The sixth annual showcase for the Extended Classroom Experience, JSC 101, happens this Friday, April 13, in the SHAPE Center, and both gymnasiums are expected to be packed with students, families, faculty, staff, community partners, guests, donors, and, perhaps most importantly, prospective students. The event was designed six years ago, and has undergone subtle revisions in an effort to achieve sustainability.

“It’s an event coproduced by students, faculty and staff,” says Director of Experimental Learning and Nonprofit Management Studies, Ellen Hill. “It’s really to highlight and showcase really rich teaching and learning. It also celebrates our very rich community partners who host students, vis-à-vis internships, student teaching practicums, service learning sites, local nonprofits for profit, even government.”

The event ties together many different departments and serves a myriad of goals, such as recruitment.

“What’s great about it is, it’s a combined event that brings in prospective students,” says Hill. “So it’s an admissions event.”

Hill says she’s expecting about 450 people total in the two gyms, including about 275 prospective students and their families. She expects that latter number to rise this week.

“This is Admission’s biggest-yield event, where prospective students come, and then that day they write their deposit check, or soon thereafter,” says Hill. “When we talk about something, it’s not as powerful as when a prospective student is talking to a current student, saying, ‘Tell me about what Johnson State College has done for you,’ and students are the ones who just by having passion are sharing their experiences. That gets a prospective student jazzed.”

The showcase also allows donors to experience how their gifting affects both students and the community near and far.

“They tie it in with development, friends of JSC, donors. They bring them in for the event, and during the day they bring all the funders up to the SHAPE facility to see how their investments are paying back.”

Showcasing trips afar as well as courses integrated into the nearby community allows benefactors to appreciate that their investments are multi-pronged, helping communities in a sustainable way, as well as helping provide a rich learning experience to JSC students.

The concept of the exposition emerged as a result of Title III grant money made available to JSC six years ago.

Friday’s showcase also allows students to present what they and faculty have been doing, giving students the opportunity to practice “their elevator speech,” as Hill puts it.

Hill also reports that there will be food on hand and that most of the departments will have freebies to hand out.