Syracuse University reaches out to Chicago-area high schools

This is a guest post by Forrest Ball, '12. As an alum us of both Syracuse University and Naperville North High School, I was excited to begin my new role as Syracuse's Chicagoland Representative. At a ground level, I was excited to share my experiences at Syracuse University with students who had similar high school settings. More contextually, I was excited to visithigh schools, build relationships, and speak with students and their families about how Syracuse can connect with them. I am thoroughly engaged and energized in my quest to make Chicagoland the next major market for the University. I can happily say that the fall has been a wonderful success. I went to many highschools throughout the area, attended College Fairs, and interviewed many great potential Syracuse students.  Among...

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Hurricane Sandy forced the cancellation of the big Campaign for Syracuse events.  While the cancellation was clearly the right thing to do - the devastation on the east coast is horrific; our hearts go out to family and friends who were battered by the storm - it is disappointing because celebrating our wonderful accomplishment certainly makes sense plus there were a number of other events planned: a meeting of the Board of Trustees, first-ever meeting of all of the Regional Councils, and many cultural activities. One item on the agenda was for people to talk about what the Campaign meant to them and how we might build upon the great work done in the Campaign.  I was asked to be a plant in the crowd to get the discussion moving.  This is what I planned on saying: The...

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Trading One Love for Another

I went to Syracuse “undecided.”  When I was in high school, my father asked what I was going to study in college, and I said I wanted to study business.  And he said, “Well, if you're going to study business, you're not going to go to college. You can come work for me.”  I immediately said “I want to be a lawyer,” so that I could go to college.  I was accepted into the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse, which a lot of “undecided” people attended. Between my freshman and sophomore years, I was seeing a girl back home who was going to take some summer classes at a local community college. I wanted to be with her, so I decided to take a class, too.  I took a computer programming class in a language...

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The Best of The Rest

When I was a junior in high school, I took the SATs and I went to my guidance counselor for advice about where to go to college.  He recommended a list of schools that I might be interested in. I was the first member of my family to go to college, so my family didn't have a whole lot of experience selecting one. So I set off to visit some of the schools on my own. I went to George Washington University down in Washington, DC, and while it's a decent school, there is no campus, which at the time was very important to me. I went to Carnegie Mellon out in Pittsburgh, which has a campus, but it was all engineering, and at that time I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. I looked at a couple of schools in New Jersey but...

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It Started up on Mount Olympus

Recently I read a really interesting book called Mr g.  It's a fictional novel about the concept of God, written by Alan Lightman.  After reading it, I had this feeling that I used to have every time I left my favorite class at Syracuse University.I took Ancient Greek Religion as an elective when I was a senior. The professor would tell us stories about the ancient Greek gods and myths.  We met once a week for three hours; I think it was every Thursday night. Syracuse University is on a hill, and the building that we took the class in overlooked the valley.I remember that we would have class, and we would all be entranced by the stories the professor told us, and then we would walk outside, and it would be dark,...

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When my Blood Turned Orange

When I think back to my time at Syracuse, I cannot help but to think of all of the meaningful conversations that I participated in. It’s not a huge university, but it’s big enough that there are always other people around who share some of your interests. There is something about the university that facilitates finding people who are like you. Back in the 70s, before Facebook and social media, I went to events and met people. My older son, who graduated from Syracuse in 2007, feels the same way. In my conversations with current students and members of Generation Orange, I get the sense that they also seem to notice there are so many ways for people with similar interests to meet. There’s something that makes you feel good about the...

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SU Chicago Honors Lifetime Trustees

What do Trustees do anyway? Find out more about SU Trustees and what they have done. I was the emcee for a recent event honoring three Chicago-area Lifetime Trustees of Syracuse University for all their years of service, and all the wonderful things they’ve done for the school. When you become a trustee, you can serve three four-year terms. After the last term, you become what is called a “Lifetime Trustee.” This means that you remain a trustee who is involved and still can be a member of board committees and other things, but you lose your voting rights. They all have great passion for Syracuse University. What's really neat is that the trustees are not only graduates of Syracuse University, but they also have a strong family legacy of...

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