Friday, August 15, 2008

New School Year Preparation

We are working hard to get the campus ready for the new semester. Our orientation class for new students begins on August 19th and the semester begins for all the students on August 30th. My first graduate level class, Basics of Exegesis, will begin on Saturday morning of the 30th. Most of the faculty and staff are back from vacations and summer support raising so today was our first Guam campus faculty and staff meeting. You can see, it took two pictures to get everyone in, that our staff has continued to grow. We are hoping for about the same amount of students we had last year (65 in the dormitories and about 100 overall). We never know until they actually arrive. We had one student that we had no prior communication with show up this morning with a completed application packet. We had him through the admissions committee and accepted by the end of the day. It was good to get everyone together again and talk about the vision for the year and get things ready for start of the school year. It seems like there are about a 100 unexpected things that pop up as we get ready.

One of the big jobs is getting the dorms ready. Joyce has been working on the guys' dorm the last couple weeks along with some of the summer students and some volunteers. This week they have been working on the main women's dorm. It is amazing how much damage and wear a group of college students can produce on a building. Today was the day to air out the mattresses and set off the bug bombs. (Joyce is pictured with both here.) Every year it seems like we won't get things done on time but we always seem to be ready even if it is close. One year we were still putting beds together with the students waiting there holding their suitcases in the doorways of their dorm rooms. We will be having a big work day on the Guam campus August 23rd at 7 AM to make the final touches to have it ready. We would appreciate everyone who can come up and give us a hand to get the campus ready to go.

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