Welcome back! My surgery went well, and I am in recovery mode. I have at least one more surgery to complete the process, but hopefully the most difficult part is behind me 🙂 I’m sorry that I didn’t make it back before the end of the semester, but initial recovery took longer than I thought. Thank you everyone for your well wishes, I appreciate it! 🙂
How was your winter break? I hope that you got to enjoy some time with your daughters. A month sounds like a long time, but it always goes by so fast. And those who are athletes come back early to start preparing for the spring competition season. Thankfully, we got to enjoy some time with our daughter, so we felt blessed. I hope you did too!
How did you fare in the blizzard of 2016? Without incident, I hope. I saw some beautiful pictures of the Sweet Briar campus covered in snow, so some pictures are included here in case you didn’t get to see any. The campus is so beautiful and serene, and the snow just added a magical look. From what I hear, some food service staff stayed on campus for the weekend so that Prothro remained open, the students enjoyed a day off from school on that Friday, and many enjoyed fun in the snow over the weekend. I imagine that there was a lot of hot chocolate consumed that weekend! We live in Vienna, Va., right outside Washington, and I was shocked to learn that we got a lot more snow than Sweet Briar did.
Around campus, main roads were already cleared by Saturday, and classes resumed on Monday. Where I live, some people were still snowed in until Wednesday! But by the time of this blog posting, most of the snow has melted away, and life has returned to normal here, too.
The spring semester is in full swing. By now, all of your daughters have had a few weeks of classes, and should be settled into their routine for this semester. I hear this week (week of Feb. 8) is a heavy week of projects and tests. If your daughter needs help, be sure she knows to take full advantage of the Academic Resource Center, known as the ARC. Whether she’s looking for someone to assist her with a current writing project, work with her on structuring her study time or prep for a test, help her get comfortable with classroom technologies, or mentor her through the demands of a rigorous academic schedule, the ARC can help your daughter take control of her own educational experience. For more information, visit the ARC website here.
Did you hear about the Sweet Briar Town Hall Meeting that was hosted on Feb. 5? Alumnae, faculty, staff, students and Amherst County community members packed into The Conference Center that Friday afternoon for the College’s first town hall meeting.
This was just one of many to come, said board Chair Teresa Tomlinson, who answered questions alongside Sweet Briar College President Phillip C. Stone.
“This is your show. This is for you,” Tomlinson announced, adding that the board of directors would be sure to make note of everyone’s concerns.
“We really want to hear from all of you,” Stone said. “Nothing is off limits — we may not be able to answer it, but nothing is off limits.”
For the next hour or so, questions ranged from what the plan might be for the College’s 3,250 acres to accommodating more international students to whether there could be staff or student representatives on the board of directors. Attendees also asked what the record application numbers mean, and whether there a written marketing plan or a branding initiative underway.
For answers to these questions, and the many others that came up during the meeting, please watch the full video on the Sweet Briar website (the first 15 minutes of the video are just music, so you can skip ahead to the start of the meeting).
I encourage you to reach out and let me or the Office of Media, Marketing and Communications (at mmc@sbc.edu) know if you liked the town hall concept as a means of communication, and if so how often you would like a similar event to occur, as well as whether you liked or disliked what you heard during the discussion. There were quite a few things I heard that I liked a lot, and one message was loud and clear: Transparency and doing the right thing — not just the easy thing to appease but that doesn’t meet the real objective — are important to this administration and board. I am thrilled with the mindset and the efforts to date. Are you? Information on subsequent town halls is to be determined, but I will keep you posted and let you know if any of my suggestions are implemented 🙂
Please remember, never hesitate to email me if you have concerns that you would like to have addressed by someone at Sweet Briar, or that you want to be addressed in the next town hall. I will be sure your concerns reach the appropriate office, and that you get a response.
What topics would YOU like me to address? Send them to me at SBCParentToParent@gmail.com, and I’ll address them in upcoming posts, or sooner if needed. Until then, I’ll talk to you soon!