Kathleen Clemons, Admissions/Financial Aid Counselor

I am sitting here with Kathleen Clemons who is one of our Admissions/Financial Aid Counselor’s here on our Marion Campus.  Kathleen has been in this position four years now.  Kathleen received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from The Ohio State University, with a Major in Social Work. Kathleen came to the Marion Campus to pursue her undergraduate degree in 1993.  She herself was a non-traditional student at this time.  She finished her degree in 1997 and then started to work in the Marion School System.

 

Kathleen was born and raised here in Marion.  She decided to go into the area of social work for her major because she wanted to help others and give back to others.  She wanted to be in a position that would enable her to impact the lives of young people.  Kathleen didn’t go to work in a position with a social work agency she put together a job description which encompassed working with youth in the local school system.  She had help putting the job description together with Dr. Leslie Beyer-Hermsen, Dr. Dan Christie, and Larry Prude,  the previous Diversity Coordinator/ Marion Campus.

This job was created and Kathleen worked for the Marion school system from 1997 through 2005.  She found this job to be very rewarding. This also put Kathleen in working hands-on in her passion in working with young people and developing programs to enhance their educational and personal needs.  She watched them grow through this program into responsible students.  This program was enabled and designed originally to grow our own minority teachers but turned into more of a mentoring program.  This program was called “Growing Our Own” and was to try to get our own local minority teachers.  In 1998 the government sent to the State of Ohio grants to the local school districts to promote minority teachers to work in their local school system.  This had to be in collaboration between the Marion City School system and The Ohio State University at Marion.  This program would let the students who wanted to teach be able to attend the OSU Marion Campus and then go back and teach in the local Marion school system.  Unfortunately though the majority of the students in this program wanted to obtain their teaching degrees but move away from the Marion area and not stay and teach within it.

Kathleen found herself in the midst of budget cuts in the local school system and was unemployed for three years before she was hired to work in her current position in July 2008.

Now  she works mostly with non-traditional students who are coming to campus for their first time and transfer students.  I asked her if she has seen a rise in non-traditional students enrolling for their higher education and she said yes, this past year especially.  She feels this is due to the current climate of the economy, and loss of jobs.

I asked Kathleen if she saw trepidation when the new non-traditional comes into to talk to her about financial aid and admissions, she said some are nervous about starting college then some are confident, comfortable and relaxed and ready to get started.  Some of the students want to stay locally due to family responsibility and job, so they want to complete their degree here not transition to classes on the main campus.

Kathleen sees a need to better serve the non-traditional students on our campus so she is heading up putting a “Non-Traditional Student Advisory Committee” together, which she asked me to a part of.  We did have a “Non-Traditional Student Informational Night” here on campus a few months ago which Kathleen was instrumental in putting together.  She asked for my help in the area of the non-traditional military student information and I contacted the offices who have helped me in the past with non-traditional students who are military or family of military and they all came to campus to help us.  There were also non-traditional students who are attending classes here speak on their role on campus in class, student life, student organizations and even a full time employee who is a student herself spoke on her insights on being a student here.  Of the prospective students that attended this informational night but who were not already students, of these not all applied and started classes but some did.  So this makes it a success because we helped individuals start their goal of completing their undergraduate degree and answered all questions that were asked.

(Watch for another chat with Kathleen in the upcoming weeks.)

Kathleen Clemons
Admission and Financial Aid Counselor
The Ohio State University at Marion
1465 Mt. Vernon Avenue
Marion, OH  43302-5628
phone: 740/725-6251
fax:       740/725-6258
e-mail:  clemons.8@osu.edu

By:  Val

       8/2012