Comanche Nation Hosts College and Career Day
On Wednesday, September 20, the Comanche Nation Higher Education, Youth Program and Work Force held a College and Career Day at the Great Plains Coliseum in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Comanche Nation Higher Education Director Christian Boos said the event allows area high school students to explore future options in careers and school.
“For them to meet college and university recruiters, admissions, staff, administrators,” he said. “They also have the opportunity to visit with vocational institutes throughout the state. And also, it's a time for them to maybe meet future employers, businesses, organizations that attend our event.”
Boos said the event is geared toward juniors and seniors to decide what to do after high school, which may vary depending on the student.
“We promote higher education…In a perfect world, we'd like to have all our students attend a four-year college or university,” he said. “Realistically, you know, some students are geared towards vocational institutes, getting vocational training, licensing certifications so they can enter the professional workforce. Others might, you know, look at the military as an option, as a future option. But any others, like I said, we had a great variety of vendors. And when I speak about colleges and universities, I'm not only talking about the four-year universities like the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University. We also invited junior colleges, two-year institutes that were able to maybe give some important information to our high school students.”
Boos said Higher Education is there for students whenever they need help.
“What they can do is they can definitely reach out to us, or more importantly, we can go to them. We schedule outreach activities throughout the academic year,” he said. “I have my staff scheduled for a few of them starting next weekend all the way through November. So that's one great way that we can get scholarship information out not only to our tribal members but also to non-tribal members and non-natives. So, we try and help as many people as we can, but our focus is on providing scholarship [and] financial aid information for Comanche students.”
Several speakers were at College and Career Day, including vendors and directors. As well as the Comanche Nation Chairman Mark Woommavovah and a keynote speaker.
“We went with somebody a little more local, Dr. Robin Minthorn,” Boos said. “She's a Ph.D., and she did a lot of great work in the Pacific Northwest, but just this past summer, she and her family decided to move back, and she's currently employed at the University of Oklahoma. So, what's great about our guest speakers in the past couple of years is they're both highly educated Native American women, and we wanted to focus on empowering our local area high school youth, specifically the females. They can see these two phenomenal women in leadership positions at the university level. So next year, I'm already thinking about “Who can we invite that will help inspire our students once again?’”
He said the most significant change was a bigger space for students. The event used to be held at Watchetaker Hall at the Comanche Nation Complex.
Boos said the number of high schools attending College and Career Day has grown.
“We wanted to combine our departments in order to provide better services for our area high school students,” he said. “And in doing so, we wanted to hold our event at the Great Plains Coliseum.”
Boos said he’s always interested in doing something different.
“I always tell my staff members about EEGAD. I want us to be energetic, enthusiastic, and we have to give a darn. Well, I use another ‘D’ word, but we have to give a darn about our students, about helping them become successful college students, successful professionals, but most importantly, successful tribal members,” he said.
There was an area power outage, which caused some schools to be unable to attend, but those who did received backpacks, hoodies, door prizes and lots of information.
