Calling all high school reporters and photographers

Student reporters and photographers are invited to apply for a free, weeklong, summer journalism immersion program at Seattle University.

The Journalism Summer Workshop, sponsored by The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund as well as other news organizations including the Yakima Herald-Republic, is looking for 15 high school sophomores, juniors and seniors to attend its annual journalism summer camp at the end of June.

To apply for this competitive program, students must fill out the application posted on the workshop’s Web site. Applications must be postmarked by April 6, 2009.

Students who are accepted to the hands-on workshop will live in dormitories on the Seattle University campus. They will also interview and photograph newsmakers and receive intensive instruction from professional journalists from around the state.

The workshop is run by Tomas Guillen, an author and former investigative reporter for The Seattle Times who now teaches journalism at Seattle University.

For more information or an application, visit the Journalism Summer Workshop’s homepage at www.seattleu.edu/jsw.

Campus Tours

By SELAMAWIT GEBRETSADIK
Kentridge High School (Kent, Wash.)

SEATTLE — Ian Heilbron sets the tone for the tour.

“Ask a lot of questions,” he encourages the dozen people gathered in the foyer of the University Services Building on a recent Tuesday morning. “My tours are very laid-back.”

The 23-year-old Seattle University graduate has been leading campus tours for prospective students and their families for two years and says he makes a point to be open and informative. He doesn’t want the experience to be intimidating. He wants people to ask questions. Lots of questions.

Frequently, he’s asked:

• Why choose Seattle University?

• Is there a Greek system? (No.)

• Do freshmen have to live in the dorms? (Yes, sophomores, too — unless they live at home with their parents.)

The small class and campus sizes are what drew Heilbron to SU. Plus, he wanted to go to a private institution and get off the island. (He’s from Hawaii.)

Heilbron graduated in June with a degree in accounting and plans to return in the fall for graduate school.

Meantime, he — and admissions counselors from around the state — recommend on-site versus online campus tours whenever possible. Virtual tours, they say, show how a campus looks.

But, Heilbron notes, “You don’t get the feel of the school, you don’t get the smells, you don’t get the sounds.”

And he’s not alone.

“It’s hard to pick up the atmosphere of the campus by looking at a Web page,” says 21-year-old Barbara Seabury, a student admissions representative at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Plus, “Most of the students actually make their decision of where they’re going to actually attend by going on a campus tour,” says 39-year-old Lisa Garcia-Hanson, director of admissions at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. “That’s why I think having good information about the campus and the campus tour go hand-in-hand.”

Heilbron encourages high school juniors and seniors and their parents — “the people who are paying,” he says — to visit five to seven college campuses before making a decision.

There’s just no substitute for an actual campus visit, agrees 30-year-old Mike Rotterfman, assistant director of admissions at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.

“I would recommend visiting different types of campuses,” Rotterfman says, also advising students to come prepared for tours and not to be afraid to ask questions, such as, “What are the hot topics on campus?”

Also, “Students always want to know how the food is,” he says.

But, Seabury says, “I think it’s important for students to ask questions about the actual application process. A lot of students don’t understand exactly how to apply.”

Campus tours are typically free and last an hour to an hour and a half. Some schools require reservations, so it’s not a bad idea to call ahead.

University students might also be available to have lunch with prospective students. And admissions counselors might be available to meet individually.

“I encourage students to do a one-on-one appointment with an admissions counselor,” says 24-year-old Jenna Serr, assistant director of admissions at Tacoma’s Pacific Lutheran University. “It’s a great way to get information about what makes the school special or unique.”

Like Heilbron and other counselors, she recommends multiple visits: “They should visit as many schools as possible because they might have one school in mind they think is the perfect fit, but once they visit other schools they might find that their opinions have completely changed,” she says.

At the start of his recent Tuesday morning tour, Heilbron asks folks where they’re from. Oregon, Hawaii, Louisiana, Colorado. This isn’t surprising, as about 50 percent of SU students come from out of state, he says.

The first stop is the Albers School of Business and Economics in the Pigott Building, where a piece by renowned Pacific Northwest glass artist Dale Chihuly hangs in the atrium. Heilbron pulls the group into Classroom 100, where he mentions the average SU class size is about 25, the ratio of professors to students is about 13 to 1, and there are about 50 Jesuits living and teaching on campus.

He also explains that SU is on a quarter-based system, and the most popular class is “Hollywood and Jesus.” Then, he leads the group through the Chapel of St. Ignatius, designed by architect Steven Holl. According to SU’s Web site, the chapel was inspired by “seven bottles of light in a stone box.”

Next, Heilbron leads the group past Xavier Hall, the smallest dorm building on campus, and the Quad, the plaza at the heart of the campus that features a waterfall and rock formation reminiscent of a Zen garden.

At Lemieux Library, Heilbron explains that the black-and-white façade is “supposed to look like books on a book shelf.” The library holds more than 250,000 volumes, he says.

After a few more stops, he takes the group to the third floor of Bellarmine Residence Hall to check out a dorm room. By 11:08 a.m., the hourlong tour is back where it started, in front of the University Services Building.

“I was impressed with the layout,” 53-year-old Connie Hector says at the end. “I think it’s nice to see it in person.”

She took the tour with her husband, Richard, 66, and their 17-year-old daughter, Stephanie, a high school senior in Roseburg, Ore.

“I like the campus a lot,” says Stephanie, who’s visited about a half-dozen college campuses.

But “I still have no idea,” she says. “I like so many other campuses,” too.

• Selamawit Gebretsadik, 17, is a senior at Kentridge High School in Kent, Wash. She works on her school newspaper, the Fleet Street News.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Reporters Selamawit Gebretsadik and Beth Zainwel and photographer Travis King participated in the Journalism Summer Workshop at Seattle University last month.

The intensive, hands-on camp was held June 20-27. Fifteen teens experienced journalism during the workshop, which was organized by former Seattle Times investigative reporter Tomas Guillen. Now a journalism professor, Guillen teaches at Seattle University.

Gebretsadik and Zainwel were mentored by Adriana Janovich, a Yakima Herald-Republic reporter and the coordinator of Unleashed, the newspaper’s weekly teen section.

— For more information, visit www.seattleu.edu/jsw.

Studentpainters.net: A Summer Job to Dye For

By ALYSSA PATRICK
EISENHOWER HIGH SCHOOL

Andrew Hoge and Jessica Miller are two students who have added a whole new tint to the term “summer job.”

They are painting houses this summer — but not with their own hands. Instead, they are hiring other college students to work for their house-painting businesses.

“We don’t want to have to pick up a paint brush this summer,” Miller said. “It is our job to give (our employees) the skills to paint and line up enough houses to keep them busy.”

Hoge, a 2007 Davis High School graduate, and Miller, a 2006 Bellevue High School graduate, are managers with a company known as Studentpainters.net, which for the first time has a branch here.

This summer, though, the pair are “pioneering” the Yakima Valley.

The greater Yakima territory, which includes Selah and Union Gap, will be managed by Hoge, an 18-year-old Seattle University sophomore.

Miller, a 20-year-old sophomore at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, will manage the Ellensburg and outer Yakima territory, which includes Terrace Heights and Naches.

Studentpainters.net is a “painting company and student development company,” Hoge said. Production-wise, employees paint houses; career-wise, the company creates entrepreneurs.

“The philosophy is to find those individuals who are leaders, ambitious and entrepreneurial, and let them manage a region,” Hoge said. “We are given all the tools we need to start our own business training on paint technology, sales techniques, production management and crew management.”

The business began in 1981 in Toronto, according to its Web site. In 2000, two University of Washington graduates and longtime veterans of the program, Dwayne and Jessica Bishop, took their entrepreneurial passion to the next level and made the Northwest division an individually owned and operated company. Hoge and Miller work for them.

“We both worked our way through college with the student painting business,” said 37-year-old Dwayne Bishop of Seattle. “It paid for all of Jessica’s schooling, so we really appreciated the company. And now we enjoy giving that experience to others.”

Hoge has been returning home to Yakima on weekends — about 360 miles round trip — to start gaining a clientele in his territory. Miller has also been traveling to sites in her territory.

Although they aren’t reimbursed for gas, they are paid a salary — roughly $8 an hour — for a nine-hour work week in the spring and a 40-hour work week in the summer.

Said Miller, an aspiring business owner: “Not everyone can delve into the career they are interested in before they graduate from college.”

And she and Hoge are definitely delving in deep. Gaining clients is just the first part of their job requirements, and it involves more than just a long car ride.

“We perform a detailed and free estimate that is tailored directly to a client’s home. The exact paint job the customer is looking for is usually established after two hours, and then we come up with a contract,” Hoge said.

Because the estimate and painting plan are written into the contract and a two-year warranty is provided, Studentpainters.net, affiliated with the paint company Sherwin-Williams, works at a high standard, Miller said.

“Ninety-seven percent of our customers do not use the warranty, and we immediately followed through with that 3 percent that did use it. We keep the promises that we make,” she said.

Building clientele is only half of the responsibility these managers carry. The other half is to hire painters and maintain their payroll and expenses. Since their employees are often their peers, this is the side of managing that can often produce the most pressure.

“I promise my employees 40 hours of painting a week, so I have to make sure I have a constant lineup of jobs for them. It creates more than just a personal risk in running the business. These people are depending on me to deliver work, so I have to follow through,” Miller said.

Six to eight CWU students are working for Miller this summer. Five students from Washington State University, the University of Washington and Western Washington University will be working for Hoge.

Tegean Coward, a 19-year-old CWU junior and Miller’s friend, is excited to be a first-time painter this summer.

“Judging how (Miller) handles everything business-wise, (working for her) will be just like working for any other established company,” Coward said.

Miller’s aspiration is to one day run her own nonprofit organization. She has a double major in business administration, with an emphasis on marketing, and English literature.

Hoge has a double major in bio-chemistry and political science, and wants to be a pediatrician.

“Studentpainters is one of the best experiences I have ever had in my life,” he said. “It is teaching me what I can do, how I can handle juggling many activities at once while giving a serious amount of focus to my business.”

Both Miller and Hoge point out another perk of their summer job: meeting people who are just as motivated as they are. A recent training session in Seattle allowed all of the managers and district managers to share successes and discuss solutions to difficulties.

“It’s so rewarding to be in a room full of people who work as hard as you,” Hoge said.