AU Parent Connection, April/May 2018

In this edition of the newsletter, we have highlights from our 2018 Day of Giving and news from the AU Alumni Office.

During our third annual Day of Giving: Orange & Black Give Back, we raised over $121,000 for student scholarships and programs, and we met our goal of 700 donors who gave for this cause. Thank you for all of your support on April 12.

I want to share an update with all of you in regards to my role as your Parent Programming contact. My title is changing, and I wanted you all to be aware. I will be stepping away from parent programming for twelve months and have been given the task to manage the Endowed Scholarship Fund program through our Advancement department. Many of our students receive scholarships from generous donors, and I am thrilled to be a part of growing this process so that we can offer help to more and more students in the future.

Scott Tilley, Director of Alumni Engagement, will be your contact moving forward. I will assist when I can so you can contact either of us. Scott’s email is setilley@anderson.edu.

I, too, am a parent of two students at AU, and my heart is with all of you. I’ve enjoyed coordinating parent programming for the last three years very much.

Congratulations to you and your students on completing another school year, and a special congratulations to the parents of the senior class. We are so proud of the Class of 2018, and we pray for great things in their future.

Blessings,

Brenda Bailey '13, MBA '16
Associate Director of Alumni Engagement and Parent Programming

Dear Parents,

There is power in the stories that we tell. This is the time of year when we take the time to celebrate the faithfulness of the Lord in the lives of our graduating seniors and to hear their deep and personal stories of growth and transformation.

Over the past two weeks, several of our chapel services have been dedicated to reflections from seniors. Consistently, they have shared stories that contain both struggle and success, isolation and community, confusion and clarity, and doubt and assurance. It is in these places of tension that true and lasting growth takes place.

As your student comes home for the summer months, I encourage you to invite them to tell stories about the growth that has taken place in their lives over this past year and to help them identify where they have experienced tension, whether that be in their relationships, spiritual life, or in the classroom. As your student looks to returning in the fall, I look forward to continuing this journey with them. I believe God is working behind the scenes to accomplish greater depth, meaning, and purpose in the lives of individuals and for our community as a whole.

For those of you whose student is graduating, we celebrate this wonderful accomplishment with you as well as the stories that will unfold in the years to come.

With joy and anticipation,

Tamara Shelton (Pastor Tam)

This is an exciting time of the year as we celebrate many of the outstanding accomplishments of our students and what the Lord has been doing on campus! We are also encouraging students to register for next semester. Please remind your students to log into their Student Center account and look to see if there are holds that they need to have removed so that they can register for classes. It is important that this is done quickly as we have more RAVEN 101 new student registration events coming up quickly. This may limit your student's ability to get the classes that they want or need.

Also, Room Draw for housing took place earlier this month for the coming academic year. If your student does not yet have a housing assignment for next year, please have them contact Stacie Carpenter at housing@anderson.edu or come up to the second floor of Decker to the Department of Student Life to receive further guidance in this process.

Finally, all students in the residence halls will need to move out of the halls by May 5th at 3pm.

We are looking forward to a great finish to this semester and that your student will fully engage this summer with Tri-S trips, internships, and other great learning experiences!

Sincerely,
Dr. Chris Confer
Dean of Students

Commencement is coming soon, and the AU Office of Marketing & Communication is excited to help you and your family celebrate! They provide a live webcast of AU's Commencement so that your family members and friends who are unable to attend in person can still see your student cross the stage!

To access the webcast, simply visit our Facebook or YouTube page on May 5 beginning at 2:30 p.m. Please note that only YouTube will have live captioning available.

If you have guests attending Commencement, you are welcome to share this interactive campus map with them. It includes all regular campus landmarks, as well as special Commencement notes just for your student's big day.

We also encourage you to share your Commencement journey using both the hashtags #Ravens2018 and #SoarRavensSoar. Your posts could be reposted from our accounts, or included in our new social media feed on AU's homepage!

On April 12, our AU alums, as faculty, staff, students and friends of the University, overwhelmed us with their generous gifts and participation during Orange & Black Give Back.

Our goal was to have 700 donors, which was a larger number of donors from the prior year. We are pleased to announce that we exceeded our goal, and over 700 donors participated in Orange & Black Give Back! With the generous support of these donors, we were able to raise over $121,000 for student scholarships and programs!

Thank you to all of you who participated in this significant day!

Hello Parents!

We are excited to share that we now are offering new Raven Dollar bonuses!! This is a limited time offer, but we encourage everyone to recharge their student ID for the last remaining bit of the semester and try out one of our new bonuses. This is also an exciting time for our seniors as they are winding down before graduation this is a great time for family gatherings and get-togethers, so check out our catering website for all our your catering needs at www.aufoodservices.catertrax.com or reach out to Christy Nelson, our catering director.

We hope you all have a wonderful April and we look forward to seeing you at this year’s graduation in May!