By Taylor Johnson (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 7, 2012
Halloween is the one time of year students don’t have to feel guilty about pigging out on candy during lecture. This past Halloween, however, students were given not only candy but pizza while they pondered their future possibilities at the Arts Majors Expo.
This year’s Arts Majors Expo took place in the foyer of the Envision Athletic Centre last Wednesday. It consisted of multiple booths, where students could ask questions about majors, minors and future careers in the arts – from media and communications to fine arts. The Career Centre, Student Life, Study Abroad and the Teacher Education Program were also set up at the event.
There were tables set up for criminology, economics, theatre, English, fashion design, global development studies, philosophy, modern languages and media studies.
At the Career Centre booth, students could ask counsellors about when to declare their majors, what a major consists of, and how to prepare class schedules in order to graduate.
The event was sponsored by RBC, the University of the Fraser Valley, Parallel Yoga, UFV Cascades and the Abbotsford Heat.
The expo began with the Royal Bank of Canada presenting a $20,000 check in support of the new First Year Peer Mentoring Program at UFV. This upcoming program’s goal is to match first- and second-year students with a third- or fourth-year mentor. This will allow the new student to learn about UFV and options available. The first few years are stressful and sometimes confusing; an experienced peer mentor can help answer questions and sort through exam stress, as well as help with homework and with figuring out the social world of university.
Faculty and staff who participated with the expo were impressed to see how many students stopped by throughout the afternoon.
Tricia Taylor, who works with the history department and helped operate the history booth, was pleased with the variety of students that attended.
“There were lots of students who were outside of their study field,” she said.
Robin Anderson, a history professor, was pleased with the event as well and said it served as a good way for less-experienced students to pose questions and get answers.
“It went very well,” he said. “There were first and second year students who learned a lot.”
There was a consistent flow of student traffic from booth to booth, and at each booth students could answer a trivia question and enter to win event door prizes.
Overall, organizers counted the event as a success: students celebrated Halloween, ate pizza and candy, and won prizes. But more importantly, they were able to ask questions about course options, majors and minors, graduation requirements, international opportunities and how to kick-start future careers.
