Paige Full of Words
I'm Paige. These are my words.
Students from big cities adjust to life at CMU
When Farmington Hills senior Alexis Baker came to Central Michigan University as a Multicultural Advancement Scholar, she expected its campus to be more diverse.
“I come from an area that is quite a bit diverse so coming to CMU and seeing the kind of segregation and lack of diversity was a shock,” Baker said. “I was really shocked to see how separated each racial group seems to be here and I had a hard time finding where I fit in because I didn’t directly identify with any of the groups 100 percent.”
In the past five years, CMU has experienced a 50 percent change in on-campus minority enrollment. Compared to about 10 years ago, the minority student enrollment on campus has nearly doubled.
Patricia Young, who works in University Admissions and focuses on recruiting multicultural students, said CMU’s freshman class this year was made up of 22 percent multicultural students. However, CMU’s overall student population is less diverse than that, with multicultural students making up about 15 percent of the undergraduate student body. She wants to see multicultural students make up 20 percent of the undergraduate student body by 2020.
Bringing students to campus
Young said a lot of efforts go into recruiting students. Their office tracks students using a data management system and keeps data on them, sending out emails, brochures and follow-up calls.
Recently, their office mailed promotional materials to 10, 000 students. Soon, they’ll send an email to 20, 000 more.
Each fall, the recruiters visit about 1000 high schools in total and throughout one year, about 200-300 groups of students travel to CMU by bus to get a tour of campus.
“The point is we want students to be exposed to college,” Young said. “It’s not realistic that they will all come here. We want to expose them to a college campus and that’s what it’s about.”
She said in terms of recruitment, face to face interactions go a long way.
“We’re the fourth largest (university in Michigan) so at some level our university holds its own weight,” Young said. “There will be some students that our office never talked to and they’ll still apply but there are some students who will only apply if we talk to them.”
CMU receives approximately 21,000 applications per year.
However, Young said CMU still has to be strategic in its recruitment.
Recruiting diverse students
Young travels to Saginaw, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Wyoming and Muskegon to recruit students. There is a separate recruitment team that works in Detroit, and there are now two recruiters who focus on Illinois.
Because of this recent focus on recruiting in and near Chicago, the number of students from Chicago attending CMU has increased. In addition to having two recruiters in the area, CMU brings in many bus groups from there, paying for the students’ transportation and meals, Young said.
Any out of state student with a 2.75 grade point average or higher can receive in-state tuition from CMU, she said, which often makes attending CMU cheaper than attending school at home would be for Chicago students.
“A cool thing about our diversity changing and increasing is that our student body is also coming from more locations too,” Young said.
In terms of recruiting diverse students from within the state of Michigan, Young said the Multicultural Advancement Scholarship is a strong recruitment tool. The scholarship is open to anyone, but because it focuses on diversity, it tends to attract more diverse students, she said.
Part of the change in CMU’s student population is because of the changes in Michigan’s population.
“The state of Michigan’s demographics are changing. You’re seeing a decrease in the white student populations in high schools just across the board,” Young said.
Retaining diverse students
University Admissions works closely with the Office for Institutional Diversity, which focuses more on retention once students attend CMU.
“I would say it’s important to be intentional to make sure all students are integrated,” Young said. “Maybe you’ve got a student coming from the suburbs – they might have easier integration because of what they’re used to versus a student from the inner city who might’ve had less resources.”
In additional to the Office for Institutional Diversity, CMU has other programs and resources aimed at helping and retaining diverse students, such as Multicultural Academic Student Services and the Center for Inclusion and Diversity. This past year, the Office of Student Activities and Involvement hosted IMPACT for the first time. IMPACT was free for students and was successful this year, Young said.
“(IMPACT) gives our multicultural students kind of their own programming. Obviously there’s Leadership Safari and they will do both,” she said. “It’s required that students who do IMPACT also do Safari. It kind of gives them an opportunity to network with other students like themselves and they were also able to take a lot more out of Leadership Safari.”
However, Young said more could always be done to provide resources to diverse students, especially at a university where diversity is present but not prevalent.
She said she doesn’t necessarily think multicultural students are well integrated on campus because she has seen multicultural students reach out for help for a variety of reasons. She said their office is open to these students, even if speaking with them isn’t in the recruiters’ job descriptions.
“It’s all of our jobs. From professors to staff to financial aid to admissions to retention. We all need to be intentional about supporting all of our students and sometimes you just have to take a couple extra steps to make sure that it’s an even playing field,” she said.
She said CMU’s location also poses challenges because universities in bigger towns or cities might have more resources in the area or more diverse communities.
“We’re Mount Pleasant, Michigan. We’re not a big city so students who are comfortable with big cities, there’s a challenge there,” she said. “At the same time, we’re a fantastic university and have a lot to offer students. We have a big presence of Chicago students on campus.”
Adjusting to campus life
Baker said there are great resources for students on campus. However, she said she only knows about them because she’s a Multicultural Advancement Scholar. She isn’t sure how well they’re promoted to other students. She also thinks CMU is very segregated.
“I think it stems from people just sticking around what they know and a good portion of people that go here grew up in rural areas with less diversity than there is here,” Baker said. “I think we all just need to step out of our comfort zone a bit to improve the situation.”
Detroit junior Ahsha Davis said she was skeptical about the diversity at CMU when she went on a campus tour. She chose CMU because she received a good scholarship.
Now that she’s here, she loves CMU but thinks the diversity and inclusion at CMU is somewhere in the middle; it’s getting there, she said, but it could still use some work.
“I think it depends on the group. I know living in the dorms is very accepting and inclusive,” Davis said. “Greek Life and (Student Activities and Involvement) are so inclusive. I think the improvement is more so within the student organizations. Inviting others and showing diversity will encourage others to take part.”
Skyscrapers light up Chicago at night on Nov. 12, 2016.
Various businesses line Mission Street in Mount Pleasant in Oct., 2016.
The following photos show scenes in Chicago in the fall compared to Mount Pleasant in the fall.
An increasing number of students from Chicago are attending CMU. These photos illustrate just a few differences they might have to adjust to.
Author paigesheffPosted on December 14, 2016 December 14, 2016 Categories LifestyleTags admissions, big cities, campus life, choosing a college, diversity, recruitment, small towns, student lifeLeave a comment on Students from big cities adjust to life at CMU
A Taste of Home: Indian student prepares traditional food, embraces culture
Sometimes Namrata Baipally eats hamburgers and pizza. She likes french fries, which she also enjoyed fairly often in India, her home country.
But the Central Michigan University graduate student also misses the traditional Indian food that she can’t find around Mount Pleasant.
Two or three times a week, she prepares some of her favorite Indian dishes, such as mushroom curry, to get a taste of the traditional, spicy foods she ate at home.
A Taste of Home from Paige Sheffield on Vimeo.
Author paigesheffPosted on November 15, 2016 November 15, 2016 Categories LifestyleTags cooking, culture, food, indian food, international students, student lifeLeave a comment on A Taste of Home: Indian student prepares traditional food, embraces culture
Students express themselves through fashion
Senior Caitlin Eldred wears a sequined hair clip and bright pink sweater as she edits photos in the Bovee University Center on Oct. 18, 2016.
Senior Lauren Kissick wears a sorority sweatshirt and Vineyard Vines baseball cap as she completes her homework in the Bovee University Center. Kissick studies Communication Disorders and is a member of Alpha Sigma Tau.
Freshman Gabrielle Mason wears blue jeans, a printed tank top with fringe, a long cardigan and black ballet flats as she walks between classes on the campus of Central Michigan University.
Freshman Molly Markiewicz accessorizes her bright, printed dress with a black and silver ring and a few bracelets. Her Alex and Ani bangle reads “my story isn’t over yet.”
Junior Zhimin Zhang wears a bright green sweater layered over a collared shirt as she walks from her class in Ronan Hall. Zhang is an international student from Inner Mongolia who currently takes courses in the English Language Institute at Central Michigan University.
From Grand Rapids to Inner Mongolia, students from across the state, country and world attend Central Michigan University. Students can express their cultures, interests and personal styles through fashion, whether that means wearing a sorority sweatshirt or accessorizing with jewelry engraved with words.
Author paigesheffPosted on October 20, 2016 October 20, 2016 Categories Lifestyle, UncategorizedTags campus style, culture, diversity, fashion, styleLeave a comment on Students express themselves through fashion
Student strengthens her spirituality through choir
Before coming to Central Michigan University, junior Elayashia Kendall went to church every Sunday. Now, she still tries to, but work sometimes gets in the way.
Challenging assumptions, finding stories
an introduction to my blog
I grew up quiet.
I know, I know – what a boring and unimportant way to describe myself.
When you grow up quiet, the trait has this tendency to override everything else. When you grow up quiet, that tends to be all people hear.
I’m much less quiet than I was then, but I can’t separate myself from it.
People have questioned my ability to be firm or assertive. People have questioned my ability to ask tough questions. People have questioned my ability, essentially, to do my job and accomplish my goals.
The truth is that I can be quiet, calm and reserved. But you might have noticed that when I introduced myself that way, you learned pretty much nothing else about me. When we don’t know the full story, we tend to make assumptions.
“Quiet” on its own isn’t bad. It’s the assumptions that come along with it that can be negative or misguided.
But I’m not here to tell a sad story about being quiet. The truth is, while being known as quiet and introverted can be frustrating or sometimes limiting, it is nothing like being silenced or ignored.
My name is Paige. I’m full of words. And so is everyone else, regardless of whether they have the freedoms to express them, regardless of whether people listen or understand, and regardless of their background, personality or anything else. Everyone has a story that stretches far beyond the assumptions and surface-level details.
I aim to tell some of those stories: the stories that are hidden or simply overlooked or misunderstood.
I’m a junior at Central Michigan University majoring in journalism with a minor in media design, production and technology. I started this blog for my JRN 340 class and I hope to tell some stories that haven’t been explored much before.
Welcome to Paige Full of Words. On the surface, I might be “quiet,” but I still have stories to tell. I also have a name that is great for writer puns and jokes.