This week, ACU’s graduate school program will put on Graduate School Awareness Week. Students will be able to attend over a dozen events on campus that will offer information about the graduate school process.
Students can pick from a variety of options on the event schedule, including departmental lunches, a spiritual formation forum and a graduate and professional school fair. The fair is one of the biggest events that students can attend, and several schools will be present to represent their individual programs, some of which are not offered at ACU.
Bree Beasley, associate director of student services, said these events would not only be geared toward future ACU graduate students, but also toward students who may consider attending other schools.
“Graduate School Awareness Week is not about recruiting,” said Beasley. “The week is about raising awareness of what goes on at the graduate level and why it’s important to think about the next step.”
The graduate and professional school fair is one event Beasley said every student should consider attending. The event will offer students who may consider law school and other advanced schooling that ACU does not offer a chance to ask other schools questions about their programs.
“We want students to realize what our graduate school offers, but we don’t want students to feel obligated to attend every event,” Beasley said. “If they attend only one event, like the fair or a departmental lunch, it still does a lot to help them decide what their calling is.”
Corey Patterson, the director of graduate recruitment, said that one of the goals Graduate School Awareness Week aims to accomplish is inspiring students to discover their vocational calling.
“We decided a spiritual formation forum would be one of the best ways to introduce the students to the idea of discovering their vocational calling,” said Patterson. “By putting an emphasis on graduate education and by holding events like this, we believe that we can help students discover what God has planned for them.”
In order to create more opportunities for students to learn about furthering their education, the Graduate School scheduled many events, some of which overlap. Patterson said students should only attend events useful to them and avoid bogging down their schedules.
“We wanted students to have options, but we don’t want them to feel like they need to run to and from events,” Patterson said. “Students should know that they are not coming into an event that is a high-pressure sales pitch; we are here to answer questions.”
