Hello from the 2016-2017 St. Jerome's Chief Experience Officer team!

 

Clockwise from the top left, our team consists of:

• Amy, a fourth-year Kinesiology student;
• Vinussa, a second-year Public Health student;
• Abby, a second-year Psychology student;
• Sarah, a second-year Psychology student;
• Robbie, a third-year Knowledge Integration student;
• Jon, a second-year Arts and Business student.

Of course, we're managed by the one and only Jay Smith, Manager of Recruitment and Admissions.

 

You may have seen us this week during our @stjeromesuni Instagram takeover - and yes, this is a plug for the SJU Insta page. Give 'er a follow. Over the last month or so - but the last week especially - we've spent a lot of our free time planning March Break Open House with Jay. This is one of the biggest and busiest days of our winter term, final exams included.

 

As Chief Experience Officers, we understand just how important this day is for you. Almost all of our CEO team chose to accept our offers to St. Jerome's after visiting campus at March Break Open House. This is the day that we could picture ourselves as a St. Jerome's student.

 

Now, two or three or four years later, we've been working hard to ensure that you can do the same tomorrow.

 

 

Sarah took this picture at our most recent meeting. We come hang out at SJU every Wednesday evening to make sure we're all on the same page and plan our events. Here, we're talking about recruiting student volunteers to help out at Open House.

 

Jon is holding the master volunteer schedule and is making sure that all of our volunteers are going to be in the right place at the right time. Abby is proofreading the email that we sent out to the volunteers the next morning.

 

You'll see these volunteers all over our campus decked out in green and gold (and trying to stay warm!). They'll greet you and help you get to where you need to go. Keep your eye out for Jerome, our college mascot!

 

 

Another integral part of Open House is our Ambassador Team. If you've been following the blog, you will have seen many of our ambassadors profiled in Ambassador Spotlight on Mondays. They do an unbelievable job of showcasing our campus and telling prospective students like you what it means to be an SJU student. Some of the ambassadors who gave us tours when we were high school students have gone on to be our friends and mentors after we came to St. Jerome's. 

 

Each CEO has a subteam of seven ambassadors. Before each big event we have some friendly team-building competitions along with a quick information refresher session and an overview of what to expect at the event. Jay took these photos of our ambassadors competing against each other in Minute To Win It mini-games for bragging rights.

 

On top, you'll see Sarah T., Clarke, Luke, Jacob, and Calvin competing in an Oreo race - we put an Oreo cookie on their foreheads and they tried to eat the cookie without using their hands. Luke was a seasoned vet and made the competition look silly.

 

On the bottom, Alyssa is attempting to knock over a coffee cup pyramid using elastic bands in 30 seconds. It's a lot tougher than it looks!

 

 

Finally, these are just some of Jon's notes from Open House planning, just to give you an idea of how much work goes into an event like this. Ambassadors, volunteers, faculty, and staff have to be co-ordinated; information sessions have to be run; all of the small things like balloons, posters, and signs need to be in the right places; and the campus needs to look pretty! 

 

As you can see, March Break Open House takes months of planning from many people. It can be exhausting to plan, but the satisfaction we get from seeing students like you starting to fall in love with SJU just like we did is totally worth the work. We're so very excited to welcome you and hundreds of other students onto campus tomorrow, and we can't wait to show you around!

 

Sincerely,

 

The 2016-2017 CEO Team

Amy, Vinussa, Abby, Sarah, Robbie, and Jon