How often in this day and age do you walk into a room with over a 100 teenagers and none of them are on their phones? This was the case as I had a chance to visit the HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Information Fair held at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort.
As part of the weekend events leading up to the MEAC/SWAC Challenge Presented by Disney is the annual football game that matches up teams from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), this college fair was very impressive.
The morning started with brief presentations from Alabama A&M and North Carolina A&T State University talking about scholarships and financial aid before the main part of the day, the informational tables.
A concept Belinda Frazier, Manager of Corporate Citizenship for Walt Disney World Resort called a version of speed dating to encourage the students to not just go to the local Florida College tables. The students from the local Edgewater High School were broken into small groups and rotated between 10 HBCU College tables where they were given 3 minutes of basic information about the school before moving to the next. The catch was the representatives were not College reps, they were Disney Cast Members who were alumni from the schools, Belinda felt that having real alumni to talk to would help give the students a more real experience. After visiting all 10 of the tables, in true Disney fashion they provided the students with a photo spot with a photographer so they could remember their day.
After all the students had a chance to visit each table they were given 20 minutes to go back to the schools of their choice to ask more questions.
As I stated, it is very rare to see a teenager in this day and age not with phone in hand even when talking to friends, but this room was full of them all learning about options for their future. I had a chance to speak to a few who all were very excited by the days activities and found info about schools they never event would have thought of going to. As the event winded down the energy in the room was still very strong even the Cast Member/alumni were having fun talking about their experiences speaking with the students. When I asked Belinda about the future of this event she gave a resounding yes to this coming back in the future.
It is not very often I cover a Disney event that isn’t park based, but this was something special I wish I could have spent more time at just to see the excitement on the face of our future!