Yesterday we hosted a contingent from the School of Business at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, Missouri. The Dean of their business school and the head of their finance department came for the visit. We are in negotiations for an agreement to transfer credits and give our students an opportunity to pursue additional degrees or certificates in the United States as well as some distance learning opportunities. We spent most of the day in meetings but also got a chance to introduce them to some of our students and they passed out literature about their programs. The next step will be a memorandum of understanding between the two institutions.
We are very excited, because since Ivan the college has not pursued this type of partnership with a foreign institution. This is the first one the new administrative staff had been a part of pursuing. Before Ivan the college had many such partnerships which helped students who wanted to start their education in Cayman and complete it abroad. It did mean a long day for us both starting with leaving our home to pick them up for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. and ending when we closed up the college at 10:35 p.m. We put them on their flight home this morning and are looking forward to a very productive relationship with their institution.
We learned about Missouri Southern at a conference last fall where there was a presentation on their partnership with a college in the British Virgin Islands. They have a very international outlook and their mission statement includes partnerships abroad. We contacted them to see if they would be interested in something in the Cayman Islands and they were interested enough to send down the contingent. The students who met with them yesterday were excited because they have been pushing us to get arrangements with U.S. institutions and this showed them we were pursuing options for them. We suspect they would be in for a bit of a culture shock going from Cayman to Joplin, Missouri but that is what going away to college is sometimes suppossed to be about. Equally exciting though is the distance learning capabilities for our students to take MSSU courses here in Cayman.
This weekend we are hosting a Super Bowl party for some of the folks in our office. It is a rest weekend for us as next weekend we head up to Miami for the seminar. Next Wednesday is a national holiday here on the Island and is the big agricultural festival. We are also in the final planning stages for the annual college to castle walk which benefits the college scholarship fund. It is on Saturday the 16th at 6:30 in the morning (all events like that have to be early to avoid the heat). The students have responded well and we already have several who have signed up for the walk and posted the flyers at their work places. Our goal was to raise $500 for the scholarship fund we think we may double that at the pace we are going with registrations.
Our cats have both broken out with something on their heads and we are taking them in to the vet tomorrow for a check up. Neither one reacts with any pain when you touch them where they have broken out but it is worrisome since they both broke out in the same place with very similar looking sores. The kitty cats are much more like puppies than cats. They come running to the door when we get home each night and are very demanding of attention. The clincher was when we got back from the Brac. Usually cats give you the cold shoulder when you go away to let you know how angry they are with you, ginger and gypsy came running to the door and were so happy to see us back just like little puppies wagging their tails and licking us. We will let you know how the vet visit tomorrow goes.
