The Daily Bulletin Archive

By Tony Astran

The residence halls have become more than just a place to study, socialize, and sleep. A series of late-night seminars, now in their fourth consecutive semester, are more popular than ever.

Designed to reinforce academic and leadership skills, the seminars are held during evening hours in the residence halls to encourage student attendance.

Eileen Merberg, retention and leadership specialist for campus life, created the seminars in 2007 for first-year students. Over time, upperclassmen also took an interest in the sessions.

The series continues through early May with topics that target all levels of students, such as “Navigating the Quarter-Life Crisis,” “Steps to Becoming a Real Leader,” and “Stress Reduction.” Last week Tuesday at 9:30 p.m., students in Moore Complex attended a job search seminar as a precursor to the Career Development Center’s Job Fair.

Merberg said about 25 students attend on average, and the turnout is much larger at many of the sessions. “The series has been well received by the students,” she said. “Now that we’ve expanded the focus to upperclassmen, they’re enjoying the topics, too.”

Students are offered incentives to attend the seminars, such as the opportunity to earn housing lottery points and extra credit for classes. Merberg plans to work more closely with resident assistants to tie the seminars to existing residence hall programs and thereby boost attendance further.

Merberg is happy that commuters continue to attend the seminars. And last fall—like the year before—a few workshops held at the Adam’s Mark hotel yielded large turnouts.

Merberg continues to receive excellent responses to the seminars. She tries to make improvements each semester and get a better feel of what topics students need most. She merged a few past sessions on similar topics into one. And she changed the original name of the seminars—“Seven Steps to Success”—to “Map Your Steps to Success” for wider appeal and flexibility in programming.

But the overall concept remains the same: make the seminars relevant and bring them to students.

“I know most colleges offer some type of late-night programming, but I’m not sure if much of it is necessarily focused on academics,” Merberg said. “Our seminars are definitely unique.”