The Cookie Connection at Coker College

Barbara Steadman, who is our medial relations expert at Coker College, is a long-time relationship builder. She has brought her tradition of Friday home-baked cookies to the Coker campus. Every Friday morning she introduces the cookies of the day in a cute email connected to something, somehow germane to the time. She invites people from around the campus to come for the Friday cookie fix and to share some of "shat's happening" in their worlds.

Barb has a great system here for building relationships and for getting the word and I often use it in class as a "how to" example for increasing the seendipity that comes in chance meetings that do not always have to be 'chance."

Barb, thanks for the cookies. For others, today's cookies were in honor of Flag Day (June 14) ans were the old American staple of chocolate chip -- I believe she had three kinds of chocolate chips.

Always enjoy visiting with former Coker College students

This was a fortuitous week and it is only Tuesday.

One of my former students, Tim Morton, who majored in both business and communication and also played tennis was in town. He works in Europe for Sonoco and is the states for business to be followed by vacation. He earned a masters in communication from N.C. State and we caught up with a quick coffee at the Midnight Rooster. Hope we can grab lunch when he comes back through.He has a number of interesting things with market studies and I hope to learn a little more from him about the way social media can be used b2b.

Then, again at the Midnight Rooster, Heather Watkins was in for morning coffee. She was a dance major while at Coker and has just returned to Hartsville after earning her Masters in Fine Arts in Dance at Sarah Lawrence in New York. She is currently in the job hunt but even more exciting is seeing her passion for finding ways to bring the power of dance to communities outside of major cities.

And in almost this same time period had another chance for a short conversation with Whitney Watts, who is on the Coker campus as the director of student housing. Whitney was also a communication major when here as an undergraduate and her masters is from the University of South Carolina. She has a vital role for our residential campus and works hard building a team to make our campus housing not just a place for sleeping but far more as an extension of the learning opportunity of college education. I get to learn new things all the time when we have opportunities to talk. In addition to her campus work, she is also active in Relay for Life and just came off the Darlington County Relay for Life event from last Saturday.

Talking with former students always demonstrates very concretely the concept of life-long learning because all of the conversations help me learn new things. It is just one of the great things I have found about being able to be part of an active college learning community.