As Former student and current office manager in biological sciences, Marschelle McCoy, says, her heart “beats blue” for Eastern.

Though seeing the university’s lower enrollment in past years has been hard, it has only motivated McCoy and students in biological sciences to get the word out about Eastern even more.

To do this, student volunteers from the program have been coming in throughout the week to write postcards to prospective students talking about their experiences and inviting them to an open house.

During the fall and spring semester, the department started its recruitment efforts by calling potential students.

“Every positive interaction we can have with a potential student gives us that much more. It gets us in front of their face and more makes them more likely to choose EIU,” McCoy said.

McCoy did not want to lose connections the department has already made, so she sent out an email to all biological sciences students to see if they wanted to write postcards in the summer.

“Our students are very engaging,” McCoy said. “Our students love the department; they see the worth of it, the value of the education that they get at EIU in biology, and they don’t mind sharing it.”

Gary Bulla, chair of the biological sciences department, said after seeing other academic departments reach out to prospective students, the biological sciences department started a student ambassador program to help with activities such as writing postcards.

“This kind of technique works well, just to get students on campus. That’s our main goal,” Bulla said. “If we get them here we can show them what we’re all about.”

Getting on campus is what made Chelsy Lorance, a senior biological sciences major in the pre-med program, want to come to Eastern in the first place.

Growing up in Charleston, she never thought she would go to Eastern, as it was a school pushed on her her whole life from family and friends.

After going “behind the castle,” this all changed.

“Once I came, I saw (Eastern ) had so much to offer,” Lorance, who came in to write post

cards Tuesday, said. “I realized it was an awesome place with lots of opportunity there.”

Student volunteers chatted and ate pizza between writing to prospective students.

They picked up one blue postcard after another from large stacks on lab tables.

Though the volunteers did not all know each other that well before the postcard-writing session, they soon started talking animatedly with each other about their summer jobs, future plans and research opportunities.

Eventually, the students’ conversation turned to their own experiences at Eastern and what made them so passionate about the biological sciences program, including the small class sizes and faculty conducted various research programs.

Lorance recounted an instance when Bulla accepted her into a lab last semester even though she signed up for it late.

“Where else can you go and ask ‘can I do research?’ two weeks into when school starts,” she said. “But (Bulla) was like, ‘sure.’”

Juncel St. Cloud, a senior psychology major who works in the biological sciences office, transferred from Kent State University in Ohio, where she would sometimes have 300-400 students in a class.

In contrast, she said, she gets to have close-knit relationships with professors at Eastern.

“That’s always an advantage, to be able to speak to professors,” St.Cloud said.

While half-sheets of paper were provided to guide biological sciences students on what to say, volunteers wrote out each postcard themselves.

Emmaline Cler, a sophomore biological sciences major, helped work on this general template on Monday, which she wanted to make personalized and relatable.

“It doesn’t sound like, ‘Come to Eastern, we need your money,’” she said. “It’s more like ‘I’m a student here, and this is why I’m a student.”

St. Cloud said the personal aspect of the postcards is what makes them effective.

“It’s handwritten so they’ll see it and say ‘this is nice, somebody wrote me a letter,’” she said.

St. Cloud mentioned that it was even more important to recruit students now, especially in the midst of false rumors going around about the university closing because of enrollment and budget challenges it has recently faced.

“Though that’s not true, people were believing it,” she said. “Now that that’s dying down, it’s a good time to recruit more students.”

According to both McCoy and Bulla, students have been enthusiastic about reaching out to prospective students.

“Students really stepped up to the plate,” Bulla said. “They really helped recruit students into program.”

Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]