Diana Mireles purposely intrudes on students at Grand Valley State University's Meijer Campus in Holland. She's not trying to be rude; she considers it part of her job.
I have a list of students that I keep in touch with and do 'intrusive' advising, says Mireles, Holland Partnership Program Counselor. Employed since March 1999 under the Academic Resources and Special Programs division, she helps students in Holland with test taking, time management, and study skills in addition to general academic advising. Sometimes if we wait for a student to come to us it may be too late to help them with something. I'll stop them in the hallways and find out of they're struggling with something.
Mireles works in tandem with Vanessa Greene, a Continuing Education program coordinator. Greene completed her Master of Education through GVSU in 1998 and started working at the Holland campus that fall as an intern with Career Services, becoming full time in January of 1999. Greene says they both work as generalists to serve a mostly non-traditional student population.
I would say no more than 10 percent of the students in Holland are traditional student population, Greene points out. Most of the students start here because they can get their general education courses here for two years and then go to Allendale to complete their degree.
That's the case for Jody Nykamp, a 36-year-old self-employed Holland resident who started taking classes through GVSU at Holland High School. A Biology major with an environmental health emphasis, she hopes to be a consultant to companies about how to use and dispose of natural materials. She likes the fact that she can even take some laboratory classes on the Holland campus.
The Meijer campus is about 10 minutes from my house, and I've taken about six classes here, says Nykamp, who will take most of her remaining 11 courses in Allendale. It's so much easier here than in Allendale in terms of parking and everything else.
The Holland campus offers bachelor's degrees in business administration, criminal justice, language arts/elementary education, nursing, and sociology. Master's degrees are offered in business, education, and public administration. For those students who will eventually take some courses in Allendale, Mireles says the Holland campus serves as a way to ease themselves into the large campus atmosphere.
I like that the classes in Holland are smaller, it's better than a large lecture hall, says Zeeland High School graduate Gwen Flinsky, 20, a sophomore considering a health science or nursing degree. She heard about GVSU's Meijer campus through the newspaper and word of mouth, and completed classes for her freshman year in both Holland and Allendale. I also like that everything is here in one building, and that you can get advising, pay, schedule for classes and everything right here.
With the Holland campus still relatively new, Mireles and Greene are busy working to build awareness of the building and its various programs among the traditional college student population as well. Mireles and Greene recently teamed up with other Holland area organizations to sponsor a youth conference called Communities That Care. More than 150 area high school students participated in the event.
In terms of exposure for Grand Valley, that was great, says Greene, who is planning to invite high school students to college awareness seminars at the Meijer campus to let them know about financial aid, curriculum, college preparatory courses they should be taking and other issues concerning college education. I think high school counselors do a real good job, but we can help them. We want to be a partnership so we can collaboratively reach more students and parents.
