Luncheon revolves around Idaho-Oregon Border College Fair
Event slated Nov. 5 at Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario
By William Lundquist
Argus Observer
Thursday, October 25, 2007 1:06 PM PDT
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| Student members of the organizing committee for the upcoming college fair from around the local area gathered at the Sizzler in Ontario Wednesday to discuss final plans for the event. The fair, which will showcase representatives from a number of colleges throughout the region and the United States, will kick off Nov. 5 at Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario. |
Ontario — Representatives from more than 50 colleges, universities, technical schools and the armed forces will be on hand to greet high school students from the Treasure Valley and other areas of Oregon and Idaho at the Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario Nov. 5.
Students attending the annual Idaho-Oregon Border College Fair will have a chance to meet college representatives from nine western states, attend four informational sessions on everything from financial aid and scholarships to athletics and the arts and hear Boise motivational speaker Kip Spittle explain how to successfully choose the next step in life. As a door prize, one student from Oregon and one student from Idaho will each receive a $200 scholarship.
The organizing committee, with volunteers from nine Treasure Valley High Schools, met Wednesday at the Ontario Sizzler restaurant to discuss the final details for the event. Admittedly using the endless salad bar as bait, the volunteers each brought with them student body presidents and officers from their respective high schools. The idea, organizing committee chairman Dave Shirts, Weiser High School, said is for the student leaders to help sell the college fair to their peers.
One of those leaders, New Plymouth High School Associated Student Body President Shianne Edmunson, said she attended last year’s college fair, and it helped her decide to study engineering at the University of Idaho next year.
“I liked it,” she said of the college fair. “We took the whole junior and senior class.”
Besides the schools, representatives from most of the branches of the military will be at the fair. While most of the students at the table expressed no desire to see Iraq, some acknowledged the value of the college funding and sign-up bonuses offered by the military.
Edmunson said a lot of students from New Plymouth are now enlisting.
Definitely headed for the College of Idaho, and not Afghanistan, is Payette High School Associated Student Body President Chris Manser. He said he plans to major in business or technology. He said it helps to have all the choices presented in one place at the college fair, and believed all the student leaders at the table would be attending. The fair attracted nearly 1,000 students last year. Shirts said high schools make it easier by busing students to the fair. Any student from ninth-grade through 12th-grade can attend. Shirts said his own school, Weiser, as well as Fruitland High School, will hold an inservice day Nov. 5, and wondered how many students from those schools would attend when they would be doing so on a day off. Organizers said students have, in past years, come from as far away as Wallowa and Bend in Oregon.
The fair always features a motivational keynote speaker, some nationally famous. This year, Spittle from the Milan Institute in Boise, will speak on “Life Impact,” how to develop a success map and make the most of every experience. Organizers said they had discussed dropping the last informational session of the day, but instead scheduled some of the best presentations there to make it truly a full-day event. The fair is scheduled to run from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Getting down to the final details Wednesday, the organizers discussed how to provide food for the 100 to 150 presenters and representatives at the fair. They felt the only caterer contracted to serve at the Four Rivers Cultural Center had gotten a bit expensive. They will probably go with vouchers for an Ontario restaurant this year, but they were concerned the representatives might prefer to hurry out of town. Many will be representing their schools at a national college fair in Boise the next day.
The representatives will come from colleges in Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The Treasure Valley high schools sponsoring the fair include those from Adrian, Fruitland, Vale, Nyssa, Parma, Weiser, Ontario, Payette and New Plymouth.
