Friday roundup
Happy Friday, Deac families! Hard to believe June is right around the corner. I am happy to see the end to the last few months (which I refer to as ‘Marprilmay’ since they all ran together for me).
Couple of quick program notes sent from campus partner offices:
We encourage students to look for the COVID-19 Health and Wellbeing survey in their inbox and complete the survey as soon as they can. Responding to the survey can help us care for our WFU community!
Incoming ’24 students should pay special attention to an email today from Dr. Cherise James with the final details for June advising. The Office of Academic Advising looks forward to speaking with your student during their scheduled week of June! As a reminder, as the summer continues, all emails sent to our incoming class will be housed here.
Students in the Classes of ’21, ’22, and ’23 received a message this morning about housing selection; read it here. (Note: ’24 students’ housing assignments follows a different process, so they did not get the email.)
To add a little color to the housing email, we sent this to students because we’d told them in our 4/30 email that they would get an update on housing selection by 5/29. After that 4/30 email, we subsequently announced the creation of the fall scenario planning team, who is charged with creating a fall semester update by 6/30. We can’t know our housing plan until decisions about the fall have been made, but we wanted to honor our word about the update on housing. I’d ask everyone’s patience in letting the fall scenario process unfold.
On Fridays this summer I will bring you a roundup of some of the news of the last week that you might have missed on the web. Here goes:
There is a great story about our recent graduate, Sam Chason (’20), who runs Storage Scholars, the packing and shipping company many Wake students use each year. Sam just won a Deac Fast Pass to Winston Starts, a startup incubator. Fun fact: Sam came to Wake Forest with a goal of graduating debt free, and made that happen through Storage Scholars.
In what feels in retrospect like providential timing, Dr. Karin Friederic taught an Anthropology of Global Health class this spring. Though the class stared before the first case of coronavirus was confirmed, the pandemic gave a new lens from which the students could explore theories they were learning in class. The class learned real-time lessons in global health even as they pivoted to online learning.
Engineering is a relatively new major at Wake Forest, one that I am still getting to know. This story talks about how students in Engineering 311: Control Systems and Instrumentation, were used to hands-on activities such as building circuits and sensors and using their lab bench equipment. How did these engineering students manage to continue learning remotely in such a hands-on class? Hint: through really creative teaching.
Andy Chan, Vice President for Innovation and Career Development, was quoted in The New York Times for an article entitled It’s Not Too Late to Get a Virtual Internship: “’We have a team of people who are contacting alumni, as well as searching the job boards and finding jobs that are hard for students to locate. Over these last few months we have found a thousand more jobs than a student could find on their own and are putting them in front of students,’ he said.”
These are all good reads and I hope you spend a few minutes exploring these stories.
Finally, I want to share this beautiful picture that was sent to me. It was taken by one of our essential employees who still has campus access. I can practically smell the magnolia – can you? Even though we aren’t there, it is good to see campus looking so gorgeous.
Have a great weekend, Daily Deacdom! Stay safe and well 🙂
by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)