JORDAN PATTERSON
Special to The Leader
A day set aside for celebrating Christopher Columbus’s discoveries saw students travel from all over in search of their own adventure. While these students are deciding which school fits them best, Fredonia held an open house to show the many opportunities it has to offer.
This past Columbus Day, Oct. 12, was Fredonia’s biggest fall open house turnout since 2011. Over 300 students and 1,063 people in total gathered to visit Fredonia, which is a huge jump from last year, which saw around 800 people. Jam-packed with events and things to see, the visitors were able to hear speakers including staff, students and even some of our own a cappella groups, such as The Guerrillas & Premium Blend.
“We’re very happy about it. We’ve really grown these programs over the years,” said Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. David Herman. “It was one of our best open houses. It was [a] terrific day weather-wise, so it was perfect for people to travel — sometimes we’ve had trouble with weather and open houses, and a lot of people that registered don’t show up. So it was a wonderful day.”
Although Herman explained that each year has a similar format for open house, there were a few new additions this semester.
“We had several special things going on for this open house,” said Herman. “We had a science expo for science majors, so instead of a normal campus tour they had students showing some of their work in the labs at the science buildings.”
When asked about the increase of visitors he mentioned one of the many factors was that the admissions office has increased their travelling to other areas by 35 percent this year.
The event opened up with a welcome speech given by the president of Fredonia, Dr Virginia Horvath.
“I thought there was a lot of energy,” Horvath said. “It was beautiful weather, which helped, so people were happy to be outside to take tours.”
Horvath also talked about the importance of having open houses.
“It’s critical for us as we think about our enrollment and the challenge when students in New York State have so many different options … how do we make Fredonia seem like a good choice for people?” said Horvath. “What do we have to offer? So I think [the] departments really did a great job [with] academic departments, highlighting programs [and] getting students involved in talking to other students.
“I think it’s really important … some people come from Long Island, so they come all the way across the state,” continued Horvath. “They’re already kind of making a commitment, [saying] that they’re serious enough in their interest in Fredonia to come look. But so often, people make a decisions about coming to college based on an impression they had when they were there, and if you ask current students, ‘why did you come here?’ many of them will say ‘because when I stepped on campus, this happened.’”
One of the people who is involved in the setup of the event and the actual event itself is Admissions Counselor and Admissions Event Coordinator Katherine Smith. She is involved in all things related to the open house. Her job is making sure that everything runs smoothly, so that as soon as guests arrive their visit goes as flawlessly as possible.
When speaking on the number of people showing up this year, Smith said “We had planned for between 800 and 900, and then last week we had a bunch of people decide last minute that they were going to register, which is a wonderful, wonderful problem to have.”
In a year when enrollment is down, Smith said the big turnout for the open house is “very, very rewarding.”
“People seem happy. Fredonia students are especially nice, I think, even with strangers people will look people in the eye and say hello,” said Horvath. “That’s unusual that people would, with strangers, just make eye contact, even if it’s just a nod, but to acknowledge one another, it’s a different feeling on this campus.”