Higher Education & Student Affairs

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How Can I Help You Today?: My Apprenticeship in Baylor Campus Visits

“Welcome to Baylor Campus Visits, my name is RaeLynn. How can I help you today?”

This is my tagline at work. From the moment you enter my office, to the moment you leave it, you are the center of attention. My job is to make sure that any question you have about Baylor is answered before you leave. And if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find it for you.

In case it isn’t already evident, my apprenticeship is in the Wiethorn Visitor’s Center, which is an extension of the Admission Services Department. While my apprenticeship is a lot of fun, it’s also a lot of work. Ready for a rundown of a typical day? Here we go:

–       Create student schedule for the week. With about 50 student workers to manage, scheduling can be a daunting task. First, I have to look at each day’s tasks and figure how many students are needed for each. Then, they are assigned on Outlook. Finally, the calendar on Outlook is transposed onto a daily spreadsheet that students use to sign off their responsibilities.

–       Coordinate group tours. When a school group wants to come and visit the university, it is my job to make sure we can accommodate them as well as set up their itinerary. We get requests every day for school groups ranging anywhere from 15 to 150 students. Because we host four standard tours per day, it can be a trick to schedule groups and find enough student workers to provide tours for them.

–       Files, files, and more files. There are always files to be worked on. When a prospective student decides they want to visit Baylor, they submit an online request that comes directly to our office. Because we are a team, everyone works on these files. During our busiest seasons (primarily Spring Break), our office receives upwards of 300 emails per day. Once we receive these requests, we input them into our system and send itineraries. A lot of times we have to contact various departments and professors in order to set up appointments and class visits as well.

–       Events. Campus Visit events are large-scale recruitment events geared toward various types of students. Our largest event is called Premiere and generally brings about 2000 prospective students and their families to campus. This event occurs once a semester. Invitation to Excellence and Know Where You’re Going Day are our other two main events, which both occur once a semester as well. As the GA in Campus Visits, I get to help coordinate these events, everything from running information sessions during the event, to decorations, to arranging travel for keynote speakers.

So that’s it, right? Sounds easy enough. Well, there’s more, though most of these things aren’t daily. Here’s what I have to be prepared for on any given day:

–       Bus driving. Every person working in the Campus Visits is required to obtain their Class B commercial driver’s license (CDL). At first it can be a little intimidating to drive a 38-passanger bus, but once you get the hang of it, it can be a lot of fun. There are some days where I’ll know in advance that I’ll be driving a tour and other days that things just come up.

–       Presenting. Four presentations occur in my office on a daily basis. Usually, the Campus Host (who is also an Admissions Counselor) will give them, but if he/she is unavailable for any reason, that responsibility lies on me. If you’re not much of a public speaker (like me), this can be terrifying. However, it makes for great practice!

–       Hiring/firing. Being able to participate in the hiring/firing process has been a growing experience for sure. It’s certainly not easy to choose five hires out of a pool of 25 qualified students. In the same way, it’s extremely difficult to have a firing conversation with a student that you’ve invested in. But these are both very real experiences that will likely be encountered later in life.

–       Cleaning. Often times our office is the first building that prospective students and their families enter. Because of that, we pay very close attention to detail – everything from freshly baked cookies, to fluffed pillows, to cleaned restrooms.

Though Campus Visits seems to run like a well-oiled machine, there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. Though there are days that I want nothing more than to go home and sleep for eternity, those are few and far between. More often than not, I find myself thinking how blessed I am to work with a group of students who love Baylor and a team of staff who love what they do.

Sic’em Bears,
RaeLynn

scottshepherd • January 7, 2013


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