Month: January 2023

Because it’s a top priority here at Longwood, we’re always looking for ways to be proactive when it comes to your student’s safety.

An email went out to students today letting them know about a training opportunity where they can learn more about how to be safe in different situations.

This free Code Red training is being offered by the Longwood Police Department and Office of Emergency Management, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The training will cover what steps to take in an active threat situation and severe weather emergencies.

A total of 12 sessions will be offered here on campus: six each on Monday, Jan. 30, and Tuesday, Jan. 31.

The training will last approximately 90 minutes and will be led by LUPD staff, Emergency Management Coordinator Tracie Giles ’94 and Jamie Finney ’98, a supervisory protective security advisor for the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Students will be welcomed into each session on a first-come, first-served basis. Sessions are limited to 25 participants each.

If you or your student has questions about the Code Red training, you can email Tracie Giles, emergency management coordinator, at police@longwood.edu.

—Sabrina Brown

I’ve never shared a link to an article in Parent Pipeline before—and I won’t do it again if you let me know this isn’t the kind of content you find helpful—but I saw something in the New York Times this week that I thought was interesting and illuminating.

Written by a longtime professor (though not one at Longwood), the article addresses what success in college looks like and the simple thing students can do to achieve it.

It’s easy to think of college as job training—and that is an important aspect, writes the article’s author. However, something that will last much longer than the skills needed in today’s job market is the desire and willingness to learn, he says:

“To an overwhelming degree, students today see college as job training, the avenue to a stable career. They are not wrong, given the 70 percent wage premium for 22- to 27-year-old workers with a bachelor’s degree over those with only a high school diploma. But this orientation can close students off from learning things that don’t obviously help their job prospects. …

“The human mind, though, is capable of much more than a job will demand of it. Those ‘useless’ classes like philosophy, literature, astronomy and music have much to teach. I haven’t had to solve a calculus problem in 25 years. But learning to do so expanded my brain in ways that can’t simply be reduced to a checklist of job skills. Living in the world in this expanded way is a permanent gift.”

Here’s a link to the full article. You should be able to access it, even if you don’t have a Times subscription, as along as you haven’t yet used all of your free views for the month: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opinion/college-learning-students-success.html?smid=url-share

I’d be very appreciative of any feedback you’d be willing to share about this article and/or the kind of content you’d most like to see in Parent Pipeline. Please feel free to email me at browncs2@longwood.edu.

Back to Campus and Basketball

For those of you who are bringing your students back to campus this coming Saturday, Jan. 7, you might want to consider sticking around for the men’s basketball game vs. Winthrop at 4 p.m. It promises to be an exciting contest, with Longwood so far undefeated in the Big South after four conference games. The game is in Willett Hall. General admission tickets are $8.

Also, spring semester classes begin on Wednesday, Jan. 11.

All the best to you and your family in 2023!

—Sabrina Brown