6th Annual Grads Return Program at Columbia HS

On Monday, December 21, 2015 we are hosting the 6th annual "Grads Return" program at Columbia HS. In this program we have CHS grads in college/grad school/community college/vo-tech come back and speak with current CHS students about college. 

It started in 2010 with 10 speakers and 3 panels, all on Science and Engineering (well, I am a science teacher). We had a couple hundred kids cycle through to listen and ask questions of the panelists.

In 2014 we had 60 speakers and teachers brought a LOT of classes as we cycled through 2700+ students (so, yes, many got to two panels).

This year we are aiming for 90 speakers and we expect the attendees will rise well above 3000 for the day. The Main Gym, both cafeterias (except lunch periods), the Auditorium, the Black Box Theater and the Library are reserved for the day. Principal Aaron and the entire admin team and the academic supervisors are all on board for the program. The list (tentative in nature) is shown below. 

Safety on college campuses
Study Abroad
Taking a Gap Year
STEM majors
Medical (and one panel has FOUR sisters all in some aspect of the medical field!!)
Liberal Arts majors
Performing Arts majors
Business majors
What to major in (lot of kids have no clue as to what to major in)
Interns/work-study -- programs like Northeastern and Drexel et al
Journalism & Communications majors
Design majors
Arts majors
Education majors
Social Studies majors
Game Design majors
International affairs majors
Playing Sports in college -- DI/DIII
Comm College, vo-tech schools
Military -- the military academies, ROTC, enlistment

The program is supported by grants from the CHS Cougar Boosters and the CHS Home School Association. Each panelist gets a Gift Card from Words Bookstore.

The energy in the building that day is amazing and it is wonderful to see the recent grads come in and help our high school kids. Ms. Aaron wants this program to be part of the effort to build community -- it's not just 4 years in school here. 

I've passed your contact info to several alumni.  Hopefully they will reach out to you.

Who should they contact and how?

Would love to see if any video professionals in the community can help out somehow and get some of these panels on tape. Jude, is that possible if volunteers can be pulled together?

Video and still pix are possible and will check on any restrictions, but I think big group pix are OK. Speakers are OK. Will check if we can get some panels on the school network. We will have as many as 8 panels running simultaneously at the peak (2 in Gym, 2 in Library, 2 in cafeterias, 1 in Black Box, 1 in Auditorium) so we will be moving around.

Contact MrT in D200

Is this a request for more volunteer alum or information to inform us? 

Corey

Thank you for doing this, Mr. T.

Mr T- do you need more college students?

Info -- a bit to inform everyone about a rather large event

More speakers -- we are recruiting actively, up to around 35-40 now and we need to get to 90. If you have a son or daughter who might be interested, they can contact me at the school.

As a Drexel grad who studied abroad, played sports, majored in engineering and design (undergrad and grad), performed in a acting/dancing groups, and wrote for the school paper, I think I'll be able to contribute to several categories! How can I get involved as a speaker?

Who's running this thing? Does he/she have an email? Unfortunately, I'm a bit wrapped up during most workdays so I prefer to stay off the phone. 

We tend to ask kids currently in college/grad school/med school to come and speak. We are contemplating later in the year a few career sessions where CHS grads come back and relate how they go into their careers, how education helped or didn't help them, and so on. I even tried for year to re-create the very first grads return panel -- former CHS kids who, at the time of the panel, went to Stevens Institute, West Point and Villanova and were talking about science/engineering and college life. They are now, respectively: one is an engineer/manager at a major cosmetics firm; one is a Blackhawk pilot; and the third is a civil engineer with a giant construction firm. 

The main reason for the emphasis on very recent grads is that there is an affinity between them and the students -- some are older siblings of kids in the audience, many are known to the upper classmen, and it is becoming a "thing" where the new grads ask to come back.

I organize it and I teach at the high school. Private line me for an e-mail address.

Thanks!!!

I've got an education college student!

deborahg -- have her e-mail at the high school (private line me if you need the e-mail address)

Jude, I pmed you.

We are now over 70 speakers signed up for the event and funding has been secured from the CHS Cougar Boosters (Thank YOU!) and the CHS HSA (again, Thank You!). Looks like this will be a huge event and, we hope, become a Columbia tradition. When it started back in 2010 it was small, focused only on Science and Engineering and had 10 speakers. My guess is we will reach the 90 speaker mark, have quite a few of the speakers do double duty as they get a real kick out of it, have another 5-10 or so speakers just show up that day and participate (happens the last 3 years) and we will probably cycle through well north of 3000 students to the various panels )so quite a few may see more than one panel.

We are arranging both for teachers to bring classes and for students to sign p in advance for some panels, eg military panel, community college panel, playing sports at a DI/DIII school, studying abroad and so on. We actually have a lot of speakers who have shown strong interest in being on the Military panel -- active duty Army, active duty Air Force, cadet at West Point, an ROTC student and a couple of others. We have a bunch who go to or have been in community colleges. We have a boatload of medical and bio-medical panelists, students majoring in design game design the arts, performing arts, comp sci and education among many fields our grads have gone into. For the sports panel we have the marvelous Olivia Baker at Stanford and a numerous others on scholarship to places like Duke.

Again, we try to limit at around 90 speakers so if any posters have a CHS Grad son or daughter in college or taking a gap year have them contact me. PM me if needed.

We have climbed over 80 confirmed grads coming back and many are doing double duty as speakers. It is shaping up to be a pretty good event! We will try to get the TV studio to make a short video of the event. 

This sounds like an amazing event! I see that you have safety on college campuses listed as a topic, do you have any plans to address LGBT issues specifically? I know that can be a real concern for kids moving from this progressive community into a larger arena where they know they will not always experience the same acceptance they enjoy here. I think it could be very helpful to have some students who have navigated that transition speak to those who may be anxious about it. 

Is there a panel on LGBT issues? No. The Safety panels may hit on that topic depending upon the panelists. The training some of the RAs at school dorms receive includes this topic and some of the panelists are RAs. There is also a panel called Diversity, Politics and Activism which may cut across this issue as well.

The attached schedule shows the 30 panels scattered around 9 locations. We are very close to an effective limit on the number of panels under the current schedule of 9 periods. Each panel is 2 periods long so any location can have only 4 panels max. The cafeterias can only hold 2 or 3 panels since lunch takes 6 periods and one of the cafeterias is used for breakfast for quite a few students. Some locations are split in two, like the Main Gym and the Library.

We could run 3 STEM tracks (instead of 2 tracks which now have 3 STEM panels, and 1 Design, 2 Medical and 1 Environmental panels) and we could run even more Safety and Diversity panels but expanding these in number means cutting out other panels until we can find space that works. Some large spaces simply do not work, like the East and West Gyms, the Wrestling Room and the Dance Studio. So for now, under the format of panels for 2 periods we are at an effective limit of 30 panels. Perhaps with some clever scheduling of adjacent spaces we could shoehorn in one more panel. As it is, we expect well north of 3000 students to be cycled through the various sessions that day -- last year we had 2700 kids cycle through.

This event sounds great- my kid will enjoy it. 

Jude, do you know what rooms the locations are in? Specifically locations 1,2 and 6. 

Location 1 = Library front

Location 2 = Library back

Location 6 = Old Cafeteria

Grads Return was a great success! During the course of the day we had close to 4000 students cycle through different panels, from community colleges to biomedical, from military to performing arts, from what should I study in college to international affairs, from studying abroad to education and many more!

A big thank you to the school administration led by Ms. Aaron, the faculty and the CHS HSA and the CHS Cougar Boosters for funding the program, our students who seemed to actually get something out of this program and asked lots of questions, and to the grads themselves who were terrific!!!!!

I was surprised and pleased to hear my kid talk in some detail abt what she learned. Thanks to all who organized and attended.

My son came home asking what I thought about the field of music education. Apparently that panel really impressed him. Great program overall. Thanks Jude and good work, all!

http://villagegreennj.com/schools-kids/grads-return-columbia-high-school-smashing-success/

Monday was the sixth annual “Grads Return” program at Columbia High School — and it was bigger than ever before. Founded by CHS science teacher Allan Tumolillo, the program brings recent CHS graduates to the high school to share with current students their experiences at college.

This year, Grads Return featured nearly 90 graduate speakers presenting in around panels on topics including Arts, Business/Marketing, Community College, Military Careers, Campus Safety and Health, Social Studies/Law, STEM – Medical, STEM – Computer Science, Study Abroad, What to Major In, Work/Study, Sports, Journalism, and Design.

The program was made possible by CHS teachers and administrators, and funded by the CHS Home School Association and the CHS Cougar Boosters.

“It is unlike any other [event] in high schools in New Jersey,” said Superintendent Dr. John Ramos at Monday night’s Board of Education meeting.