Submitted by The Evergreen State College
At the beginning of the academic school year in 2023, the University of Puget Sound held a Graduate School fair that was attended by several schools in the region, but few students. The pandemic turned enrollment numbers on its head and institutions were still struggling to restart many traditional events held before the world shut down.
With the pandemic, there was more and more focus on online education, leaving smaller liberal arts colleges and universities struggling to adapt and compete. It was during the Graduate School fair at UPS that individuals from the Universities in the South Puget Sound region started talking to one another about how to support each other and students in accessing graduate educational opportunities. As a result, the University of Puget Sound, Saint Martin’s University, Pacific Lutheran University and The Evergreen State College decided to form the South Sound Graduate Coalition to host a collaborative Graduate Fair. The goal of the fair was to create greater access and awareness to graduate programs so that prospective students could explore what each of the campuses in the South Puget Sound region had to offer without having to travel all over Western Washington.
This South Sound Grad Fair Coalition has taken on an alternative approach to graduate education recruitment and outreach. Since graduate school is so tailored to the needs of individual students and their career goals, students must find the program that will be the best fit for their needs.
As a result, the Coalition members are focusing support of student higher education exploration by not only providing information about their own programs but also by referring students to schools that have the program a student may be looking for. The priority lies in ensuring that the student’s career goals are met with the appropriate graduate program by creating a strong network between institutions that understand each other’s offerings and can better negotiate the referral process so that the student experience is seamless. The other goal of the Coalition has been to support our recruiter colleagues who travel long distances to attend graduate fairs. The solution has been to organize fairs in the region close together so that recruiters can travel to our South Puget Sound region and attend multiple fairs to increase student access to the opportunities they are offering without having to travel to the same region twice in a season.
This fall, The Evergreen State College took the lead in organizing the South Sound Grad Fair Coalition into a planning committee to host the first annual South Sound Graduate School Fair at the Evergreen Olympia campus on October 8, 2024, from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m. in partnership with the University of Puget Sound’s Grad Fair on October 7 from 11:30 am- 1:30 pm in Tacoma. Even during just one year of the building process, there were many changes and modifications to planning since many Coalition members in graduate affairs experienced leadership and structural changes. Despite these changes, the group persevered and met together once a month to think through the logistics of bringing the first South Sound Graduate School Fair to fruition. The hope of the Coalition Universities is to revive the culture of graduate fairs in the South Puget Sound region of Washington state with this first event this fall.
Graduate fairs are a great way for students to learn about graduate educational opportunities in a fun and engaging event. They offer a space that is highly exploratory and low commitment where students and community members interested in going back to school for an advanced degree can ask important questions to different grad programs to better understand the ways that they can help further their career goals. It also offers a concentrated event where multiple programs are present so that students can learn about a range of offerings and come away with information from many programs and schools. This year, we are fortunate to have attracted 40+ institutions from all over the country and the globe, offering degrees in everything from Information Technology, Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Law, Tribal Governance, Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Public Administration, and the Environment. Students and community members preparing for professional careers or careers in research will be able to find programs that can help meet their goals. The South Sound Graduate School Fair Coalition welcomes all to attend the first annual South Sound Grad School Fair at Evergreen Olympia on Tuesday, October 8, in Evans Hall, 2nd Floor Lobby, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
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