Archive for September, 2009

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YHWH YIREH.

Ellie Kipps Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

This year I’m studying the very different, decently difficult language of Ancient and Modern Hebrew with one of my favorite professors, Dr. Smoak. I took Dr. Smoak last year for  Exodus/Deuteronomy Honors (he teaches honors and non-honors sections… so take him either way! I got my roommate into his class and she loves it! The man is brilliant, talented, and hilarious!… okay, back to blogging)… and I learned so much from his class that I just couldn’t imagine not taking him again, so when I heard he was getting the chance to teach Hebrew at APU, which he has taught for years at UCLA, I jumped at the chance… honestly, not really knowing what I was getting into.

I have Hebrew today, and I woke up this morning full of excitement that today meant another day of throwing myself at this challenging language and hoping I make it through the other side. Doing my Hebrew homework has made me laugh at myself (just try to make the Hebrew ח and not laugh), but has also made me realize the beauty in learning things that are far outside my comfort zone, and far outside the realm of what I’m ‘good’ at. It has also been a worshipful practice, which sounds weird because it is homework and homework can never be anything more than homework, right? Wrong. I’m learning the language of God’s chosen people, a language that was used in some form or variation to write nearly all of the Holy Scriptures, the language that was on Moses’ tablets and passed down from generation to generation through the mouths and hearts of God’s beloved Israel. The language is so intertwined with the Law that it cannot be separated, so by knowing the language you have an understanding of the Law (which is something entirely confusing until you really study Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which you’ll do if you take Smoak’s class or any other Exodus/Deuteronomy class).

This semester I’ve already been challenged and it hasn’t been comfortable. God is changing my heart to pursue obedience rather than perfection, and oddly enough, stumbling over those letters of the Hebrew alphabet (the Hebrew word for alphabet… interesting similarity, huh?) has made me understand a little more of what God is doing in my heart. And upon my heart the Hebrew words have been inscribed: YHWH YIREH (transliterated, of course), which means basically: God will provide. He will provide me with challenges and ways to persevere, with friendships and community, with love and grace and mercy and His inexplicable peace. He is teaching me, through struggling with a language I do not get, that He is more than enough and that He is the only Rock upon which I can stand in victory over sin. But I’m not there yet, I’m not standing in victory, and even if I do get there, there is a great chance I’ll stumble or trip over my own foot or something, and He is teaching me that that’s okay too. That He is enough to get me there and get me through and that He takes great joy in taking care of His beloved when they lay their hearts at His feet.

So whatever it is this morning, whether money struggles or family issues or an overwhelming workload, take the time today be with your Creator, your Savior, and maybe just surrender a little bit of the stress and the worry or the pain or even, maybe, surrender to Him the joy you might be feeling today as well (which is an interesting theology that I might talk about later). And if you don’t even know what surrendering looks like, smile, because honestly, I don’t exactly know either, but it is something like laughing at yourself for making a silly ch- sound in Hebrew and knowing that despite the obvious, God has got this under His control.

I pray a blessing over your day as you walk alongside your Loving God, even if you don’t realize He is there.

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First Week おわり

Staphon Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

So the first week of school was amazing! All my classes are looking challenging yet fun (what else can you expect from the Graphic Design Major?) Chapel 1 and 2 were great! I always enjoy President John Wallace’s speeches, they simply make me want to be a better person! This year, I definitely want to get SALTY! (Yeah Smith Hall!) If anyone missed it, they should definitely watch it online! And for Chapel 2, I absolutely love that our Professors announce to us all in a kind of oath that they will do their best to help us in our scholarly journey’s this year.

Going on, I also had a lot of fun with my residents this week, I can feel our community growing bit by bit all the time. Apples to Apples was great, along with randomly watching the Lost Room! However, I am truly excited to see the creative level of my building once the rest of them tell me what T stands for! So far, T stands for “Thizzle” which absolutely brought rolling excitement in the form of laughter out when I saw the video I got from a few of my residents! (Good Job Girls!)Azusa From Garcia

Men's Track team on GarciaMy weekend was very busy however. It started on Saturday with a captains practice at 7am consisting of a hike up Garcia Trail. The view was amazing! Our Track team is looking really good this year, I am definitely excited! They are all pretty classy, if I do say so myself.

Then it was time for work. This year I am the Media and Design Manager for IMT Student Services, so I was the MOD this weekend (Manager On Duty) and so I was in the office for long periods of time on Saturday and Sunday working on all the various computers that have come in since school started. I like working with this section of the school that makes sure the students have their most needed tool in order to be a successful student (and if any of you readers are perspective students or parents of perspective students, I will say this, “A New Computer Is Necessary for College!” )

I also made sure to keep up with Project 21 (which is located on my website: Staphon.com) with a near miss on Saturday, but I got it done at 11:30, just in time!

Whelp, tis all for this week! It is Monday now and so far, all is going pretty well! I’ll keep you posted on anything exciting!

Cheers!

PS: That bit of Japanese at the top is Hiragana for Owari which means “the end”.

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Online Campus Map 2.0

Nathan Scheck Monday, September 14th, 2009
Ye Olde Map Interface

Ye Olde Map Interface

Last week marked the launch of our new “online campus map” interface—now with 100% more Google integration!

While our previous map viewer served its purpose well, it was completely custom-built, and therefore wasn’t the simplest thing to update or add features to. Therefore, based on the fact that Google Maps are at this point a fairly standard way for websites to present their map-based data, and because Google continues to expand the available capabilities of the system and makes sure it’s up to date with current technology, we decided it was time to upgrade.

The New Interface

The New Interface

Thanks to some foresight a couple of years back, our entire database of campus building locations was actually already based on GPS coordinates. Because of that, no major reworking of the data was required to make the upgrade to a Google-based system. We simply needed to build a new front-end (using Google’s tools) that interacted with the database in almost exactly the same manner as our previous map interface did.

The only downside at the moment is that Google’s current satellite images don’t include some of our newest additions to campus—most notably the Segerstrom Science Center, which I had to add manually by drawing a rough placeholder-simulacrum over the satellite image.

Just like Google!

Just like Google!

On the other hand, the switch to Google Maps also included one major benefit that we’d been wanting to include for a while: driving directions. Now, any time you’re viewing information on a particular building or area of campus, simply enter your starting address in the field provided, and the system will output a set of standard Google directions. (Note: Since they are driving directions, they’re designed to get you to the most appropriate university entrance; it’s assumed that you’re not already on campus.)

Well, here it is: APU Online Campus Map. Go ahead and way-find to your heart’s content.

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Or E N tay shun…

Kelsey Bjugstad Saturday, September 12th, 2009

You can thank my fellow 3rd North sisters for the title of this blog. Can’t you tell we are freshman? We apparently haven’t learned the art of spelling. There are currently 5 of us watching Pride and Prejudice with girls popping in and talking. Actually, we are barely watching the movie and mostly talking. I love it.

Orientation was pretty crazy. It was a bit stressful, really interesting, but mostly overwhelming for me. Which isn’t true for everyone, some kids had no problem with it all.  Overwhelming isn’t also a bad thing though, Orientation is guaranteed slight chaos anywhere you go I think. But this chaos was actually quite organized; APU has an impressive schedule that they stuck to. There was so much to do! There always was a friendly face to help us out though.  The events were really cool including a football game!

Ready to help us move in and direct us where to go :)

Ready to help us move in and direct us where to go :)

The main chaos for me was getting to know people, organizing all my stuff, and the many trips to Target my parents have taken for me. I forgot a lot of small stuff on top of the fact that we could only take so much down here in our car. Let’s just say I over-packed a bit. So far all the stuff has come in handy except maybe the art-like stuff though. I’ve brought. I may have been laying against a few boxes cornered in the backseat, but it worked! Thankfully my dorm room is pretty spacious and as lots of places for drawers and boxes :).

The photos on my wall in the dorm room.

My almost completed dorm room :)

Another thing you’ll experience as a freshman is Alpha Groups! An Alpha Group is a random mix of freshman assigned to a sophomore who helps us through orientation and our first semester of freshman year. I really do like my Alpha group. My leader Jen is nice, sincere and really chill. Our group gets along pretty well and we were all open the first night, sharing the fun and scary parts of Orientation. It’s been nice just to talk about Orientation together and know that other people are coming without knowing anyone else.

A few members of my Alpha group on the trolley :)

A few members of my Alpha group on the trolley :)

I’ll definitely be talking more about my hall (3rd North!!) in my next blog! I was planning on staying on the topic of orientation so I guess I’ll just make hall stories relate :) The first night of Orientation I stopped by my RA’s room to just say hi. An RA is a Resident Adviser, which basically means an upperclassman has decided to live in our hall all year to support, counsel, and love on us. Her roommate is called a RAR (Resident Advisor’s roommate) and they usually aren’t very involved in the hall.  Instead, Jaclyn decided that she is going to be super involved with 3rd North and we all think it is awesome!! They invited me to come hangout with them in the dorms and watch a movie with them. It was so nice! Megan is such an awesome RA and it was nice just to be able just relax and hang out.

The next night I went to the football game with my alpha leader Jenn, another Alpha leader Bianca and a girl from her group. It was really cool to experience the game with all of the APU students. The field was packed! It was really fun but we decided to leave before the game was over so we could head to Tutti Fruity.

Hanging out at the football game.

Hanging out at the football game.

Tutti Fruity is a frozen yogurt place right across from the college.  APU students get a discount and it very delicious! Our alpha leaders took us to a sophomore living area and we played slap uno with a bunch of their friends. It was really neat to see all of the different living areas, plus be able to meet people who could talk about their fun experiences at APU. I even met someone who lived in my city for a few years and went to my high school’s rival which was really exciting! I haven’t met a lot of people from around where I lived.

_______________________________________________________________

While writing my blog earlier I overheard a conversation between a hall sister and her family. I wasn’t eavesdropping I swear! Both of our doors were open (which is the best way to meet people in your hall). I asked her afterwards if I could use something she said in my blog anonymously. She said yes so here it goes:

“I’ve never been anywhere where people are so genuine and real. I don’t know how to act sometimes because I can truly just be myself and it’s not a problem. For the first time I can act like me and everyone is okay with it. They’re here because they believe in God and they are so open about their faith.”

Beautiful (and very true) words from a ‘sister’ in my hall.

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What a week!

Ellie Kipps Saturday, September 12th, 2009

Hey Blog Readers! It’s Ellie and I’m soooo excited to be back blogging this year talking about the undergrad experience, now from the eyes of a sophomore (which, have you know it… means wise fool… which I might have to write about at a later date). These first few weeks of getting settled in and starting classes have been a whirlwind, but I’ve been so so so blessed with encouraging mentors, challenging and enlivening professors, a RA who basically rocks my socks, and my roommates who, honestly, I almost get choked up about how blessed I feel to have them as the people I share life and a home with for this year. So I made a little video to just show a little bit of my life right now. Sooooo here it goes!

YouTube Preview Image

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Marketing Higher Education as a Commodity

Rafi Maljian Friday, September 11th, 2009

The landscape of higher education has changed dramatically the last 10 years. Some might argue that the last five years have been even more monumental as education is becoming commoditized like many other industries. When a product reaches that point, marketing and advertising become major players in determining your niche and creating value for customers. Unfortunately, advertising/marketing costs money.

The Office of University Relations fields questions all the time regarding our marketing strategy and the venues we choose. Even with new and social media outlets, there has been a shift back to traditional advertising channels. Because of this, we evaluate daily, via various metrics and tools, what is working and what type of marketing are causing customers to take notice of Azusa Pacific and its offerings.  To complicate matters, our product has a 6-18 month buying cycle. This means we have to be in front of our customers in various forms for more than a year.  At that point, our goal is to be in their top three choices for school, giving us a 33% chance to get their business.

The only way this is possible is to be aggressive in all media, as people have different preferences for receiving information. This proves challenging as we are bombarded daily by more than 4,000 messages. To date, we have been aggressive in television, radio, search, paid search, natural search, college newspaper, traditional newspaper, e-blasts, direct mail, targeted websites, social media outlets, billboards, movie theatre ads, and targeted trade publications.

Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t a silver bullet. Rather, the recipe for success is stretching your dollars to utilize all media, as one size does not fit all. Further, mixed media messaging types compliment each other.  For example, I might hear a radio spot numerous times, then see a billboard or a print ad, but it was a conversation with a co-worker that drove me to apply. However, that referral alone wasn’t the driving factor rather it was the marketing mix combination that resonated over time helping me to reach that decision.

Students have a variety of options when making the decision of where to go to school. We need to shift our thinking in academia and understand that we are selling $25,000 graduate products or a $120,000 undergraduate experiences. Think about your large purchases and the amount of thought you put into them, as well as the value you expect from them. To quote Warren Buffett, “Price is what you pay; value is what you get.”

In my next post, I will try to share how we use television to promote the Azusa Pacific University image.

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