19 April 2020

Festival Season 2020 may have been derailed by covid-19, but that doesn’t mean you should stop looking forward to the festivals you planned to attend. Many festivals have been rescheduled, which means you have more time to prepare to have the best festival experience.

The best way to ensure that you will have fun and make memories that will last a lifetime is to come prepared. This article will walk you through everything you will need to have the best festival weekend possible. 

 

Campsite Essentials

Most likely, the first thing you will do upon arrival at the festival is set your campsite up. A tent is an obvious necessity, but if at all possible, it is recommended to also bring a 10 foot by 10 foot canopy tent. On hot, sunny days, you will be dying for shade. A canopy provides that along with some breeze. The canopy also provides you a place to set up tables and chairs under for eating or lounging with your friends. Bringing several tapestries or bedsheets to tie up as makeshift walls for your canopy is also a good idea. These will offer you additional shade and privacy.

There are a lot of things that you will want for your campsite that you won’t think of while packing, but wish you had once you arrive. These include clothes pins, zip ties, duct tape, extra waterproof tarps, and scissors. These items have endless uses and will without a doubt come in handy at some point during the weekend. 

Of course, you will also need pillows and blankets for sleeping, and an air mattress if you so choose (and a device to blow it up that is battery operated). Food and drinks for the weekend are also obvious. Pack things that are non-perishable so you don’t have to worry about things staying cold when all the ice in your cooler melts. Bagels, granola bars, apples, and oranges are good staples.

 

The Basics

Once you are all settled in at your campsite, it’s time to get ready and go explore the festival! Pack fun festival outfits to wear during the day with extra layers to add after the sun goes down. Be sure to check the weather when you’re packing clothing and prepare accordingly. Comfortable walking shoes will be your best friend. Bring a couple pairs that you can wear all day and do a LOT of walking in without uncomfortable rubbing or blistering – this is crucial to avoiding a painful festival weekend. 

Staying hydrated is a continuous battle at a camping festival when it’s hot outside. A hydration backpack – a small backpack with a built in re-fillable water bag – is an absolute necessity. If you don’t own one, make sure someone in your group does. Drinking water constantly throughout the day will ensure you don’t get heat stroke, and the last thing you need is to be passing out in the middle of a crowd.

In that same vein, make sure you pack sunscreen, chapstick, sunglasses, and a hat to bring into the festival every day. Showing up on day two of a festival looking like a cooked lobster will not make for very Instragram-able pictures the rest of the weekend. Ear plugs are also nice to have at loud festival stages, or to help you sleep at night when you campsite neighbors are blasting music into the wee hours. A first aid kit with items like bandaids and such will also come in handy for blisters or small cuts. Wet wipes are a festival essential that you will be thankful to have. The crowds kick up a lot of dust, dancing in the heat. You will be way dirtier than you are used to being, so wet wipes are nice to have in your bag to clean yourself off throughout the day or when you get back to your campsite. 

Along with your basic toiletries (shampoo, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc.), make sure you pack flip flops or some sort of shower shoes, and towels. Most camping festivals have showers that you can pay for, but it may also be a worthwhile investment to bring a shower with you! That’s right. You can bring a shower with you. At your local sporting goods or camping store you can buy a shower bag, which is essentially a giant 5 gallon bag with a hose on it. You can fill the bag with water at a water station and put it on your car to shower off as best as you can in your bathing suit. The reality of camping festivals is that you are going to be pretty dirty by the time the weekend is over. You have to be okay with not being at peak cleanliness for a few days. 

 

Extras You’ll Want

Keeping your phone charged all weekend without draining your car battery can be a bit of a struggle (on that note, bring jumper cables just in case). For this reason, packing portable charging devices that you can charge up at home and use throughout the weekend are useful. Extra charging cables can also be helpful if one gets broken or damaged. 

Fun things like glow sticks, and disposable or polaroid cameras are fun to have around. Make sure someone at your campsite packs a bluetooth speaker – it will definitely come in handy. Bring a flag or some sort of identifier so that it will be easier to find your campsite though a sea of cars and tents. Especially when it gets dark, it can be difficult to navigate through camp. 

Lastly, let’s talk about totem poles. “Totems” as they’re called in the festival community are flags, signs, or pretty much anything on top of a tall pole that you carry around the festival throughout the weekend. They are helpful for identifying your group if you ever get separated, and for following your group through packed crowds in the dark. They are endlessly helpful and they create a great opportunity to be creative and incorporate an inside joke from your group. 

 

That’s it! You’re ready to attend a camping music festival! You’ll be prepared, but try not to worry too much. Get ready to let loose, enjoy the music and look forward to a fun weekend.

26 February 2020

Unless you live a zero-waste lifestyle, there is always room for improvement when it comes to taking care of the planet. The thought of reducing one’s waste can be overwhelming, but the easiest place to start is in the comfort of your own home. Changing small habits can make a big impact, so start small and as you get more comfortable more good habits will follow.

Here are 10 simple ways to reduce your waste:

1. Compost your food waste.

Composting is one of the simplest changes you can make to reduce your waste, and costs almost nothing. Rather than mindlessly tossing your food scraps, place them in a compost bin outside. Some cities will provide you a free compost bin and collect your compost weekly. If your city doesn’t provide this, you can start your own compost pile in your backyard, or create a compost bin on your porch or balcony of your apartment.

If you are worried about your compost smelling, keep your food scraps in a container in the freezer until you are ready to put them in your compost receptacle. Many people don’t compost because they’ve never looked into it to know how easy it is. There are ways to start composting no matter what your living situation is, and it’s a great step towards reducing your waste. 

 

2. Stop using tin foil and plastic wrap.

With so many alternatives to single-use food containers, there really isn’t a reason to keep using them. Tin foil and plastic wrap can be easily replaced by tupperware containers that you probably already own. Create less trash and use what you’ve already got!

 

3. Stop using plastic bags.

In that same vein, why use plastic bags? Using the reusable food containers that you already own can prevent the creation of a ton of needless waste in the form of zip-top plastic bags. 

Additionally, you can swap out plastic shopping bags for reusable ones. They’re super cheap and widely available. Pick up a set and keep them in your car, or carry one in your backpack or purse every day. Plastic shopping bags are another single-use plastic that we seem to mindlessly accumulate. With just a little bit of effort and forethought, we can prevent more plastic bags from unnecessarily ending up in our oceans or landfills.  

 

4. Recycle where you can.

Being mindful about how much trash you create goes a long way. A great first step towards sustainability is working to recycle the waste you create whenever possible. However, recycling isn’t necessarily the best you could be doing for the environment. Unfortunately, due to waste contamination and other problems, only a small percentage of the items you place if your recycling bin actually get recycled. The rest go into landfills. This is why reducing the amount of waste you consume is the best path you can take towards minimizing your contribution to environmental degradation. 

 

5. Use a reusable water bottle.

This one is pretty basic, but it deserves to be mentioned nonetheless. Plastic water bottles make up a huge portion of the waste that ends up in our landfills and oceans. Bringing your own reusable water bottle will allow you to stop contributing to this. 

If you’re concerned about water quality, there are water bottles available for purchase that have built in filtration systems. With such a wide variety of options available, there’s really no great excuse to not carry your own reusable water bottle. 

 

6. Bring your own reusable mug to get coffee.

Lots of people have made carrying a reusable water bottle a part of their life. Fewer people have taken their sustainability a step further by using a reusable coffee mug. The goal here is to work towards eliminating single use drink containers altogether. In our plastic-loving world, this can seem like a daunting ideal. However, once you build the habit, it becomes second nature, and mother nature will thank you for it. 

Bonus tip: If you love getting coffee from drive thru establishments, tell the person who takes your order that you brought your own reusable cup when you give them your order. Then, when you pull up to the window, they can take your cup, make your drink, and send you on your way. Most coffee franchises will allow this. If they don’t allow you to use your own cup in the drive thru, you can always just run inside. 

 

7. Bring your own straw wherever you go.

Reusable straws have become extremely popular in the past couple of years. The issue with reusable straws is less about owning them, and more about remembering to carry them and use them. A good tip is to buy several and stash them in multiple places. In your silverware drawer at home, in your backpack or purse, or in your car are a few good starting places. Once you have one on you at all times, half the battle is done. If you can get into the habit of remembering to use them, reusable straws are a great tool to help you start reducing your waste. 

 

8. Buy your clothes second-hand.

Fast fashion has become a buzz-phrase lately. But what, exactly, is it? Fast fashion is cheap, trendy clothing, that cherry-picks styles from runways or celebrities and turns them into garments sold at high street stores at breakneck speed. Fast fashion can be fun and tempting to buy into, but it is detrimental to our environment. According to a UN report, fast fashion emits more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. So why not do away with fast fashion altogether? 

Thrifting your clothing or buying from vintage and secondhand shops is a great way to reduce your waste in this area. When most people think about reducing the amount of trash they create, they seldom consider the amount of clothing or other fabric they toss. You can further reduce your waste by donating your usable clothing as well rather than throwing it away. 

 

9. Buy produce without unnecessary packaging. 

Supermarkets are notorious for cutting and packaging fruits and vegetables in single use containers to make them more attractive to shoppers. While it can be tempting to reach for pre-cut watermelon or oranges neatly wrapped in plastic netting, it’s simply unnecessary. It doesn’t take much effort to get into the mental habit of buying your produce plastic-free.

Additionally, the plastic product bags that grocery stores provide are unnecessary too. You will hopefully be washing your produce once you take it home anyways, and we can’t forget that produce is transported to grocery stores in less-than-sanitary fashions. You can buy reusable produce bags if you really want to separate your produce, but you can also save the money and skip them altogether. 

 

10. Dine in rather than carry out.

When you carry out food from restaurants, without a second thought, you create a whole lot of trash. Plastic utensils, styrofoam or plastic food containers, paper napkins, and plastic bags – all of which will eventually end up in a landfill. Imagine how much waste you could prevent from being created by just dining in for one meal at a restaurant, rather than carry out. Of course you will still create some waste, but the goal isn’t to be perfect or waste free, it’s just to be better and reduce your waste. 

For your leftovers, don’t create food waste, and no need to use those styrofoam containers that restaurants give you. Bring your own food containers from home! You probably already own them, and while you might turn a few heads, it’s well worth the forethought to reduce your waste.

Some of these switches and habit changes may come more naturally than others. Try not to be too hard on yourself. Do what you can, and incorporate these changes one at a time. You cannot save the world all on your own. But you can do your part by reducing your waste to help take care of the planet we have, because it’s the only one we’ve got!

1 March, 2020

Central Michigan University is currently suffering from its steepest enrollment decline in a decade, and the most severe of any public Michigan university this year. Central’s statistics are an extreme embodiment of national college enrollment trends. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, total undergraduate enrollment decreased 7% from 2010 to 2017. Central’s enrollment is down 20% since 2009. 

With many other Michigan institutions in the same predicament, schools are scrambling to target an overall-smaller pool of traditional college-aged students. Central, like its competitors, is getting creative with its strategy for recruiting students to come to Mount Pleasant. 

Executive Director of Admissions Lee Furbeck addressed the Academic Senate on February 25th, outlining several changes to the recruitment strategy for upcoming semesters. 

1. Making it easier for students to transfer general education credits. To oversee that, a new position in the admissions office was created for transfer outreach and filled by Robert Garcia II. 
2. Accepting a common application that can be used to apply to multiple colleges. Around one-third of incoming students use the common application.
3. Adding staff to out-of-state CMU locations to recruit in areas where CMU has little influence, such as Illinois. This is not limited to America — staff will be hired in other countries to recruit international students. 
4.  More efficient processing of student applications. 
5. Recruiting students earlier in their high school career, as early as sophomore year for many students. 
6. Increased print advertising.
7. Putting recruiters in charge of specific areas to make recruiting more effective. 

CMU’s Board of Trustees is making new changes as well. At their February 13th meeting, they approved a new meal plan, offering unlimited meals and $300 in FLEX money. They also unveiled new living options for the remodeled rooms in Carey Hall, which would position CMU as one of the few Michigan universities with full sized beds on campus, said Kathleen Gardner, director of Residence Life.

CMU has also added a new Vice President position to their administration – vice president of student recruitment and retention. The search for the candidate to fill the position ended with the appointment of Jennifer DeHaemers. 

DeHaemers will be leaving her current position as associate provost for enrollment management at Southern Illinois University, where she led an increase in freshmen-to-sophomore retention and an increase in undergraduate applications and admission for transfer students in the fall of 2020

At her candidate open forum on February 5th, DeHaemers stressed the university’s need to appeal to non-traditional students and build resilience in students to help retain them. 

“What can we do as an institution to try and help to give students the opportunity to build resiliency and understand that getting a ‘B’ on a test isn’t the end of the world – even a ‘C’ is not the end of the world, a ‘D’ isn’t the end of the world?” DeHaemers said. “You can recover from these things and there are many students and many alumni across the globe who can attest to surviving those types of things.”

DeHaemers will begin working in her new role on June 1st, with a starting salary of $220,000, according to University Communications. According to a CMU press release, DeHaemers will oversee the major aspects of student recruitment and enrollment in her role, including admissions, scholarship, financial aid, the office of student success and the career development center. 

While DeHaemers spoke briefly about resilience in her candidate open forum, Central’s clear current focus in the face of huge enrollment declines has been recruitment. However recruitment is only half of the battle. Retention – convincing students to stay once they’ve enrolled – is the piece of the puzzle that often gets overlooked. 

With a shrinking pool of college-aged students, recruiters are expanding their efforts to places that had previously gone untouched, like rural areas. 

Rural high school students graduate at higher rates than those in urban areas, and at about the same rate as those in suburban areas. However, they go on to college at much lower rates than urban and suburban students. And those that do go on to higher education, drop out at higher rates too. 

Emily Reeves, 22, senior, said that only recruiter that visited during her time at Ithaca High School came from Mid Michigan College – a community college just a short commute away. Ithaca is a rural town with a population of 2,799. 

“As a rural student, I was very lucky to come from a family of educators. My family was able to prepare me the best they could with my next steps after high school. But my peers definitely did not have the same experiences,” Reeves said.

Reeves came to CMU on a full-tuition “Centralis” scholarship offered to her through the Honors Program. She said that thankfully her mom knew about the scholarship program, otherwise she never would have applied to CMU. 

“I come from a school district that does well academically, and I think so many of my peers could have also gotten Centralis or something equivalent at another university if they were just informed better. Additionally, over half of my graduating class went to community colleges that are within a short driving distance of our hometown. I’m sure a lot comes down to cost, but a lot of parents don’t want their kids to leave home or move far away,” Reeves said. “That was a big part of my decision coming to Central. I had an even bigger scholarship to the University of Detroit Mercy, but I turned it down to be closer to home. For so many rural students the prospect of going to an actual university is scary.”

Reeves said that as schools like Central begin focusing their recruitment efforts on new groups of students, like transfer and rural students, it is important that they have programs in place to welcome them and deal with specific issues they might face in their college transition.

Reeves expressed facing many challenges in her transition from life in Ithaca to college. Even classes of 30 students felt overwhelming.

“As a rural student, the transition to CMU was hard. CMU is the most diverse place I’ve ever been. I felt like I lacked a lot of knowledge about diversity and I had a lot of learning to do,” Reeves said. “I think that CMU does a great job of providing resources for first generation and minority students and that is so incredibly crucial. However it’s never felt like rural students are looked at as high risk. It’s hard transitioning from having close relationships with teachers and having a community where almost everyone knows you, to being 1 in 20,000.”

It may be easy to overlook rural and transfer students, and assume they don’t need help with their college transition. However, these groups of students are often overwhelmed by little things that other suburban or urban students may be better prepared to deal with, such as larger class sizes, office hours, or navigating a large campus. Reeves said that it may be too much to expect these students to reach out and ask for help. 

“I think something that could really help is providing mentorship opportunities for rural students. If they had someone to help guide them through college and be a go-to person, I think it would be incredibly beneficial,” Reeves said. 

Anne Hornak, a CMU faculty member in educational leadership does research on rural students and community college students. She conducts focus groups and surveys with students across the country and at CMU to learn more about their experiences as rural and transfer students. 

Hornak pointed out that while there are programs and onboarding efforts for groups of students that are traditionally considered “high risk” for dropping out, like poor urban students, but rural and transfer students sometimes get filtered out from these programs because they don’t meet the same traditional markers. 

“Rural students often report feeling invisible on campus, like it’s difficult for them to socially connect,” Hornak said. “These students report over and over again, when they’re hanging out in the residence halls, they feel like they have no entry into the conversation. Nobodys talking about 4H or Future Farmers. There’s nothing like that for them on this campus – which is kind of surprising when you think about the hundreds of student groups we have here.”

As for transfer students, Hornak said that the ones in her focus groups frequently report having an especially hard time getting acclimated if they transfer mid-academic year in January. 

“CMU could really get attuned to the fact that transferring in January is really a horrible experience,” Hornak said. “I mean students that go here already know – January is ugly, cold, there aren’t a lot of people out and about, everyone’s kind of stuck in their ways. There’s not a lot of pomp and circumstance like in the fall, and the transfers really feel forgotten. That’s something CMU really needs to be paying attention to when we think about recruiting.”

As recruitment becomes the administration’s biggest focus in the coming semesters to close the enrollment gap, it is important that CMU prepares itself to welcome the new groups of students it is targeting with its efforts.

5 February, 2020

Central Michigan University administration is in the process of hiring for the creation of a new vice-president position – vice president of recruitment and retention. The search has narrowed to four candidates who have been invited to campus for a series of public forums and interviews. 

In Michigan overall, fall enrollment this year was just over 482,000 students. That’s down 2.9% from last year. Central’s enrollment is down 20% from the fall of 2009.

The first of the candidates to hold a forum was Lee Furbeck, who has been executive director of admissions at Central Michigan University since January 2019. Furbeck holds a doctorate from the University of Missouri in English, and was previously director of undergraduate admissions at Cleveland State University as well as associate director of admissions at the University of Kansas and Iowa State University. 

Furbeck focused on scholarships and marketing to freshmen with alternative student pathways when discussing what strategies she would take in the new position. 

“When you’re talking about financial aid leveraging, in a sense, what you’re saying is, ‘how can we make sure that we are offering students a package that is in the proper amount that is going to attract them to enroll and retain them, but not offer too [much] to where we are wasting resources that we could have used on other students that they would serve a little bit better?'” Furbeck said. 

In addition to leveraging scholarships, Furbeck also mentioned the opportunity to market to freshmen entering with dual enrollment credits. 

“Many times students who are participating in programs where they earn college credit before they graduate high school, are unpleasantly surprised when they don’t necessarily do what they thought or were told that they would,” Furbeck said. 

Dawn Medley was the second candidate to visit campus, with a forum on February 3rd. Medley is currently vice president for enrollment management and chief enrollment officer at Wayne State University and has previously held enrollment and retention positions at several colleges and universities. Medley also holds a Master of Science degree in administration from Southeast Missouri State University, a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Missouri, and a higher education leadership degree from Lindenwood University. 

At her forum, Medley said that to boost enrollment and retention, the university needs to focus on student life and market CMU as a destination institution.

“When you are a destination institution that also means you have a thriving student life here,” Medley said. “You have sports teams here, you have things to keep students busy, engaged and active, not only through the week but also on the weekends.”

Medley also stressed that the surrounding community also plays an active role in retaining students and maintaining the “destination campus” reputation.

“Are you having those discussions with the members of your town community, and how you can strengthen those relationships?” Medley said. “You don’t want to be the destination campus everyone leaves on the weekend.”

The third candidate to visit, Anne Monroe, had her forum the next day on February 4th. Monroe is currently vice president of recruitment consulting services at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a recruitment consulting and enrollment management service in Iowa. Monroe has previously served in student services and admissions roles in the Virgin Islands and in Michigan, including at CMU. Monroe also has a doctorate in higher, adult and lifelong education from Michigan State University and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from CMU. 

At Monroe’s forum, she reflected on her choice to go for the position at Central and her personal experiences while attending herself. 

“People have been asking why I am interested in this, and it is largely because I am a product of this,” Monroe said. “This was the place that gave me my start, that taught me what I needed to know to be a good professional and good at enrollment, and let me go use those skills at other institutions.”

In Monroe’s discussion of retention strategies and marketing during the forum, she focused on advising, smooth course registration, and personalizing the student experience. 

“When we ask returning students what’s important and what’s not going well, they’ll say advising,” Monroe said. “(Second) is registering for courses without any difficulty and the third is faculty not providing personalized feedback.”

The final candidate, Jennifer DeHaemers will have her open forum on February 5th from 1:30-2:30 pm in the Park Library Baber Room. DeHaemers is associate chancellor for enrollment management at Southern Illinois University. Previously, DeHaemers was involved in enrollment management and admissions in various positions at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. DeHaemers also holds a master’s degree in higher education administration from the University of Missouri and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Central Missouri.

Thus far, all three candidates who have held public forums have presented different strategies to attack the issue of enrollment. 

The creation of the new vice president position is one of the many efforts Central Michigan University’s administration has put forth in the past year to work towards steady enrollment growth. 

For example, academic advising will soon become mandatory for all students. All new first-year students must complete at least two meetings with their assigned academic advisor each year and will receive more frequent digital check-ins.

The last candidate forum can be streamed on the senior officer searches website (https://www.cmich.edu/office_president/Pages/senior-officer-searches.aspx). Any feedback related to the position can be submitted by emailing any comments to president@cmich.edu.