During the first three Fridays of October, the Center for Student Involvement will put on Badger Expo.
On October 2nd, 9th and 16th, Badger Expo, Spring Hill College’s student club and organization fair, will be hosted in-person and socially distanced in Leblanc. This fair allows students to become familiar with various groups on campus and provides students with a way to get involved.
This year, Badger Expo takes on a much smaller format than in previous years. Instead of having all active student clubs and organizations in the student center at the same time like in years past, this year there will be approximately 20 organizations tabling each of the three Fridays. CSI sends out an email every week detailing which clubs and organizations will be there for the upcoming Friday.
Kristyn Russell, the Director of the Center for Student Involvement, stated that she had already been looking at scaling down the Badger Expo experience even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to allow for more intentional and meaningful conversations between organizations and interested students.
When talking about the new format of Badger Expo, Russell said, “I think this model allows you to have more quality interaction with people, I’m hopeful it allows people to interact with each other more. It does seem like more of the organizations received a lot more interest and signups and had the ability to really talk to them [students]. Being able to go to only twenty tables and being a little more distant, we were able to have more of those quality conversations with students.”
Sophomore student Aaron Foster shared his experience of attending the expo last year as a freshman, “honestly [it was] kind of overwhelming. The second you walked up the stairs there were tables and people yelling about their organization. It was nearly impossible to spend more than 10 seconds at a table because there were 20 people on your heels. To sum it up, it was a lot at once and I really didn’t get anything out of it because of how many tables and people were there at once.”
He then went on to share his experience attending this year’s expo, “This year was a lot more personal and easier to learn about an organization. I didn’t have to scream to have a conversation at a table and I could stay at that one table for as long as I needed. So much was different because of COVID-19, but I honestly think it changed Badger Expo for the better and set a new precedent for what it should be moving forward.”
When talking about the future of Badger Expo, Russell said “This year, we had to keep it more in-person, Spring Hill community only. I’d love to be able to bring our partners back on campus. I know everyone loves their Carpe Diem coffee. In the future I do anticipate us being able to have more of a true expo as we’ve had in the past with a mixture of jobs [and clubs].” At the conclusion of Badger Expo, Russell says that she will send an email to all students with the information of all clubs and organizations.
For more information on Badger Expo look out for emails from CSI!