Go West, Young Admissions Officer

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With the start of the application season, I find myself looking back at all of the great students I met over the fall. In the past two months, I visited over 30 high schools, 4 college fairs, 3 states, 2 regions of the United States, and 1 World Series winning city (I had a little bit of a stopover in San Francisco…during the World Series). During that time, I met a wide range of students from all over the US with all sorts of backgrounds, stories, and academic passions that they want to pursue in the future. Being a first time counselor, it was really exciting to travel to new places I’ve never been to before and to meet so many enthusiastic students who are going through a process I went through not too long ago. With that in mind, I want to take some time to share my experiences “going west” with you all.

“Go West, young admissions officer” CHECK!

First stop on the three state tour: New Mexico. This trip was my first one to the state, and I wanted to make sure I saw everything I could in the Land of Enchantment. Luckily, on my flight out from Baltimore, I sat next to this lovely lady from Santa Fe. Anyone who knows me knows I love to strike up a conversation and meet someone new (good thing I’m in Admissions), and this flight was no different. The New Mexico native told me about all the beautiful mountain ranges and outdoor scenes I’ll run into on my drive. She described the Spanish influence that informs everything from the architecture to the day to day life. Most importantly, she let me know that I could not leave the state without trying any New Mexican dish with good helpings of Salsa Verde. Anyone who knows me also knows I’m a big foodie, so this last piece of advice was much appreciated. By the end of my 5 day trip, I would have done all of that.

Definitely recommend to anyone passing through Albuquerque.

A real Spanish Plaza Mayor…in America

While I was out in New Mexico, I attended two fairs: The Hidden Ivies Fair and The RMACAC Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These two were my first college fairs on my own on travel, and as evidenced by my tweets and pictures back to the office, I was pretty excited. I got to meet a lot of great students who came from a wide range of backgrounds and interests here in the American Southwest. Students were coming up to me talking about the strength of our international studies programs or how famous our Bloomberg School of Public Health or our engineering programs were. It made me really excited to see how far our message has gotten all over the country. Afterwards, I was able to spend a nice dinner with a few other Admissions colleagues at a pretty well-known Albuquerque restaurant, El Pinto, and dined on delicious New Mexico food (I had a huge carnitas burrito with fresh avocado and HEALTHY helpings of salsa verde, because I know you wondering about it). Overall, this was a great first trip to New Mexico, but work always calls. With that, I was off to the Pacific Northwest.

Baby’s First College Fair

Next stop on my trip was a 3-day stop in Washington. As soon as I landed in Seattle, I knew this was a place I could learn to love. I’m a big outdoors guy who loves his landscape full of trees and his weather crisp and cool. Washington was certainly all of this. Seattle was even better with its international flavor, metropolitan style, and maritime feel with its multitude of boats and harbors. I had a morning to myself the day after I landed, so I took the time to go out for a run and take in the sights of Seattle. I stopped by the famous Pike Place Market and took a picture of the first Starbucks (any admissions officer will tell you that Starbucks is essential to any travel season, so I had to stop and pay homage). I snapped another shot at the famous Pike Place Fish Company (they really do throw fish around and sing). Finally, no trip through Seattle would be complete without a trip to the Space Needle.

Couldn’t leave Seattle without at least one picture

Had to stop here on my morning run

The line got a LOT longer during the day

During my three days out here, I went to two college fairs hosted by the Seattle Area Independent Schools and 3 high schools in the Seattle area. Again, I was struck by the variety of major interests and passions that the students I met had. At Hopkins, I was always very happy with our liberal arts style and the ability to take two very different majors and bring them together (I was a neuroscience and languages guy myself). It was great to take the time at Hopkins to explore all of my passions and many other classes in fields I just wanted to learn more about (big fan of Intro. to Art History 2, Shakespeare, and Intro to Comparative Politics). For me, with this view of the college process, I have to say that it is really nice to see students who are drawn to Hopkins for that same freedom and ability to discover new fields. It also struck me how so many students in Washington seem to really want to add Comp. Sci. to whatever they want to study (making Bill Gates proud!). While I wanted to take some more time in Washington, maybe go out on a hike or camp out for a few days, I had to keep moving and catch a flight down the coast.

My last leg of the trip was in sunny Northern California, the region I represent in our Admissions Office, where I spent a little more than a week visiting high schools and hosting my first Explore Hopkins program. While I had been to Southern California and visited LA a few times, this was my first trip to San Francisco and NorCal. Again, I was a big fan of the international flavor of the city, with Ethiopian and El Salvadorian restaurants next to sushi and dim sum options. San Francisco is a very walkable city with plenty of public transportation from the modern buses and subways to the traditional cable cars, a staple of the past and San Francisco today. I got shots of said cable cars, visited the TransAmerica building, and dined on the famous sourdough bread at Boudin in Fisherman’s Wharf.

A sourdough croc from the Famous Boudin Bakery in San Francisco

Cable Car Picture…Check!

Insert typical tourist shot of the Golden Gate Bridge here

During this week, I traveled around the entire Bay, starting in San Francisco, going east to the East Bay, traveling down to San Jose, heading back up through Palo Alto, stopping up north in Marin County, and settling back down again in San Francisco proper. I covered a lot of miles traveling up and down the bay visiting high schools, but I was so happy to do it. Being a graduate of Hopkins, I found myself really enjoying all my conversations about the university. While I have conducted information sessions in the past, those sessions have a more formal set up to them. With the high school visits, I really got the chance to connect with students and talk about my own personal experiences. I really felt like I got to drive the point home about why I loved Hopkins so much and why I thought they would too.

In the end, I returned to Baltimore with a few more states I’ve visited under my belt, a bunch of great meals I’ve eaten, and plenty more great experiences I now share with you all. I found the trip to be really rewarding and really got to see why Admissions professionals love the field so much. As one final note to students out West, know that I was really happy to take the time to visit you all and where you come from. With any luck, I did a great enough job that when you decide to come visit Hopkins you’ll have plenty of students from your neck of the woods to talk to as well.

A Tour Through the New Brody Learning Commons

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Hi again everyone.  With the start of the school year and all the new faces on campus (a topic recently covered by our own Admissions_Laurin in her new blog post, “Movin’ On In”), I wanted to take this time to introduce one of those new faces to you all.  To be fair, it isn’t really a new face so much as it is a new façade.  But, like any new building on campus, it’ll quickly become another essential aspect of the undergraduate experience here at Hopkins.

I’m writing today about the newest building on campus, the Brody Learning Commons.  Named in honor of the university’s 13^th president, William R. Brody, and his wife, Wendy, the Brody Learning Commons connects on all floors to the Milton S. Eisenhower Library (also named after a university president and brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for all you history buffs out there).  However, the goal of this space is to encourage collaboration as well as a more social studying atmosphere.  The building boasts 16 group study rooms, 6 seminar rooms, a three-story atrium, and lots of natural light.  The admissions staff was lucky enough to get a tour of the new facilities, and hopefully by the end of this blog, you’ll feel like you came along for the ride.

The Admissions Office leaves its mark...on the dry erase walls.

Entering the Brody Learning Commons, BLC, or BroCo depending on who you are talking to (yes, students have already assigned a nickname to the place…and the student opening was on the 6^th), I was struck by how open the building felt.  Looking at it from the outside, I saw that the façade was almost all long glass window panes.  Stepping inside, however, I began to realize how big of an effect that has.  Everything has nice, natural sunlight to shine on and highlight it.  The building ends up looking brighter and has a nice outdoor feel to it.  It’s certainly a far cry from the cramped libraries of the past and the quintessential dusty shelves of yore.

Coming in from the quad, I entered the newest café on campus, the Daily Grind.  This 75-seat café is part of a family of Daily Grind cafes around the Baltimore area (a shout out to all the hometown folks) and has a nice collection of snacks, sandwiches, and drinks for everyone’s different preferences.  Going past this to the atrium proper, the space opened up and covers 3 floors of the MSE Library.  This atrium is lined with glass windows and clear views of the study rooms of the BLC and the stacks of the MSE Library.    The openness and glass windows make people feel like they aren’t stuck inside in a cramped space, but rather, they are studying amongst all their friends.  The space really does a great job of integrating both libraries and showing off the best of each.

An Archaeology of Knowledge in the new study room.

Farther in on this floor, the tour stopped by the new quiet reading room, another fantastic space with high-lofted ceilings and plenty of lighting from the outside.  This 100-seat room gave the BLC a great, traditional collegiate feel to it with its wood paneling and studious atmosphere.  Of particular note, the artist Mark Dion created an installation at one end of the room called “An Archaeology of Knowledge”, which can best be described as a cabinet of curios, artifacts, and other fascinating objects found all throughout Hopkins.  The point of the cabinets and all of its contents is to inspire “productive day dreaming” in everyone who sees it (not an exaggeration, in my opinion).

The library hosts an array of new amenities from standard library ones to the far in the future technological innovations.  The BLC has the standard printing room with scanners and copiers.  However, if you bring your own laptop and decided you need to store it for a little while, you can rent out number locked lockers complete with outlets inside for all of your charging needs.  Many of the walls in the study rooms and throughout the buildings have a special paint on them that allow students to write on them with dry erase markers (no need to worry about running out of writing space anymore).  The building itself is LEED Silver certified, a rating given to various buildings based on their performance as a “green” building, and contains energy efficient windows and vents.  The Brody Learning Commons also contains a space to study and to have consultations on rare books and materials, The Winston Tabb Center for Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Archives Research.

The library lockers of the future.

Coming into the bottom of the atrium on B-level, I really got a sense of the size of the building and what it was trying to accomplish.  Furniture of all shapes and sizes were spread out through this space, all of which were movable and allowed students to arrange their study set-up any way that they chose.  The furniture itself was voted on by students back in 2010 based on which ones they wanted to see in the new library.  The new seats (a term used to describe everything from seat/back combos with no legs to soft, rolling cushion balls) really allow students to use anything they find comfortable while they are here.

Admissions_Ardi and Admissions_Shannon trying out the new study furniture.

More than just a study space, however, the Brody Learning Commons also houses active research projects.  In the atrium, the Department of Computer Science has placed a visualization wall made up of multiple video screens, Xbox Kinect Cameras, and an array of computers in the background.  The goal of this study is to analyze how people interact with computers and to determine what “natural” gestures are in the interactive sense (think Tom Cruise in Minority Report).  One floor down is The Department of Conservation and Preservation, home to the Heritage Science Project, which promotes original scientific research on conservation issues.  To find out more about these two projects, and about the Brody Learning Commons, you can also check out the article from the JHU Gazette: “An uncommon library” .

For the visualization wall, again, think of Tom Cruise from The Minority Report.

In the end, the Brody Learning Commons acts as a great compliment to what we already have on campus.  For those who need a more traditional space with a quiet atmosphere, we have the MSE Library, Gilman, and many of the other libraries and study rooms on campus.  For me as an undergraduate, I was always right on the top floor of the library right at the entrance.  I needed people passing by and chatting with me every once in a while to keep me motivated and working.  For me, the Brody Learning Commons provides the social study space that I always looked for.  So, whenever you get to campus, you can try out all the different spaces on campus and see what works for you.  When you settle there, you should make that space your own, but also know that you are just a few steps away from everywhere (and everyone) else as well.