Bradley Admissions has gotten creative in its efforts to provide visit days for parents and students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their most recent event had visitors tour the campus without ever leaving the Alumni Quad.
This adaptation is called “Bradley Under the Stars,” which is a bigger visit day, but still allows for social distancing and follows other safety protocols.
“Our campus visit coordinator, Cory Craig, saw a social media post from New York’s Central Park with socially distanced circles painted on the grass so that people could use the park,” Tom Richmond, assistant vice president for enrollment management and director of enrollment marketing, said in an email. “She started thinking about how this could work for a visit day.”
Bradley Under the Stars is held throughout the evenings on weekends to avoid student foot-traffic and help limit the spread of COVID-19.
“They made sure the STARs and the families were distanced and safe,” said Sydney Foe, senior game design major and Bradley STAR, in an email interview. “I think the families really enjoyed it as well.”
This was not the first run of Bradley Under the Stars; the admissions office debuted the event on Aug. 14 before students were back on campus.
“It was so successful that we scheduled several more,” Richmond said. “We chose to wait until two weeks after move-in so we’d not be in the way of all the move-in activities. This past weekend, we held our first visit programs of the semester and we saw about 100 families total.”
The two-hour program is a condensed version of a regular admission visit day program. There are no meals offered, no dorm stays and building tours and no appointments with faculty. It is a quick virtual tour of campus, a presentation and a student panel.
During the two-week quarantine period, the admissions office paused all visits to keep the students and staff safe.
In addition to Bradley Under the Stars, the admissions office is also offering Curbside Tours, a contactless experience that still allows for a tour of the university. Tour guides will greet prospective students and their families outside of their car and the entire tour will take place separated. Visitors also need to follow the mandatory mask policy.
With the changes to how visits are done, the Bradley STARs have had to adapt from their regular schedules but still maintain their regular responsibilities of giving tours, making social media content and blogs, making and answering calls and writing emails.
The virtual parts of the admissions office have improved and been expanded upon due to fewer people being able to make it to campus. Webinars open to parents and students can cover virtual tours, campus overviews, introductions to financial aid and academic-specific presentations, according to Richmond.
While the admissions office has had an overwhelmingly positive response to its programming, Richmond said prospective students and high schoolers looking into higher education during this time should not feel limited.
“We encourage families to look into their future and imagine what [the] campus environment will offer more than just Zoom lectures,” Richmond said. “We encourage students to go ahead and imagine a 4-year experience that includes mentoring, one-to-one interaction, study abroad, pep rallies, concerts, labs, clinicals and everything that makes a Bradley education experiential, not just virtual.”
