[civsa] Groups that visit your campus

[Lambert, Dee]

Good morning.  Please see responses for UT Dallas below.

Regards,
Dee Lambert
UT Dallas Visitor Center
www.utdallas.edu/visitor<http://www.utdallas.edu/visitor>

From: listserv [mailto:listserv-bounces at civsa.org] On Behalf Of Barb Lieske
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 4:10 PM
To: listserv at civsa.org
Subject: [civsa] Groups that visit your campus

Hi all!  Can you provide us some feedback, please, on how you accommodate organized groups that want to visit your campus?  Our requests for high school and other group visits have exploded in the past two years and we're trying to determine what other schools are doing and how we should modify our own programs, if at all.


What audiences do you accommodate? (elementary, or middle, or high schools, or all three; alumni; church youth groups; community groups?)  For instance, we recently had requests from a high school wanting to bring 150 students to campus for a tour & info session followed by a diversity panel (current students) and we had requests from elementary schools wanting to bring 55 students for a tour and session about the importance of academics and we had a request from alumni classmates who want an historical tour of campus and we've had church youth groups who want us to tell them about Valpo while giving a campus tour followed by attendance at the chapel service.
We accommodate all of these groups, but a little differently. We mostly provide organized group tours for high school students. We have done it as well for middle school students, but on a much smaller scale (and we don't add the housing component for middle school students).  We will not turn away elementary school groups, but we do have a scavenger hunt created for these groups (which typically are a little larger)...  if they specifically want a guided tour, we also try to partner with our office of Diversity and Community Engagement who also has students we have helped to train to be able to provide campus tours. We haven't really gotten many request from alumni or church groups, but I'm guessing that's mostly because we don't provide weekend tours.

Do you limit these tours to specific days? (if yes, which days)
We will provide group tours each weekday provided we have the students available. We typically have two students on shift each morning and afternoon. One is responsible for the regular tour, one is listed as back up for the regular tour, but they are responsible for any group tours scheduled.

Do you limit these tours to specific hours of the day? (which times)
We provide regular campus tours at 10am and 2pm each, and we specify 11am as the group tour time... however, if a group has time limitations (due to buses, etc.), we try to work with them. We have given group tours as early as 9:30 and as late as 1:30... depending on when we have student availability.  If we are not able to give them a guided tour due to lack of students, we will give them a presentation and the self-guided tour document we have had made.

Do you limit the number of people per group tour? (e.g. 50 students per group that visits)
We limit our tours to 50 people as well.  That way each of our students can split the tours and have no more than 25 people on each tour.

Do you require a certain number of chaperones for the groups of students? If yes, what is the ratio per student?
We ask for a ratio of 10:1... sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.

Do you feed your groups on campus/pay for the meals through your own budget or do you tell them to bring a sack lunch?
We don't pay for their meals on campus. We have been able to contract with Chartwells to provide a discounted rate for groups... cheaper for elementary schools groups, a little more for middle schoolers, and close to the regular rate for high school/adult groups.

Outside of the tour and potential lunch, what else do you provide for a group visit?
We give each group a bag with brochures, etc... and then we give the chaperones a poster, or pennant or guidebook... depending on what we have in stock at the time.

Thanks in advance from your friends at Valpo!


--
Barbara Lieske, Director
Admission Programs & the Valpo Admission Network
Valparaiso University
Duesenberg Welcome Center
1620 Chapel Drive
Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493
888-468-2576<tel:888-468-2576>, 219-464-6717<tel:219-464-6717>
barb.lieske at valpo.edu<mailto:barb.lieske at valpo.edu>
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