some folks also asked about community colleges. In that case, I think the chair needs to review the course before credit will be given.
Minors. I stressed that Math and CS were one dept and so we had a lot of double majors or majors with minors. The required coursework is six courses above calc for math and six courses at or above beginning programming for CS.
Computer Science vs. Information Technology. A lot of students hear "computers" and think it would be a neat thing to do. When asked about the difference I told them CS writes the software and IT uses it. The MIS program has a table as well, so I encouraged people to visit that table as well. I also stressed the more mathematical/rigorous coursework CS takes.
If you have experiences (or corrections) you would like to add let me know and I'll be sure to incorporate them into the above.