February info-tainment in the Commons

For the month of February, we had a few programs where we had our own CCI faculty as guests. One was a lunch where faculty members came and hung out with all of us over here. We talked about classes, advice on picking up a major and other random small talk.

Last night’s program featured one of our professors from the journalism department, Tim Roberts. One of the first required courses for all journalism majors in media writing. In the class, you learn the basics about AP style and how to write for various media. Students are also required to take the Grammar, Usage and Punctuation test (The GUP.) Most of our students in the Commons are freshmen and sophomores so the GUP is upon them. Many of our students have their first round taking the GUP at the beginning of next week. Tim has a great track record with students passing the GUP, so we thought it would be a good idea to bring him in for a crash course in grammar. It was great! He made PowerPoints for our students to study from and had great handouts for them to take as well. There were some grammar rules he had tricks before that I wish I had known when I was taking the test my freshmen year.