Bethel Ad­mis­sions Hosts Pi­lot Party for In­com­ing Stu­dents

MISHAWAKA—On Fri­day, March 12, Bethel hosted a Pi­lot Party for ad­mit­ted stu­dents. This event is not new, but it did look quite dif­fer­ent this year as the or­ga­niz­ers strove to fa­cil­i­tate a fun and safe ex­pe­ri­ence for Bethel’s guests amid con­tin­u­ing COVID-19 pre­cau­tions. 

This year, the tra­di­tional overnight ex­pe­ri­ence was not of­fered to ad­mit­ted stu­dents. There were also no ac­tiv­i­ties or in­for­ma­tional ses­sions of­fered for par­ents—the event was de­signed for ad­mit­ted stu­dents only. Par­tic­i­pants were di­vided into smaller groups than usual for ac­tiv­i­ties and en­cour­aged to re­main with their group for the du­ra­tion of the event. 

Stephanie Hochstetler, di­rec­tor of ad­mis­sion, said this is a great event for giv­ing in­com­ing stu­dents a lit­tle taste of col­lege life. 

“Our goal is that they can con­nect with cam­pus,” Hochstetler said. “Many of the stu­dents . . . are ac­tu­ally com­ing a lit­tle bit early, and they’ll be meet­ing with their ad­vi­sors to sched­ule FYE courses, so they’ll start into the Pi­lot Party al­ready with col­lege courses in the bank.” 

Kim­berly Miller, en­roll­ment re­port­ing spe­cial­ist, headed up or­ga­ni­za­tion of the event. There was a wel­come time with minute-to-win-it games, a tour of the re­cently opened Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter, a scav­enger hunt, din­ner in the Din­ing Com­mons and the Let’s Make a Deal event in Gates Gym­na­sium. 

“The in­com­ing stu­dents get a taste of what it’s go­ing to be like and how fun it is just to be around that good at­mos­phere,” Miller said.  

A to­tal of 62 ad­mit­ted stu­dents reg­is­tered for the event. 

“We re­ally en­joy how our cam­pus com­mu­nity wel­comes fu­ture Pi­lots,” Hochstetler said. “We’re al­ways ex­cited to bring more peo­ple on cam­pus.”