College of Liberal Arts General Information Session

Not really.

Hello, welcome to the College of Liberal Arts informational webinar. I'm so happy that you were able to join us today. My name is Jessica Rencher Ann. I am the recruitment coordinator for the College of Liberal Arts. I'm joined today by an awesome student ambassador. Her name is Jenna and I'm going to let her introduce herself and share a little bit about herself.

I cannot hear you Jenna.

OK, we'll get her per second to figure out her audio. And while we're waiting, let me give you a little overview of what today's web and R is going to look like. So I'm going to talk through some of the main points that I think you might need to know about the college, and then Jenna is going to answer any of your student related questions. You can just write them in the chat and will respond. OK Jenna, let's see if the audio is working now.

Is it working now?

First off.

OK, I'll try this again. So my name is Jenna. I am a junior at CSU. I'm majoring in music performance and minoring in arts, leadership and administration, and I currently serve as the campus events and marketing student coordinator for the College of Liberal Arts Ambassador team.

Awesome, Jenna is a wonderful part of our team. I don't know how we would be getting through or how we would have gotten through the last few months without her. She's very detailed and she pays attention to technology. So thank you Jennifer being here today to our participants. I'd love to hear a little bit about you so I can see that we have some people from Wisconsin, Hawaii, Colorado. If you could type in the chat.

Where you're from, what you're interested in studying, and maybe 1 fun fact about yourself will go through and kind of do. A little introduction that way, so again it's going to be your where you're from, what you're interested in studying in a fun fact about yourself while you're doing that, I'm going to have Jenna Jenna share that information about herself with you.

So for me I am a Cala. Rado native is from Longmont, Co, which isn't too far away from Fort Collins.

Only about an hour drive, so it's just far enough away to get away from home, but still close enough to go back, which worked well for me. An interesting fact about myself, I guess I've been out of the country twice, both for music reasons, so that's pretty cool. It's been to Japan and the Czech Republic.

So cool that you've been there all also share. So again, my name is Jessica. I'm originally from California. I moved here in 2010 and, um.

A fun fact about me as I joined the ski team without knowing how to ski in high school and I went to states my senior year, so let's see so Jenna. Would you mind reading off the different comments from our participants?

Wow.

Sure, Lily from Utah. Lily is from Utah and is interested in studying geography. Daniel is from Colorado. Ann wants to be a lawyer and is learning to speak Latin. That's pretty cool.

Alex is from Colorado Springs, wants to major in political science and likes to go camping.

So.

Awesome good group. Well this really helps us because it lets us know kind of what we need to touch on in this web and R. So I'm going to start out by describing where feel like what was that.

We have one more sorry Alexa from Minnesota was interested in wildlife biology and has three dogs.

What kind of dogs?

I have a Husky.

Also, Haley is from Wisconsin and interested in sociology.

Awesome, Haley. My mom is from Wisconsin. So like the names, the cities that I know of are like Apple Appleton or something like that. Wauwatosa, Sheboygan like I grew up with these.

Names being tossed around OK.

Oh, very cute.

Alright, So what you might need to know you might be curious about is where to CL a fit into the college or into the University? CSU it houses 8 colleges.

It has his college years like business and we have science college, Warner, Scott Engineering or.

Yep.

Jenna help me out here that Warner Scott, but um Walter Scott. There we go engineering and then we have the College of Liberal Arts. So the College of Liberal Arts is one of the 8 colleges.

We have 19 majors or 19 department's and 54 concentrations, so depending on what you want to study, you can really find anything here, so I'm going to go through real quick and I see for instance.

Like Daniel, you're interested in being a lawyer. You could study poli sci or even English and take the pre law track and you would work with our coordinator. Her name is Gina Robinson and she would make sure that you took all the right classes along the way.

Other ones in here that I saw. Let's see some interest in Poly side. We have a great poli SCI Department. It's actually one of our largest departments and a lot of the students who study poli sci might pick up, you know, some kind of double major or minor and International Studies or sometimes English. Sometimes business just depends on the direction you want to go.

If you're interested in wildlife biology, you could, and you want to study in the College of Liberal Arts. Or you play an instrument, you could double major and you could, you know.

Pick up a language, pick up an instrument or something like that, and then I'm looking at some of our other participants. Sociology, really, my brother studied sociology at CSU and had a great experience.

Jenna, my missing anybody's department's that were listed.

CON geography, so we do have a really wonderful geography program as well. Jenna, do you mind sharing about what you're studying and how you got interested in it?

Well I am studying music but what I was really interested in was the kind of business side of the performing arts. So that's why did music as my major. And then I'm adding the minor that CSU offers that allows you being on the administrative side of the arts and being able to manage yourself. If you want to become an artist. So it was a really great opportunity for me to kind of combine those business ideas and music ideas into one. Another option that I could have done with.

Yeah.

Get a minor in business and pair it with music so there are a couple of different things I could have done there, but that's why it did that.

I'm so glad that you shared that Jenna because it is so good to diversify and just kind of make your skillset set multifaceted or when you move on from CSU. OK so I am also curious about this. Which best describes you type it in the chat? Are you a high school sophomore, a junior, a senior, a transfer or transfer admitted, or something else?

So while you're OK, so Daniel is a senior.

Transfer.

Junior.

Senior.

Senior admitted congratulations.

So for our senior, admittedly Alex, I'd love for you to type in the chat what you're most excited about and maybe also maybe what's overwhelming you, or kind of that. You're nervous about and anybody is welcome to answer that question. Great thank you and then, how are you feeling on a scale of 1 to 10? Are you very unsure? One being very unsure, or you completely confident about your college experience at 10? Where do you rank on that scale? So are you in sure?

At 1:00 or you completely confident at a 10 or something in the middle.

Jenna, how confident were you about your college experience?

For me, I was fairly confident in the University I chosen about going to College in general, but I was still pretty nervous about like not knowing what I was doing or where to go if I needed help.

Budget is been of intimidating when you're walking into basically a new way of life, but I was able to find lots of support. There's opportunities for involvement and people willing to help. You. Kind of that. Every corner at CSU, so you just have to look for what you're interested in or what you need to know, and you'll find this.

Thank you, um, so whenever y'all feel comfortable, let us know how you're feeling about the college search. But I'm not going to force that one if you don't want to share. You don't have to. I mean, then, what are you most interested in knowing about CSU? So is it student life Greek, like life, the music programs, the Honors Program? What is it that you're really hoping to get out of this today?

And while you're doing that, I'm going to go on.

Talking about what the College of Liberal Arts is all about, so we are interested in the human experience. We want to explore the creative aspect to the human experience along with developing critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and helping you gain knowledge and artistry along the way. The four disciplines in the College of Liberal Arts. We have art, humanities, social Sciences in interdisciplinary studies. Under art you would have.

Exactly what you're expecting. Art and art history, dance, music, and theater humanities is like English and history and then social Sciences are like com studies, ikan anthropology, interdisciplinary studies, are women's and gender studies or International Studies and things like that. So within the College of Liberal Arts we have a breakdown. Our student population is about.

25% first generation, and that's an alignment with our land grant mission at CSU. We were developed and created by Abraham Lincoln under this land Grant Mission. That said, anyone who wants access to good education should have it, and so we're proud that 25% of our students are first Gen. 31% of our students are of color. I'm going to pause here because Alex said that he's excited about learning about topics he likes confidence about a 7 or 8.

OK, that's good to know. Thank you for sharing.

In the College of Liberal Arts, about 4600 of our students have a major within or 4600. Students at CSU are within the College of Liberal Arts. 1800 of those have a minor in the College of Liberal Arts and 800 students have a second major, so we have a lot of students who do second majors.

One thing I didn't mention is that we have 36 minors and we have award winning faculty and stuff so.

Alexis is, I'm excited to go back to school, studying full-time, confident at 8, looking up to learn more about.

Split second major. OK great thank you. So here's something that you might be curious about. What types of professors are you going to have? I'm going to have Jenna Sherina second her favorite class professor. Or, you know, maybe a couple of favorite classes or professors. But while she's thinking about that, what I want you to know is that we have professors like Dan Beachy Quick and he's an award winning poet. Very personable, does a great job connecting with his students his classes.

We have Doctor Barbier. He is world renowned economist and he's published over 300 research articles.

And we're just very fortunate to have him on staff among so many other award winning faculty and staff. But those are two that come to my mind. So Jenna tell us about your favorite class or faculty member.

Well, as a music person, one of my favorite professors is the director at bands. Her name is Doctor Rebecca Phillips, and she's just like very good in her profession and I respect her a lot musically outside of music model, my favorite classes was a seminar I took through the Honors program. It was about nature in its various forms, and it was filled. If people with all of different majors. So we're all kind of doing out doing something outside of what we normally study. So that was pretty cool, and the professor was Doctor.

Andrea Duffy, who's actually runs the International Studies program here at CSU as well. So that was a good experience with her.

Yeah, Doctor Duffy is phenomenal, so thank you for sharing that a couple other people that you should know about. We have some Guggenheim fellows, Camille Dungy and Ambition Peachy quick, who I mentioned earlier. We have a University distinguished teacher scholars and other one is Stan Beachy Quick. You'll hear his name a lot on the Franz Bose Award winner for anthropology is Kate Brown and she's also within the College of Liberal Arts and there's so many more.

So each Department has a dedicated academic success coordinator. In this is someone who will do a holistic advising experience with you, which means that they'll help you with orientation, degree requirements, scheduling, planning and navigating the campus resources.

So don't feel like you have to figure it all out, maybe right now. Very excited. Maybe you know what you need to be doing as next steps, but you also might be not very unsure about the classes you need to take in everything along the way. And if that's if you're feeling that way, your advisor can help you and we call them ACS here. One other thing that you should know about is that we have some accelerated programs, and so if you're looking to get through College in three years, you can.

We have E con com studies and language, literature and cultures is currently pending approval, but these are programs that you could enter and get through CSU in three years. We also have a 4 + 1 plan which is you can study for four years at CSU and then add a Masters on for the 5th year. So if you're interested in accelerating your experience those are some options for you.

Um?

And we go to one of my favorite things, spaces and places in the College of Liberal Arts. So my personal favorite spot is the behavioral science building. I like it because there are lots of studies places and there's a coffee shop that has cookies, cupcakes, bagels, and when I need a little pick me up in between my studies because I'm also grad student. In addition to working for CSU, I love to go to the BSP and that's the behavioral science buildings. But Jenna, what? Like? What's your favorite space on campus?

For me, I really enjoy going to the Lori Student Center for similar reasons. It has nice study spaces and if you have coffee or food then that's available there. There's also a lot of other students there if you're looking to hang out, so that's probably one of my favorite spaces on campus.

Yeah.

Thank you OK, so located along the central spine of the University. There's a building called Eddie Hall and it houses our department's like Ethnic studies, English philosophy, and it just so happens to be also where our recruitment offices in Jenna is. One of our student coordinators, so she also works there right now. But we're doing most things virtually, but in general, when we're in person were in Eddie Hall, so that's an important building. If you become a College of liberal arts student.

Um, the other building is the University theater in it's located at the University Center Center of the Arts, and it hosts all of our shows year round. We have a visual arts building an it's a place to make art in view. All the art. Not only does this building have classrooms and studios studios, but it has gallery's in the public can go in view the gallery's

we have a anthropology bone lab. So when we have important person classes again, I highly recommend you go check that out if you're interested in the anthropology, it's open to visitors when we have in person and in person campus again and then we have a building called Clark Gemma would you like to talk about Clark.

I can, although I'm one of the few people who hasn't had a class in Clark yet, but apparently 90% or I think that's what it was like at least 90% of students at CSU will have a class in Clark at some point because it has some of the larger lecture halls. So some of your general credits will be there if you're coming in as a first year student. It also houses a couple other liberal arts offices, so as a liberal arts student, you'll probably be there a lot too. There's kind of two sides of the building. There's a lecture Hall side, and then there's the side with all the teacher offices, so.

It's likely that you'll have a professor that works in Clark and you can go visit them in their office hours. Once we're in person again.

Yeah, OK, so Jenna. Even though you haven't had a class or an Eddy, I know something that you have had in that is experience in the Honors program. Would you mind sharing about your experience with the Honors program? I think you know there's a couple participants here today who are interested in going that route, so I'd love to hear what that was like for you.

And is like for you.

Sure, so I really enjoy the Honors program because if you decide to go in it, you get a scholarship which is nice. And then if you have any outstanding core curriculum credits that are like not necessarily related to your major, you can instead of doing those, you can substitute them with smaller honors seminar classes which are on broader topics and more discussion based so it can be a little bit more personal and a little bit more interesting than some of those general classes that you might take otherwise.

And then you can also add honors options to your classes within your major, which will just be an extra assignment or project so that you can get honors credit for those.

And then right now what I'm focusing on is doing my honors thesis, which can be on literally any topic that you want. And then you present it for your senior year in order to graduate with honors. an A lot of people will use the honors thesis, maybe as a way to maybe get published in the notice for their job, or maybe are for their future career. Or maybe you want to use it to make a proposal for a new program or something that you think would be good. So it's literally anything you want, and you can apply it to your career if you want to.

So that's pretty nice and you get a green robe instead of a black robe when you go through it.

Always exciting.

It's always exciting.

Yeah it is. It is. I mean you work so hard in the Honors program, so if you have questions about the Honors program, feel free to reach out to me. I'm going to right now put my name or my email.

Here in the chat, the next thing I want to talk about with you is if you're interested in honors, that means that you probably have above a 3.8 GPA, and if you have a higher than at 3.8 GPA, Andrew interested in leadership, then I highly recommend that you apply for our Blake Leadership Scholars program. Your beauty is coming up here pretty soon. It's February 3rd.

Right, this program is phenomenal. It's highly competitive. We only select handful of students every year to qualify for it.

For not qualified, but to be selected for it. And I'm putting a link here in the chat for you to check it out. But basically what it is.

Is it's a leadership program that focuses on shaping students over a four year period with workshops extra, some extra like?

Mentor ship from a faculty member and it's in collaboration with the Honors Program. So if you have if you're accepted into the Honors program, then you can apply to this. If you don't do honors and you can't, but not only does it give you leadership, support and mentorship, but then in addition to that.

It also provides some funding and you can use this funding to go towards education abroad or other college expenses.

So if you're curious about that, I just dropped that link in the chat. I highly recommend you you apply if you qualify again. You need to have above a 3.8. You need to be applying to the College of Liberal Arts and you need to be admitted to the Honors Program.

So we have a couple other scholarship opportunities we give out about almost $600,000 worth of scholarships every year.

Ann, if you would like to know more about our scholarships you can contact my colleague. His name is Cole Wise.

And he's in charge of all of our scholarships we currently have.

No, several hundred that students can apply for, but there's like 35 that nobody's applied for. So if you're interested in looking into scholarships, people have not applied for, email me and I'll give you that list or email my colleague Cole. But while we're on the topic of scholarships Jenna, do you want to talk about a couple that you've earned, ranging from the fact that you are one of our coordinators in? You're on scholarship with our program and things like that.

Sure, so yes, I got a scholarship by being a leader on the liberal arts team and then I've also gotten scholarships through being involved in other student organizations. I would participate in marching Band, which got me an extra scholarship and then also I am a fraternity sister. I guess we're technically a womans fraternity instead of a sorority, but that gave me more opportunities to apply for more scholarships, which helped me to do it that way. So that's mostly where I've gotten most of my scholarships is being involved in different student organizations and then.

I mentioned the Honors program before too. If you're a Colorado resident, then there's also opportunities for scholarships there, so that's where my scholarships are coming from, mostly.

Yeah.

Any questions up until this point, so as we're going through this content, if there's something that you're curious about, or you would like to know more about, just type it in the chat and will make sure to tailor the webinar to you and your questions while you're thinking of questions or typing them out. I want to go on to talk about the value of a liberal arts degree, so there are so many different perceptions about what degrees.

Have value and can help you get a job when you finish, and sometimes there's the perception of what can a liberal arts degree get me.

And sometimes people think it's limiting in your in career options. What I'd like to share with you is.

The opportunities that open up to you through the College of Liberal Arts and the degrees provided because we have so many degree programs, there's a lot of different directions you can go with it.

But I'll share a little story, so I had a professor in college. He was the Dean of Math and Science and I remember the first day of class. He said all of you science majors think you got off the hook because you don't have to write papers because you're in a science program and he was like, but I'm going to make you write papers every day because when you graduate, you're going to have to write resumes, cover letters, an communicate, and articulate your thoughts. And so he did.

And I never forgot that that you know here I thought I was studying science with an emphasis in education. I knew I wanted to be a teacher, but I just didn't. You know, I wasn't into writing papers and then to have my professor highlight. That made me realize it is so important to be able to be a critical thinker to be able to communicate, collaborate, empathize, understand the human experience and I think those skills are far more valuable than.

Any others that you can have in life just because you know, once you get out of college or building a resume and one job leads to the next, and so if you're able to work well with people and communicate along the way. I creativity to solve complex problems, even analyze data you're that's going to carry you far.

I have a friend and he all his brother studied engineering and he said. Well, I know. I want to graduate in four years. I know I want to study English and I know. I want to be a fighter pilot for I think it was the Air Force. So he finished with an English degree and then he ended up becoming a fighter pilot and he escorted Air Force One on 9/11 and I just I love that story, because it was like he was very practical with this approach has been very successful in his careeer.

In his degree helped him get where he wanted to go, so I always like to share those stories with people because don't limit yourself with your career opportunities. I have another friend who studied Spanish at Berkeley and then he went to Med school with his Spanish degree and so really anytime to look over the options for your career after college. Because you'll I think you'll see that as CL a degree is a pretty wonderful direction to go.

Um, also sometimes people talk about salary, so they'll say, like I know I can get a job with this, but I don't know that the salary will be competitive, and my understanding is that research shows that within five years College of liberal arts graduates usually catch up to their peers from other colleges.

If they are behind in any way, and I think that speaks again to the skill of being able to communicate and show your value in the workplace.

Those those skills catch up overtime.

Jenna, do you have anything you want to add to that?

I think you covered it pretty well. It's just the liberal arts are going to give you a lot of the skills that apply in several different careers. Is Jessica was saying like everyone wants something, someone that can communicate well that can write well, those are going to be applied into basically any career, and you're going to gain those skills through the liberal arts.

Yeah, thank you.

So applying your skills while you're in college, you can do undergraduate research, internships, apprenticeships, and then there's also a capstone project that you can do and some additional courses, some special things that you might not know about within the College of Liberal Arts is we have an anthropology field school.

Um, and there's a summer program that goes to Tennessee and does excavation work. We also have.

An internship is the CSU DC internship and Colorado legislative internship and these are just programs like I know a couple of you were interested in Poli SCI. These are programs that you could do to kind of.

Make sure that your experience within CL is of robust experience.

And then we also have celebrate. We also celebrate undergraduate research in creativity with showcase events that showcase research. 'cause CSU is a research institution?

So you might be wondering what are possible career pads that are available to you. But before we go into that, I'm curious what what career paths have you all been thinking about? And it could range from, you know you want to be an attorney. Or maybe you're like my friend and you're like I want to. You know Major in Spanish, but become a doctor. So what are? What are the jobs that you know you're excited about? What are the things that are making you consider the College of Liberal Arts?

Um, I'm doing that. I'm going to turn it over to Jenna an ask Jenna Jenna, where do you see yourself going with your degree?

Great, thank you.

Hum.

Select

thank you.

Well for me I see a couple of different options. Of course, I'm majoring as a music performance major, so I would like to perform with an orchestra at some point. But then I'm also planning on pursuing my arts management career, so I'd really love to work on the managing side for a Performing Arts Center or some other art program type of business. And I'm also really interested in music based international programs as I have been able to do myself before, and I think there should be more of him, so I would be interested in pioneering things like that.

Awesome and good luck Jenna. Thanks for taking time to be here today.

And yes I can. I also have to run because I have a test to take it, but I am putting thank you but I have the CLA ambassadors email in the chat so if anyone thinks of a question that would be best for a student in the liberal arts, you can do that email and you can say my name so that we know that you came from this webinar. So that would be good.

Thank you, no problem.

Alright, see ya OK? So we're going to wrap this up with a few more things so 83% of our undergraduates have a first destination plan, so like employment grad, grad school, or national service, and then something that you should know about our alarm. We have alumni who are in theater journalism and technology. We have alem. Who are editors of magazines now even?

People in media and Colorado like radio and on casting hosts.

And so I want to wrap this up with you just saying that I want to be a resource to you. I want you to choose CSU. Obviously I chose it for myself. I work at CSU I-10, CSU as a grad student. It was my first choice, but that doesn't mean that it has to be yours. The most important thing to me is that you get all the information you need to make the most informed decision you can for college and so please use me as a resource if you have questions. Or maybe there's something that was a net.

Answered in this web and arm reach out to me and I'm happy to connect you with other people on campus professors, Department chairs, or even if you have an interest in media. Rocky Mountain student media or art and art history or the pre lock track. I really appreciate you taking time to be with us today and I hope to talk with you all soon. Congratulations on your journey. College is a wonderful part of life and I hope that you find the perfect fit.

So thank you for coming today, Ann. I look forward to answering any additional questions you may have in the future.

Thanks everybody.

Alex, I'm glad you could make it.