Last Day of Tours

Our last day of college touring brought us to Texas State in San Marcos and University of Texas in San Antonio.

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TEXAS STATE

One of our own leaders, Tara Worthen, gave us a tour of her alma mater Texas State.

Texas State is located in the beautiful hill country of Texas.  Tara was able to show us through the student center, classrooms, and around the campus.  The university also gave each of the students a Texas State t-shirt.

We greatly appreciated having Tara as our tour guide, not only because she is one of our leaders, but also because she was able to relate much information about the school.  She told the students about admissions, housing, student groups, sports, the surrounding city, and much more.  Thank you Tara, you did awesome!

More beautiful pictures of Texas State...

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The last university of our 2011 College Tour was University of Texas at San Antonio!

UTSA turned out to be a rather large school, educating over 30,000 students a year.  At UTSA we were given a tour of two types of dorms (including the inside), sports/fitness facilities, as well as the general campus.

We were also met on campus by one of Carlton's former students.  He is now a university student with a sports scholarship.  He stayed and encouraged our students to work hard and remember that your attitude impacts your life.  He wanted to show that you can accomplish the dream of going to school and pursuing a better future.

-Jennilee

To The Capital!

Today's adventure brought us to the capital of Texas - Austin!  We traveled straight away to the capitol building downtown.

After a quick tour through the museum...

...we made our way to the capitol.  Here we were given an official introduction during the House of Representatives session.  It was explained that Mercy Street is a Christian organization in West Dallas that helps the students who live in this area.

The young men and young ladies were then split up so we could each have an official tour of this facility.

A section of the capitol building was built underground.  Though it has skylights, these skylights are actually at ground level.

The most exciting part of this visit was our opportunity to meet Governor Rick Perry.  Gov. Rick Perry not only came out to meet our students but gave an encouraging and inspiring speech just to us for about ten minutes.

We were even given a state flag to bring back to Mercy Street.

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The University we toured in Austin was, of course, University of Texas at Austin!

First, we were met by the Strength and Conditioning Coach for UTA's football team.  He took us through some of their impressive sports facilities.

On the other side of the campus we were met by our student tour guide, Claire, who showed us the classrooms, cafeteria/student center, dorm buildings, and other parts of UTA.

After a long and exciting day, we are now comfortably in our hotel and basking in the fact that we do not have to wake up at 6:00AM tomorrow...woot!

The LORD is Good :)

-Jennilee

Prairie View/Houston

Day two of our College Tour 2011 adventure began with a visit to Prairie View A&M University.  PVAMU is the second oldest public university in the state of Texas, built in 1876.  Originally PVAMU was an African American university built where a plantation used to stand, and now boasts a diverse student population.

After a discussion about admissions and finances in the school's chapel, two student tour guides led us through the architecture building, media center, dorm area, and the cafeteria/student center.

PVAMU has a nationally famous school band that has played at the Superbowl, featured in the movie Drumline, and has been involved in many other exciting opportunities.

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Our second stop was at University of Houston. UH is a much larger university educating over 37,000 students a year.

We did not have much time to spend at UH, so the girls and guys were split up into two separate tours.

The girls and I visited the student center/bookstore and academic buildings, which were near the library.  It was a wonderful day to be walking on their beautiful campus. Of few of us noted that UH takes extra steps to be environmentally conscience.  For example, they had solar-powered recycling bins throughout the campus and a greenhouse attached to one of their academic buildings.

UH - good stewards of God's creation :)

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The last university we toured in Houston was Texas Southern University.

TSU is also historically an African American university.  They have an onsite museum to commemorate this history.
At TSU we were met by Admissions Counselor for High School Students, Alison, and two student tour guides.

Apart from the academic buildings, and sports facilities, at TSU we also had the unique opportunity to view the inside of the dorms and dorm lounge.

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At night we stayed in the luxurious Omni Hotel. Many of the students took the opportunity to swim in Omni's large pool before bed.