My College Guide Blog: Anti-bullying Scholarships
In September 2013, I started writing the My College Guide blog. The blog provides college preparation and college life tips and advice primarily for high-achieving high school students.
To date, my blog post topics have included SAT and ACT preparation, fall college fairs, college rankings, online degree programs, and scholarships. I also introduced a “Major of the Month” series to highlight a different college major each month.
While researching general scholarships available to students, I came across several organizations that offer scholarships or other award money to victims of bullying or to students who actively lead anti-bullying efforts in their schools. With the prevalence of bullying among students (about 13 million American kids are bullied each year) and with National Bullying Prevention Month happening in October, I thought these college scholarships and contests were timely to write about.
See my recent blog post on college scholarships for National Bullying Prevention Month, plus check out the National Bullying Prevention Center’s website and StopBullying.gov for more information on bullying prevention.
Digital School Yearbooks for Genealogists
When researching family history, many of us are aware of the essential records to check—censuses; birth, marriage and death records; and immigration and naturalization records, to name a few. But have you ever thought about looking close to your ancestors’ home, in his or her school yearbook?
Many websites now have digital versions of middle school, high school, and college yearbooks available from the 1700s through the 1900s. Some websites offer free access, while others charge a fee. In fact, some free websites may have the same yearbooks as the subscription sites, so be sure to check the free sites first.
Learn more about yearbooks available online in my new quick guide to digital yearbooks in Family Tree Magazine‘s October/November 2013 issue. If you can’t find a yearbook for a school you’re looking for on the websites listed in the article, check the school’s library or archives website, as several schools (particularly colleges and universities) may have digitized yearbook collections available for free on their own websites.
Emerging Trends in Online Higher Education
In the last decade the number of schools offering fully online degree programs has doubled. But traditional online degree programs aren’t the only educational offerings on the internet—there’s also massive open online courses (MOOCs), online certificate programs, and competency-based online programs.
For the October 2013 Wisconsin Woman magazine, I interviewed students and administrators from various University of Wisconsin (UW) schools and programs to learn about all of these different types of programs and trends in online education.
In the process, David Schejbal, dean of the UW-Extension’s continuing education division, told me I was the first writer to know the date when students can begin applying for the UW-Extension’s new competency-based online degree program: November 18.
Check out the October 2013 Wisconsin Woman magazine (pages 7-9) for my article on emerging trends in online college education.
Mount Mary Website Redesign
My colleagues at Mount Mary University (formerly Mount Mary College) launched the redesign of their website early in September. The university completely revamped its website, including all of the content.
I assisted the university with its website project by writing several pages of content and editing copy for a majority of pages on the new website. Check out the redesigned university website. Particularly see the Fast Facts, About Milwaukee, A Women’s University and Academic Excellence pages, which I wrote for the site.
If you’d like to see samples of pages I edited (original content vs. edited content), please contact me.
Wouldn’t It Be Nice if Scholarship Money Grew on Trees?
For high school students (and their parents), figuring out how to pay for skyrocketing tuition, room and board, fees, and books is no easy task. Unfortunately for students, college money doesn’t grow on trees. But there are tons of scholarships, video contests, and essay contests students can enter from 9th through 12th grade to earn money to help pay their future college bills.
In my recent article for My College Guide‘s Sophomore 2014 edition, I spoke with college professionals from William Peace University and Iowa State University to get their advice on starting the scholarship search early.
Read the My College Guide scholarships article. (My article starts on page 36c of the digital edition.)
Iowa Business Insights
I enjoy writing quarterly newsletter articles for Iowa State University’s Center for Industrial and Research Service (CIRAS) because of the excellent business people I get to interview and small businesses I get to learn about.
One of my latest articles is the cover story for the CIRAS News Summer 2013 newsletter. The story is about two Iowa-based companies—one that manufactures trailers and another that manufactures sports equipment—and the product testing they do at Iowa State’s Structural Engineering Laboratory.
Read the cover story, plus check out my other articles in this edition including ones titled “CIRAS Presents Products Made in Iowa at Engineering Career Fair,” “CEO Peer Council Service Now Being Offered,” and “Iowa Business Council and CIRAS Partnership Helps Iowa Companies Succeed.”
Family History and Technology
Before I entered the world of higher education communications and marketing, I was an assistant editor at Family Tree Magazine. Working at this magazine started a new passion to research my own family history. I continue to research my family history today, and I continue to write (and sometimes edit) article for the magazine.
So far in 2013, Family Tree Magazine has published three articles I’ve written about technology tools for genealogists—a software review on Saving Memories Forever, a quick guide to tablet computers, and a quick guide on password managers.
The Saving Memories Forever software review is available online (subscription required) and the quick guides are available as digital downloads in the magazine’s online store.
Dana's Creative Services, Dana McCullough, Freelance Writer and Editor 