Life after St. Andrews?

We have been doing some advanced planning with the slightly quieter time in May (especially now that the horses are starting to leave for their summer homes and the numbers at the Equestrian Center are going down). One of the projects I have been involved in concerns helping our students with possible careers early on in college life so they can take the appropriate classes and maximize their St. Andrews education. Discussions for this project led us in several directions one of them being what our graduates are doing now. Renee Jones, Director of Career Services, complies data on what graduates are doing six months after graduation. She has done an incredible job with this the last few years.

2013 – 100% of grads are either working full or part time, furthering their education, doing an internship or serving our country in the military or in organizations such as Peace Corps. Data for previous years are equally impressive 2012 – 96% and 2011 – 94%.

Renee does something that most schools fail to do, she gets in touch with every graduate at the six month mark to find out what they are doing. Most schools poll 20 – 30% and draw conclusions from that and so their results are not quite as accurate as the SAU figures. Renee was kind enough to share the 2013 breakdown with me and it was pretty remarkable. Remember this is 100% of the graduating class reporting not a small sample!

Continuing Education – 14.5%

Internships – 1.3%

Full-Time Employment – 63.2%

Part-Time Employment – 21.1%

St. Andrews maybe small but these figures speak loud and clear for the value of the education provided.

Thanks for sharing Renee!

Preparing for the "Real'" World

Check out this interesting article about Senior Megan Nedow's experience as an Equine Business Major and how it has helped her prepare for life after graduation.

http://www.sapc.edu/PDF/2014/012014nedow.php

What do you do at St. Andrews?

I wrote this as a response to a question from a high school sophomore earlier in the week on our facebook page regarding our hunter seat program and the Biology with a Specialization in Equine Science major. As tomorrow is the first IHSA hunter seat show of the 2012-2013 season, this seems like a fitting introduction to one of the many things we do at St. Andrews.

Thank you for your interest in our program. We have had many several students graduate with a Biology major with a Specialization in Equine Science and most of them have gone to Vet school. The first graduates from the program are in their last years at Vet school, others are still studying. We currently have at least three students studying at Ross in the Caribbean and another who just graduated from Vet school in Missouri and has started practicing Veterinary Medicine. Students in this major have the option to do a year long internship with our resident Vet, which includes caring for the St. Andrews horses and being on call when something happens. With over 100 horses there is always something new to learn!

Although we offer western and dressage our hunter seat program is by far the largest program. We host Intercollegiate Horse Show Association shows (IHSA) regularly and compete against schools in North Carolina and Virginia. The shows are a great way to show case your riding and learn the art of catch riding. There is no warm up allowed; you mount the horse you drew at random, adjust your stirrups and go! Really tests your horsemanship. When we host, team members from all three disciplines work together to make the show happen, it is a lot of work but lots of fun too!

Using Technology in the Classroom

Summer is winding down and the new school year right around the corner! Yippee! We get to meet lots of new people, reconnect with those that have been gone for the summer and start educating both in and out of the classroom.


For this fall I am going to experiment with technology in some of my classes. The goal is to help students use the ever evolving read/write web to further their education. I remember the days of coding “by hand” in HTML and navigating complicated FTP programs to publish to the web. Oh how things have changed!

Stable Management class will be interacting through a closed facebook group. The History and Theory of Modern Riding class will be making web videos of important theoretical concepts and Basic Riding Instructor Lab will be sharing information in a Wiki (History and Theory might end up there also.) I have some other ideas I am playing with which need a little more thought before sharing!

This is a really exciting time to be involved in education with so many free or low cost resources available to educators and students. The resources are really limited to your imagination!

Relative Elevation!

Carla, Megan and I had a great lesson with Kris Hamilton today. Kris started out talking about relative elevation meaning putting the horse in a suitable frame for its training, conformation and age. We had a mixed group of horses Wind Song, (new dressage horse schooled to 4th level) Big John and Jake which really illustrated varying degrees of contact and frame for the small audience of barn workers and staff. Kris talked about suppleness and balance EVERY step. We were not allowed to accept poor quality, rushed, tense, not forward or tripping steps at any gait. This required us to be in self carriage ourselves, engaging our core muscles and using the lightest aids possible. Nagging was not permitted the softest touch was required and the cliché that Carla and I have been talking about for the last few days “less is more” again seemed so true!


All the horses were great. Carla and Wind Song did some lovely shoulder in, haunches in and half pass. Kris had Megan canter John around 3 or 4 times counting her strides and only using her leg on the 4th step. This was a great exercise for both of them and Megan soon had John cantering without his little bucky hop that he likes to do. Kris focused on my position which was exactly what I needed reminding about the importance of connection, keeping my hands connected to the horse’s mouth and showing me when my hip was not following enough causing my body to rock or twist. Very helpful, I am sitting up better since I started seriously riding again so the next step for me is to improve my balance so I can follow the horse at any gait, and not ride with reins that are too long and a dropped contact!