1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - One-On-One with DP: December 2nd, 3:25pm - Kat Kreikemeier (Southeast C.C.)

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

One-On-One with DP: December 2nd, 3:25pm - Kat Kreikemeier (Southeast C.C.)Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're listening to One-on-One with DP, brought to you by Beatrice Bakery, on 93-7 the Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Welcome back to one-on-one, and every now and then you have to exhale. Take a deep breath, exhale, let it out. We will put things down that cause stress and such, and then we will get together, get united on an idea that community colleges have the ability to make us all better. And there's a pretty good one here that we've partnered with over the course of the years. But let's bring in, I want to make sure, Krakmire. Okay, I've got it right. All right.

And you are with Southeast Community College Director, Administrator Director for Admissions in, what am I missing? Testing. Testing. Okay. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for making time for us. Several things to know, first of all. who is the actual the average the template for a southeast community college student

everyone we have so many opportunities no matter if a student's coming you know we have is really as dual credit students that are taking credits in high school we have our Career Academy Partnership at Lincoln Public Schools as well as in Southeast Nebraska we have the Southeast Nebraska Career Academy Partnership with those schools in our 15 County area that provide dual credit coursework and a lot of our career and technical programs as well as our dual credit programs. We have a huge driver's ed program that a lot of the students in our community across the 15 county area doing driver's ed all the way from the student who's leaving high school to the

student who maybe took a couple years off. It is coming back to us at 20, 24, 32, 36, 47, 52, 73, whether that's a re-career, a change in skills, pursuing a dream, refocusing because of life circumstances, circumstances, looking for additional training, looking for additional credentials, professional development. The gamut runs wide in the sense of the opportunities that we have. In addition to our credit opportunities, we also have a very diverse continuing education program. There's a lot of leisure interests, learning classes, certification classes, anything from how

to use your smartphone and how to use Facebook to how to use Excel and Microsoft. Access better to cake decorating and oil painting, flower arranging. So the gamut runs wide and the word community is important to us so we can serve all members of our community. How much of the uploading process is going through grants, loans, how can things be paid for, the cost of things? How much of that is a part of your first initial meetings with people? It's a big part. We know that how to pay for college is an important and a big question for a lot of people. So SEC, you know, works with the free application for federal student aid, which is the FAFSA where all financial aid with the Department of Education originates.

We have a fantastic scholarship program. And for high school seniors, the scholarship application for fall of 22 opened yesterday. It's open December 1st through March 1st. Last year, we gave out over 3,000 scholarships valued as a total of over $2 million. So we have a very generous foundation, lots of good support from alums, community members, industry partners. So that's a huge part. But there's also a lot of different opportunities. There's the gap funding, which is short-term funding for training,

and that pays for tuition, training, equipment, supplies, uniforms, and those sorts of things if you meet those demographics, as well as there's a Learn to Dream Scholarship. So students who are graduates of a Lincoln high school or homeschool in the city limits of Lincoln who are eligible for free or reduced lunch are eligible for 60 free credit hours of tuition, the people obtaining prosperity. charity scholarship, who the Center for People in Need gives students who are not in high school a similar opportunity for 30 to 60 credit hours of tuition.

So we know that that's an important part as helping students kind of put together the pieces of what they're wanting to do, but then thinking about how do we make that a possibility. And that's in our belief of the path to possible. A big bridge from old thinking of Juco Community College is the commitment to have this stuff transferable, that this may be the proper launch for some folks to get to the four-year school of their dreams. What type of opportunities are there?

Partnerships agreements where a high school student could come to Southeast, get their two years in, get there, and then have it move to them to the four-year college of their choice. There are a lot of opportunities. We are so fortunate that in our area, we have great partners. There's a variety of other educational.

institutions in our area that partner with us we probably have oh seven or eight institutions that send their admissions counselors and transfer reps to our campuses every week so a student can meet with an SEC advisor to mean that's say on track at SEC but also stay on track at where they are their ultimate destination their transfer destination is so we're working I like to think of as parallel advising so you have two advisors you have two people in your back corner who want the best for you and are going to make sure that you're checking the boxes at SEC and you're checking the box

so that you're not taking classes that you don't need and paying for classes that you don't need, and there's no surprises in the end. So we take that very seriously. We've got fantastic academic advisors who are trained and work closely with those neighboring institutions, and we also have scholarship opportunities with some of our neighboring institutions that say, if you graduate from Southeast Community College or you've taken a certain number of credits, you're eligible for X number thousands of dollars of scholarships towards your four-year degree. So we're really fortunate to live in a community that values education and sees us as a partner,

And it's created those opportunities for our students. We're talking to Kat Krakmeyer from Southeast Community College. And before we get to Discovery Days, I do want to ask, you have an athletic department that does some pretty amazing things. But for me, I've asked the question, how can we help with that exposure? How can we, I mean, those are young people that still have aspirations to do other things and to move forward. Most of the conversations with those student athletes are those with the eye towards

four-year universities and doing the same thing? Do these programs assist in that? I mean, how does that work at Southeast Community College? Both. We have students that know that completing a program at Southeast Community College is their destination because they're hoping to become, you know, they're interested in the ag field, they're interested in a criminal justice degree, they're interested in pursuing a career and technical program on one of our campuses. So SEC and that career path is their destination, but we also have other students that are very much preparing themselves to transfer to a four-year institution to continue playing or to continue their education and know that they want to continue playing, participating in athletics, but there's also scholarship opportunity there as well.

So both. Okay. What's people think community college and they think young people kind of wandering as as nomads in the night. But I think a lot of that's mixed messaging in that there's a, wide range of community college students. How's that breakdown for you guys? Young folks, you know, just out of high school, directly from high school, folks who were

in their secondary, and then folks later in life making the change. How does that breakdown numbers-wise? Our average age of student is probably 22, 24, somewhere in there. So that's where our average age is going to be sitting as those early 20s. But it really kind of comes down to about, I don't know, third and a third, third sort thing in the sense you have a traditional age group you've got maybe that middle age group and then another set so we have a very diverse community because we have people coming from us after military service people coming after high school we have people who have learned about a career and realized

that's not what their dream was and they have in they're pursuing a new dream so um average age early 20s but that does not mean that our classrooms are just filled with 20-somethings it's a very diverse group and what you offer is diverse like there's I went down the score I went good heavens There's something for everybody almost. We have over 60 programs of studying. We have academic transfer, business, specific program and business that is designed to transfer to a four-year institution. Same thing with criminal justice.

But we also have dozens of career and technical programs where students are trained with highly technical skills to go out into the job force and make an immediate impact in our community. Anywhere from trained electricians and plumbers to nurses and surgical technologists, non-destructive testing technologists. electronic systems, technicians, diesel mechanics, respiratory therapists. We really do have something for everyone no matter what their interest is, what their goal is, what their passions are.

This is a big week for you guys. So Discovery Days allows you an opportunity to get exposure, also to get your messaging out and control that space. Give the folks the elevator pitch for Discovery Days and what it's all about. Discovery Days is awesome. It's the best way to come see us. We know that we want to get students on campus. We want to get their support people, their families, friends, whatnot on campus because we know it's a big decision. But Discovery Days allows people to come to campus.

They get to meet our faculty and staff. They get to put faces with names and they get to see what we mean by personal attention. We're getting in front of them. We're getting to know students' names and helping them put their pieces together. They get exposure to all the programs of study on the campus that they're visiting. They get a campus tour. We introduce them and we have a panel of current students. and faculty and staff so they get to hear what a day in the life of is like.

We do a scholarship drawing. We do prize drawings. And we give people the chance to explore. It's in the name, Discover. We want you to discover the opportunities and see how SEC is part of your journey. What's the layout? Because you have several campuses. Is there one specific spot?

Is this across all of the campuses? How does this work? We do six to nine discovery days each semester. So we do two to three discovery days each semester on each campus. and all of the dates are listed on our website, southeast.edu, and there's an admissions tab with the visit link. If you click on that, you will find all of the dates. We have two remaining this semester, this tomorrow, actually, Friday, December 3rd in Beatrice,

and then Monday, December 6th in Lincoln. And then we will pick back up in early March with discovery days on all three campuses. Almost every Friday, we have a discovery day between March and April. So there will be opportunity people who are considering this to actually just register and maybe even be awarded a scholarship. Yep. And it's not specific to any brand. Wow.

No. Wow. Nope. We do drawings. And with the scholarship application, SEC is so, we're so generous with scholarships. With the high school scholarship opening yesterday

and then each semester, our current students have the opportunity to apply for additional scholarships. And we make it easy. There's no essay. It's all demographic information. Students fill out one application. And then our financial aid team goes back and matches it

against the scholarship opportunities. So students don't have to sort through the scholarships that they might qualify for. They tell us who they are and we go through and we make the match. So this would be a really good place for high school students, maybe even athletes, who haven't quite landed where they feel like they want to land, and they can build up some credit and get themselves in a pretty good spot to learn what it takes to be a student, a collegiate student anywhere. Absolutely.

And it's also a great place for a student who has a goal and knows exactly what they want. It's a great place for a student who maybe doesn't know. Our admissions counselors are experienced, they're trained. We have access to a free career assessment on our website that students can take to help them solidify and really explore what their interests and their values and their goals mean and come in and do an individual tour, meet one-on-one with an admissions counselor. And we can talk about that and help students realize their goals because sometimes students know what they want to do, but they don't know the name for it. And our staff will help put those pieces together.

message do you have for folks who are out here who are on the they're on the ledge and trying to make that decision is it really just please come in and get in front of us and we can help you achieve the things you want to do absolutely we if you come see us we're going to sit down with you we're going to talk to you about what you've done where you're going what you want to do and think about the possibilities and from there you know we're the experts on SEC and how those pieces come together and if you come to us with an idea and a goal we can help you figure out what that piece looks like and give a tour, walk down to a lab, look at some equipment, look at, you know, introduce you to a faculty member who worked in that particular

career field so you can learn more about that and even compare and contrast. Many of our programs offer the opportunity to job shadow. One thing I often ask people is, would you ever buy a car with that test driving it? And they often look at me and say, ah, no, why? I wouldn't do that. But you think about all of the energy they put into buy in a car. You look online, you research it, You test drive it. Maybe, you know, back in the day you read consumer reports. But you check out all the websites, do all those sorts of things, watch the commercials for a pretty temporary item that you're going to have. You might have it five years, 20 years, whatnot.

But, you know, take your career for a test drive. Take your college for a test drive. Come visit us. Do it to or get to know the people. See if it's a fit. And do job shadowing. It's such an interesting time where people are really wavering on the thing that they want to do. Not everybody has it set for them.

So I think this is a great thing. opportunity. I think it's a great location for it. I think it's it is the right thinking behind it. Please let our listeners know if they want to be involved in to see everyday they're just curious about it. How can they find out about it? If you go to www.s southeast.edu slash visit sCC you will find tabs for all of the opportunities to interact with SCC and that ranges from checking out our virtual tour where you can take a 360 panoramic view of a lot of our spaces. You can see the equipment. Look at the robots.

at the labs, look at the welding information, look at our pastry kitchens. You can come to a discovery day, and discovery days are awesome if you're curious because you get exposed to everything. You can do an individual visit where you get to do a tour, meet one-on-one with the faculty member and one-on-one with an admissions staff member. So there's a lot of different opportunities. You can also schedule an appointment with an admissions counselor that you can make based on your schedule versus our standard events. It's, look, I think, and just based from the text line alone, you know, folks are curious. So hopefully, we gave them some information, maybe a little nudge in the back to get them in the door and have some conversations.

Kat, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners before we let you go? I would say if you're just even thinking about it. Thinking about it is a good first step. Come see us. Come talk to us. Doesn't cost you anything to come visit. Nope. Come visit us.

Come see us. Ask your questions and go home and think about some more and come back and ask your questions. We're always going to be there. And we've got so many opportunities and it's a really exciting time. at SCC. It's a really exciting time to be part of that, and we're excited to be part of the community. Well, we, I love the community aspect of it, and I'll be in touch with the athletic director. We got work to do. So we'll get done. Kat, thank you very much. Thank you. Kat Krakmeyer from Southeast Community College. That's one-on-one. We'll be right back and close

out this hour on 93-7 The Ticket. Watch live on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. You're listening to one-on-one with DP on 937 the ticket and the ticketfm.com. Thank you.