Working Virtually With School Counselors

I've worked in the Undergraduate Admissions Office at Penn State for more than ten years now. In that time, I have had the distinct honor and pleasure of presenting to students, families, and high school counselors about the college search process - and Penn State specifically. Giving presentations has long-been one of my favorite parts of the gig, but with the whole world working remotely these days, we have had to move our presentations into a virtual format. With all of the other things that have been swirling about, I have not had the opportunity to give any presentations in the last couple of weeks.

The Penn State admissions community hosted a webinar on Thursday last week and invited high school counselors from around the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - and beyond - for a question-and-answer session regarding the impacts of COVID-19.

Yours Truly got to host the event (yay!), and hopefully provide some clarity for our partners in the counseling community. Here's a screenshot of the beginning of the presentation:

That's me, in my living room, in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen

We covered a whole host of topics ranging from where people can find resources and information about how Penn State is responding to the coronavirus pandemic to how schools moving to a pass/fail grading system for spring semester will have impacts on this year's seniors (as well as juniors, sophomore, etc. for the coming years).

Look, the remainder of this admissions cycle is going to be tough for students, families, and high school counselors (not to mention those of us on the higher ed side of the desk). The overall message that I tried to convey to our counseling colleagues was that - regardless of circumstances - we want to work with students in being flexible. We know that things are strange right now, and likely will be for some time to come.

We ended on an open Q&A forum for the counselors so that folks could ask whatever they wanted. It is my hope (and the shared hope of my colleagues that participated with me) that the webinar was helpful, even if the answers to several of the questions was, "I don't know, but we're working on it".

Our team will be hosting another event this coming week and it is my hope that we'll have even more answers to the questions posed by our friends "across the desk".