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Two Â鶹ÊÓƵ students were selected by the LU Welcome Center to attend a student development conference held at Denver University in Denver, Colorado in early January.

Yearly, the CIVSA Student Development Institute hosts multiple student development conference for student staff in higher education across the nation. This unique student-driven experience offers education sessions, networking opportunities, campus visits, a featured keynotes speaker and more.

This year, more than 501 people attended the conference in Denver and among them were LU Crew members Allaina Melancon, Isabel Martinez and Loren Wipple, Welcome Center administrative specialist who chaperoned the pair on the trip. 

“The Welcome Center is the front door to Â鶹ÊÓƵ and the LU Crew answers university phone lines, we welcome guests, answer questions and facilitate tours,” said Melancon. “Isabel and I are both specialists, which are leaders within the LU crew, that work to train and develop the group. We’ve been on the team for a while, so we got the opportunity to attend.”

Melancon said the pair learned how to be better tour guides, how to interact with new students and their parents along with building personal relations. Martinez said that, more importantly, they were able to hone in one building a better student experience for future Cardinals.

“We also learned how to make students feel at home, especially those that are actively seeking to attend LU. Our goal is to ensure that students want to come here,” Martinez said. “I learned how to make connections especially interacting with some many different people across the U.S. It gave me more confidence to not only speak more about what we do here at LU, but for the future as well.”