By Laura Sheedy

Student Activities

Why college? To fully understand all the benefits that a college can provide in achieving a future career, it helps to be on a college campus. All Pacelli junior and high School students have been provided such a visit this spring to Riverland Community College.

An invitation to the college by Director of Admissions & New Student Relations for Riverland, Nel Zellar, was quickly accepted. What a great opportunity to learn what Riverland Community College has to offer.  Students visited the college in grade-level groups, grades seven and eight, grades nine and ten, and grades eleven and twelve.  Each visit focused on the post-secondary education needs of the respective groups.

Each visit started with a presentation about “Why College?” Statistics like for every ten jobs available one requires a master’s degree or higher, two require a bachelor’s degree and seven require some sort of learning/degree after high school, can be an eye opener, even for a seventh grader.

After winning a free t-shirt or two for answers to questions about the presentation, students had the opportunity to listen to Pal Koak, President of the Riverland Student Senate and current Pacelli Senior taking PSEO classes at Riverland. His advice was to be involved and become aware of all that college has to offer you. With the new scholarship opportunities from the Hormel Foundation through the Assurance Scholarship, students are aware that many doors have been opened for them.

Students were then off to tour what the campus has to offer: the gym with its many sports opportunities; the theater, music and art departments including choir trips to New York;  the numerous plays that provide theatrical and technical opportunities each year. Students had the opportunity to “virtually” drive a combine through a corn field, to drive a semi on the road, and to look at the human body on the 3D Virtual Autopsy table.

Watching carpentry students build and paint a small play barn with an actual silo and observing nursing students being tested with automated mannequins gave students an idea of life after high school, something to strive for or to think about for themselves as they work in school now.

Learning is a skill, something that we do each day of our lives. Students in junior high and high school learn so many things.  The goal of these trips to Riverland is to show students that they can grow and extend their learning after high school, in whatever field they choose.