The football Bears are looking to end their regular season this weekend with a WIN over SIU at Edwardsville, Illinois.  They are hoping for a big win on the road and have their eyes focused on the ball!  The men’s and women’s basketball teams are just now starting to gear up for their seasons with home openers looming this weekend.  The volleyball team is hoping to pack the House this  weekend during its last stretch of home games….and let’s not forget about men’s soccer!  The men’s soccer team clinched the Missouri Valley Conference championship earlier this month ending up 12-3-2!  This weekend they will be in Des Moines playing at the MVC tournmament!  As you can tell Missouri Valley Conference Athletics is exciting!!

Well there’s a lot going on in athletics, but is that all?  NO!! This month is Native American Heritage Month at the University with different events planned all month.  The library has two exciting visiting displays:  Mapping Missouri: Maps from the Collection of the Missouri State Archives and Ozark Light: The Photographs of Charles Elliott Gill.  Our Student Government Association will be having a Town Forum tomorrow night to get student input into various topics affecting them and the University.  On Friday the Theatre and Dance Department will be  conducting auditions for the BFA Acting and BFA Musical Theatre Programs.

These are just a few of the events going on this week.  As you can tell, it’s never a dull moment around here!!  Why don’t you consider the advantages to Be Here Now!

The Resident Assistants (RAs) on each floor is always thinking up bright and creative ways of helping their resident have fun. Each Hall Council has people that are sitting around each week in meetings coming up with the next educational or social event for the residents of their building. The Residence Hall Assocaition or RHA is comprised of leaders from each residence hall. One of it’s main goals each semester is to make sure all of the residents are enjoying their stay on-campus and providing award winning programs and events for everyone. Todd Euglow talked to us earlier about RHA. Go back and review what he said earlier in the year….

This is just the opportunities in the residence halls! There are many more opportunities across the campus! The Student Activities Council or SAC is always bringing movies, comedians, speakers and much much more to campus. The Student Government Association or SGA is the official voice of all students at Missouri State and they are always looking for people to help out! If you enjoyed planning the Prom and other social events in high school, then SAC is for you. On the other hand, if you enjoyed Student Council in high school, then SGA is the group for you!

There are over 250 different organizations on-campus….there has to be something for you! If not, you can create your own group with yourself and a handful of other people!

You will enjoy being on campus….just don’t let me hear you say there is nothing to do around here!

1). There are several terms during the summer. You can go for a 8-week session, a 4-week session or a 5-week session. This offers a great variety of schedules. In the 4- and 5-weeks sessions, you are in class for a longer period of time than you would a regular 16-week semester. This can be good and bad!

2). Less people. I haven’t heard the numbers for the summer session yet, but usually there will be only 5,000 or so students on-campus during the summer. This is much smaller than normal and it makes the “feel” of campus different.

3). Camps and Conferences are here! You may have stayed on-campus when you were younger attending a basketball or volleyball or computer camp here on campus. Well they are in full swing here already! We are expecting over 31,000 people staying with us this summer for a camp or conference! This makes things look different on-campus as we don’t usually have a lot of young kids on-campus.

There’s still plenty of time if you want to join us this summer! It’s a good time to get acclaimated to the campus!

To All Incoming Students,
I am pleased to be able to reach out to you as you take the next step in your educational career. On our campus we have over 300 organizations that encompass almost any interest and walks of life. As the current president of the Residence Hall Association (RHA), I would like to make you aware of several opportunities for you to make a difference and become involved as a student leader in the residence halls of Missouri State. This is especially vital if you are at all interested in being involved with hall government. Each residence hall consists of a hall council, which is the governing body for the building. Being involved with hall council puts you in the forefront for making changes and improvements that benefit the residents in your building. It is very easy to get involved with hall council. As you begin your move-in this August, signs and banners will be posted all over your building informing you of how you can join and begin making a difference. As each building has a governing body, there is a larger organization that enacts policies and changes for the entire on-campus population. This organization is the Residence Hall Association (RHA). As a member of this organization you will be actively involved in gaining leadership experience, planning and implementing campus-wide programs, and acting as the student voice for your building, all while making some new friends in the process. If you would like more information on what RHA does and the role that this organization plays on campus, please visit our website at www.rha.missouristate.edu. No matter what organization you choose, I encourage you to get involved. College is a time to make memories, why not make them with the people who share your same interests and desires. Good luck wit h your transition and I look forward to seeing some of you on move-in day.

Best wishes,
Todd Euglow
President
Residence Hall Association
Missouri State University

Just a bit of information on Missouri State’s Honors College for those interested. We currently have about 1,050 students in the program. To give some perspective to that number, there are about 13,500 full-tine undergraduate students at Missouri State. Honors College students are in all majors and in nearly all residence halls on campus, although Scholars House and the eighth floor of Hutchens are exclusive to honors students. That means that you can have an Honors College student in your hall, even in your suite, sometimes without knowing it.

To get into the Honors College graduating high school students must have a composite score of 27 or higher on the ACT (or the SAT equivalent) and also either be in the top 10% of their graduating class or have a gpa of 3.9 or higher. To remain in the program, once accepted, they must maintain a gpa of 3.25 at Missouri State. That’s usually not a problem — in fact, our average gpa for Honors College students is over 3.8.

Honors classes differ from regular classes in three basic ways: they’re smaller (on average about half the size of regular classes); all students in the class are Honors students; and the class is taught by an Honors College professor. These are professors who are typically high achievers themselves and are also good at working with high capability students.

Honors College students, because they are required to take at least one honors class per semester for their first four semesters, are permitted to register first in their class — i.e., freshmen Honors students register one day before all other freshmen. They also have library lending privileges that are the same as graduate students.

Please direct any questions about the Honors College, including how to get into the program as a second semester freshman or first semester sophomore, to the Honors College Office. We are located in University hall, 212, and our number is 836-6370.

Thanks Dr. Spisak!  There are many perks and advantages of being a member of the Honors College and we would encourage you to become a member!

Lifetopia’s RoommateClick! That’s it! We flip the switch Wednesday to activate our long awaited addition to our online community! Lifetopia brings a whole new element to our online application and assists students in finding out more information about their roommate or actually helps them find a roommate!

RoommateClick is a social environment where you can interact with other incoming Missouri State students and see what you have in common with them. You can search for someone who you think would make an awesome roommate for the upcoming year! Your space on RoommateClick is completely customizable and you can even upload pictures of yourself to complete your profile online.

You should be receiving a postcard and an e-mail (if we have your addy!) next week announcing Lifetopia’s RoommateClick. We would strongly encourage everyone to go online and see what it has to offer you!

 I asked Shelly to talk about dining services…take it away Shelly!

Things I want to Know about Dining Services, but I Didn’t Know Who to Ask

Why can’t I share my meal plan with my friends? I always have meals left over at the end of the week and they just get wasted, or why can’t I use my leftover meals at PSU with the food vendors there?

This is a great question let me see if I can help clarify the reason why we don’t allow students to share their meal plans.  Missouri State pays Sodexo to provide them with dining services,  we know several things to be true, we know that a lot of students go home on the weekends, we know the participation levels of each of the meal plans and we know based on historical information how students with a particular meal plan will utilize those meals.  We take this information knowing that Missouri State is very focused on cost containment and knowing that we want to be great partners with the university and good stewards of our customer’s money and we figure the cost of the meal plans.  We base those costs on the fact that our students eat at about 80% participation (historical info), we take our costs and the numbers of meal plan holders in account and we are then able to give the university a fair price for the meal plans.  If we were to allow students to share their meal plans we would then have to refigure the cost of those meal plans at about 100% thus causing a minimum of a 20% increase in the cost of the meal plan. 

 What do I do if I want a particular food, but don’t see it out? Or what do I do if I think something is not right in the dining center?

Again 2 more great questions, the number one thing I want students to know about Sodexo is that we are here for them…everything else is secondary.  We believe that these dining centers belong to the students and every single decision we make is with the students very best interests at heart.  So if there is a menu choice that you would like for us to add to the menu cycle, please let us know.  There are a variety of ways to communicate with the Sodexo team, first of all if you see one of us in the dining room, please come up and ask, I can guarantee you that the menu suggestion (providing it’s reasonable) will show up on the menu cycle within the next week, if you menu craving hits you at a time you are not in the dining rooms, you can send any of us an email via campus email, you can send us a suggestion via our web or you can call any of us at any time through our main food service office. This same communication method applies if you are in the dining room and something just isn’t as you think it should be, please; please; please let someone know…it’s bad enough that we have caused you to have an unpleasant dining experience, let alone the other 1000 people that eat with you.  If you are not comfortable telling someone face to face that is just fine send us a note via our web page, email or a call to the main Sodexo office would be greatly appreciated.

 Why can’t I use my Bear Fare before 1:00 in the afternoon?

Several years ago when we first created Bear Fare we visited with the retail vendors to gain support from them for this new venture~~~ just a side note here, I’m not sure if you all are aware of this or not, but Sodexo only managed Grill 155 in PSU all of the other food vendors are subcontracted directly with the university~~~as we visited with the vendors one of the concerns that surfaced is the volume that we could potentially expect by creating this concept called Bear Fare and agreement was formed at that time that said if we were to begin this new program the meals would not be good until after 1:30 in the afternoon so that any of the regular cash paying customers would not be run out of the facility by the large number of Bear Fare holders utilizing the vendors during the noon hour.  There are 2 reasons for this, first of all the vendors give a rather large discount to the students with Bear Fare, The vendors get reimbursed only $4 for each BF served, but the value of the meal to the students is anywhere from $5-7, for this reason it then become financially vital to the vendors that the regular cash paying customers be maintained. Thus the reason for the time restrictions, please note that in fall of 2008 the due to customer request the vendors changed the time restriction for BF from 1:30 to 1:00 to better accommodate the needs of the students.

Well hopefully that clears up just a few of the common questions we get about dining services, as always if you have additional questions, please never hesitate to contact any member of my team or myself for answers.  We consider it a privilege to serve the Missouri State Community and look forward to doing it for years to come.

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Another option new next year will be two floors (Blair 2 and 3) for residents who have a major in the College of Health and Human Services (CHHS).  If you are a major in this college (Biomedical Sciences, Communication Science and Disorders, Health and Physical Education, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Psychology, Social Work or Sports Medicine and Athletic Training), then these floors are calling your name…You will be living with your fellow classmates!

We would encourage you to examine the many opportunities and the advantages of living in an LLC.  I think a former LLC resident summed it up nicely:

“I enjoy all of the LLC activities set up exclusively for LLC students. I really have learned a bunch, and it has made my transition into college that much more enjoyable … I was able to make friends a lot faster at MSU than my high school friends who were in non-LLC floors.” Jesse Loyd

Monday is the national observance of the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr….a great American! I wonder what his thoughts would be about Barak Obama becoming our 44thPresident? I think he would have to be proud of this accomplishment along with the many others achieved in civil rights since Dr. King’s death.

Here at Missouri State, we continue to examine what we do to increase diversity and multiculturalism on-campus. Charlotte Hardin is the Director of the Office of Multicultural Student Services here at Missouri State. She has been with the University several years and has made great strives in the areas of diversity and awareness. Her office is very active and promotes several events and activities each month. I would encourage you to go to their website and check them out.

Upcoming Events:                                             

Past Events:

The University also sponsors a Multicultural Leadership Scholarship.  This scholarship is available to anyone showing leadership ability in a multicultural environment.  It pays for all of a students required in-state student fees!  This link will give you more information, if you are interested.

I think Dr. King would be proud of the strives our nation has made over the last four decades and I believe he would be proud of Missouri State!

We have a lot of resources set up for our new residents to tranistion successfully to Missouri State.  Just remember when you get here….ASK FOR HELP!  There are a lot of resources and people around to help our students to be successful!