Letters - Letter to the Editor

Camping Magazine, March, 2000

Another Approach to Campus Recruitment

I am writing in response to the letter by Michael Peterson in the January/February issue of Camping Magazine in regard to staff recruiting on college campuses. I would like to offer an alternative approach that is more constructive -- a plan for action. In the southeast, camp directors are working to form partnerships with the colleges and universities around this issue. We have taken a model that was shared with us from Western Illinois University and have adopted it as a template for educational visits to schools in our area.

The idea behind this model is that camp directors work together to educate students about the value of a summer at camp. We are making classroom visits, presenting to dorms and other campus organizations, and offering cracker barrel sessions the night prior to camp fairs. The catch is that camp directors are asked to speak in general about a summer at camp and not specifically about their own camp during these visits. With this in mind, our goals are to increase attendance at camp fairs, help students be more informed about the various possibilities for working at a summer camp (in other words, to help them go shopping for a camp), and provide additional resources that will aid in finding a camp that is a match for interested students.

The schools we have worked with thus far have been very open to forming this partnership. We are coming to them with ways to help their efforts instead of asking, "what can you do to help us?" Both sides benefit from this relationship. Sponsoring organizations of camp fairs have also been willing to share their marketing ideas with camp directors and are open to suggestions for increasing fair attendance. Just by taking the time to ask about their strategies opens the door for future conversations about staff recruiting.

In support of our efforts, we have developed an outline for our campus visits to ensure consistency between various camp directors. We are also in the process of developing a slide show that is geared toward college students and shows the excitement of camp from a student's perspective. We are very much looking forward to a great staff recruiting season this year and an even better one next year!

Kim Wenzl

Brevard, North Carolina