General Studies academic adviser Richard Gaddie speaks with a parents during the Red Letter Day on Nov. 30 in the Centennial Room in the Nebraska Union. Prospective high school students and their parents were on campus for the Office of Admissions event designed to introduce the students to UNL.

HS seniors take a look around

With much preparation and work, UNL shows off at annual Red Letter Days

By Andy Schadwinkel, marketing specialist, Admissions

How do you get nearly 800 high school seniors and guests on and around campus in one day and make it a meaningful visit? Pat McBride, interim admissions director, calls it the shopping mall mode.

"On Red Letter Days, the whole university is compressed into one building, the (Nebraska) Union. The colleges and departments are easily accessible and focused on recruiting. That united front really creates a great spirit for the day, and our visitors notice it," McBride said.

Red Letter Day is UNL's all-day open house program offered to high school seniors and their families on seven Fridays this academic year (five in fall semester, two in spring). Self-sufficient because of its reservation fee, Red Letter Day is a prospective student's opportunity to, as the invitation reads, "Meet the people. Feel the spirit. Take a look around."

A few statistics reveal the scope of each Red Letter Day: About 2,700 students and guests attended the first five Red Letter Days this year. About 450 person hours are required to facilitate a typical Red Letter Day, and almost 150 students are trained as volunteer tour guides.

By definition days of special significance, Red Letter Days and their predecessors have been a major recruitment function for nearly 30 years.

The general format of Red Letter Days - a campus tour including lunch, meetings with faculty in interest area, interaction with current students - was taken from Red Carpet Day, a daytime recruitment event for high-ability students in the 1970s. At that time the Student Alumni Board (which preceded the current Student Alumni Association) coordinated the events, which provided a day of campus life experience before a banquet honoring students' academic success that evening. Red Carpet Day served to recruit the same students as today's Distinguished Scholars Day.

As recruitment of the general student population became increasingly important, the university needed open house-like events available to broader audiences. In 1984 Husker Mondays were initiated. Two Husker Mondays were scheduled during Teacher Convention days in the fall when most students were out of school. The fall Husker Mondays focused on seniors. A spring Husker Monday invited high school juniors.

"The first [events] were huge. People were very receptive to a chance to visit UNL and check things out," said Lisa Schmidt, former UNL director of admissions and current assistant director of the Innovative Media Access Institute in Norman, Okla., and full-time doctoral student at OU.

Schmidt said about 1,000 students would attend the Lincoln/Omaha session and about 1,200 would attend the second session open to other high school seniors.

"Way too big, and way too crowded," she said. "After two or three years of herding huge groups of people around, we went to starting earlier in the fall, hosting several events and restructuring the college sessions so that students could attend more than one academic interest area."

Each year, the Admissions office has refined the programs, using participant feedback to enhance the Red Letter Day structure.

Schmidt said the name "Red Letter Day" was chosen to replace "Husker Mondays" because the events weren't held just on Mondays anymore. Plus, it reflected the unique Nebraska spirit without a strong emphasis on athletics, and it suggested "a day to be marked on the calendar." Best of all, no other school was using it.

Some other notable changes have included: adding an out-of-state information session with a student panel; providing, with the help of the Nebraska Alumni Association, a legacy reception to visitors with a special connection to the university; moving all sessions to the morning instead of morning and afternoon; splitting into two lunch sessions to accommodate bigger days; and allowing participants to design their own tours so they might get more involved while on campus.

The completion of the Nebraska Union's remodeling project 1998 also helped improve Red Letter Days by providing more space and allowing tighter scheduling.

This year, Admissions featured faculty members as speakers at the main welcome sessions. Previously, the chancellor, vice chancellors, the admissions director or other administrator has spoken.

Schmidt said she suspected one who welcomed the change is James Griesen, vice chancellor for student affairs.

"One time Dr. Griesen's welcoming remarks were interrupted by a guy in a gorilla suit coming up on stage and harassing him (the Red Letter Day was also Halloween). Dr. Griesen was getting pretty annoyed. I think he thought it was a student prank. It turned out to be then-Chancellor (Graham) Spanier."

Also new this year are the two days scheduled for programs in February. Last year, just one February day was held. Admissions found that the February events are good for reaching late-starters in the college-search process.

The biggest change is in the increasing depth and breadth of information provided at the event. This grand accessibility of Red Letter Day would not be possible without the growing support of campus departments.

"The colleges should be commended for getting current students involved and really showing off their facilities," McBride said. "What might have been a speech from the dean and short tour in the past is now an in-depth look at classrooms, maybe even a mock lecture or a good look at a lab setting."

Even with improvements and years of fine-tuning, reaching 800 seniors and their guests with a lasting message on Red Letter Days is still a challenge, especially for Marsha Fortney, Admissions' assistant director for campus visits. Fortney takes the lead in coordinating each event. To get through each big day, Fortney tries to keep one memory fresh.

"At the end of the day I was talking to parents, and one mother told me how her extremely reserved son, the type of person from whom we don't get a lot of feedback, was going away from Red Letter Day knowing that Nebraska was the right choice for him."

King celebration expands to full week

A full week of activities is being planned in celebration of the 2002 Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Events begin Jan. 14 and culminate in a ceremony Jan. 21, the actual federal holiday.

"By expanding the slate of activities, we thought more people would be able to participate," said Liz Carranza-Rodriguez, UNL King Day committee co-chair and education specialist in Multi-Cultural Affairs.

The local theme of the week is "Lift Every Voice for Human Rights," said Anna Shavers, committee co-chair and professor of law.

"Dr. King stood for human rights and we hope to emphasize that message during the week," Shavers said. The theme also borrows from the song, Lift Every Voice and Sing. Written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson, the song often is referred to as the African American National Anthem.

In keeping with the national MLK Day theme of "Remember! Celebrate! Act!" UNL is initiating a project this year called "Random Acts of Kindness" in which students, faculty and staff will be encouraged to perform an anonymous act of giving for no particular reason. For example, a person might scrape the ice off the windows of a car parked next to him or her, so the car owner will find a nice little surprise and, perhaps, perform an act of kindness to someone else. Tickets describing the anonymous acts can be posted in the union so that a chain of human kindness can be created.

Details will be announced after the semester break, but in general, activities are planned as follows. All events are free and open to the public.

• Brown-bag Lunches will be scheduled from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. Jan. 14 to 17 in the Nebraska Union and 1 p.m. Jan. 18 in the Hewit Athletic Center. Speakers will address issues of human rights, diversity and the life of King.
• Random Acts of Kindness: all week.
• Candlelight Vigil will occur on the Union Memorial Plaza at 9 p.m. Jan. 14. An audiotape of King's "I Have a Dream" speech will be played.
• Walk from Selma to Montgomery: Campus Recreation is creating a way that people can symbolically re-create the 59-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery during March 1965 in which hundreds of people walked to protest conditions in Alabama. The result of the march, which was marred by acts of violence, was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
• Chancellor's King Day Celebration: This event begins at 2 p.m. Jan. 21 in the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery's Auditorium and is the official UNL celebratory event. In addition to speakers and a step-dance troupe from Lincoln High School, two awards will be presented. They are the Fulfilling the Dream Award given by the chancellor to a person who has helped fulfill King's mission and goals, and the Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Contributions to People of Color, which is given to a person, group or program that has made a difference on campus.

A reception follows in the Sheldon's Great Hall. The Sheldon, which is normally closed Mondays, will have special activities that day including a special tour of the Interpreting Experience: The Photographs of Dawoud Bey, Roy de Carav and James VanDerZee exhibition and a special exhibition mounted by the International Quilt Study Center.