Twitter
Facebook
***image1***Finding the right college and subsequent financial assistance just got a lot easier for those living in the KMC.
College Night – a one-stop shopping college bonanza – happens 6 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Special Events Center, Bldg. 237 on Rhine Ordnance Barracks.
“It’s an opportunity for students to get first-hand knowledge about colleges and universities, scholarships and financial assistance,” said Dr. Jennifer Beckwith, Kaiserslautern American High School principal. “Because we live in an overseas setting, we are not able to take students to that college or university, and meeting with these representatives has to be one of the best kinds of experiences a student can have when trying to find a college.”
More than 100 accredited colleges and universities from the U.S. and Europe will have representatives at this year’s event. These representatives include college and university staff and alumni who live here. There will also be representatives from scholarship and financial assistance agencies, and military recruiters.
Free and open to all U.S. ID card holders stationed in Europe, College Night is for middle-school to high-school students and their parents looking for colleges after high school. It’s also for servicemembers, civilians, retirees and their families, who want to pursue higher education.
This is the 11th year that the KMC has hosted College Night with Kaiserslautern and Ramstein American High Schools rotating logistics and sponsorship. The difference this year, is that the U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern’s Family Morale Welfare and Recreation is now partnering with the schools.
“We had outgrown our own College Night,” said Dr. Beckwith. “Our school gym is just too small for us to handle the larger number of people in a manner where they have privacy.”
The Special Events Center, where the garrison’s bazaars are held, is more than double the size of the school’s gym. Space is a big consideration because this event is designed for people to have direct contact with the college and university representatives so they can concentrate on this possibly major, life-changing decision, said Greg Hatch, RAHS principal, who hosted the event here last year.
Planning for College Night starts in May of the previous school year and takes the collected dedication of garrison and KMC school staffs, members from parent teacher organizations, Army and Air Force school liaison officers and community volunteers.
