MSMS Counselor Heath Stevens made his way through Florida during the week of Feb. 8, and not for a vacation. In an eight-day period, Dr. Stevens toured 14 colleges throughout the Sunshine State.

As part of his job as a high school counselor, Dr. Stevens connects MSMS students with colleges that would be a good fit for them. This requires him to get up-close and personal with as many colleges as possible to give MSMS students a better view of school offerings.

“I decided to in order to learn more about academic opportunities and scholarships from places that our students do not necessarily initially think about during their college search,” he said.

“The second piece as to why I wanted to take the tour was to give those colleges more information about our school and our students, so they will want to more heavily recruit our students. I want them to think about us when a new scholarship opportunity arises that is a good fit for our students to pursue.

“Hopefully, we will have many more representatives from them visit us next year either in Hooper lobby or at our College View fair. It was not an easy decision in the sense that it was a very long and tiring trip, but I do hope that it was helpful” he said.

“Each of the colleges had something that would be a good fit for some students and not so good for others,” he said. “Florida Tech would be a great fit for many of our students due their small class sizes and emphasis on science and unique humanities and social science courses; they also offer any student who graduates from MSMS a $21,000 scholarship a year because we are a member of the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools (NCSSS)!

“Eckerd College also stood out to me as having a lot of great environmental programs on a relatively small campus where students would still be able to conduct a lot of undergraduate research; it was also talked about in Lauren Pope’s famous book Colleges That Change Lives,” he said.

Dr. Stevens also added, “Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will also give females a $5,000 automatic scholarship, and they have more than 60 airplanes on their campus!”

The Florida Sunshine Tour Colleges include: 

• Florida Southern College
• Southeastern University
• Barry University
• Lynn University
• Keiser University
• Eckerd College
• University of Tampa
• Saint Leo University
• Rollins College
• Florida Institute of Technology
• Stetson University
• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Jacksonville University
• Flagler College

Dr. Stevens plans to e-mail a summary report of the colleges in the near future, and may even do a special college feature each week with additional information and exclusive pictures. 

For now, pictures of the college campus Dr. Stevens toured can be found on the following:

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/MSMSCounseling/

Tumblr:  http://msmsheath.tumblr.com/

Twitter:  @MSMS_Counseling

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/user/MSMSHeath

The Vision‘s Instagram:  @thevisionmsms