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- Four Southeastern students visit State Capitol for Higher Education Day and Oklahoma’s Promise Day
OKLAHOMA CITY – Four Southeastern Oklahoma State University students traveled to Oklahoma City on Tuesday to participate in Higher Education Day and Oklahoma’s Promise Day at the State Capitol.
Jill Scott, Cora McKinney, Jacee Bentley, Kaysun Thralls at the State Capitol
Higher Education Day is sponsored by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to demonstrate the value and importance of the state system of higher education to Oklahoma’s current and future workforce development and economic growth and to celebrate the Governor and Legislature’s ongoing support of the Oklahoma’s Promise program.
The program opened with a recognition of the Oklahoma’s Promise Program, which offers qualified Oklahoma students an opportunity to earn a scholarship for college tuition. The speaker for this event was Representative Arturo Alonso Sandoval (D-Oklahoma City), a recent college graduate who is the youngest current Oklahoma state representative.
“It was really interesting to hear Representative Sandoval speak about Oklahoma Promise and all the benefits that it provides for students in Oklahoma,” said freshman Jacee Bentley, a pre-nursing student from Durant. “Oklahoma Promise helped him achieve his college goals and is helping me as well, along with so many other students.”
The students then went to visit their local representatives to thank them for their support of higher education in the state and hear directly about issues important to them.
“It was very neat to visit the Oklahoma State Capitol and get to speak with a legislator (Cody Maynard [R-Durant]) regarding his opinion on his district’s university and actually get to hear his thoughts and opinions,” noted Cora McKinney, a sophomore fisheries and wildlife management major from Oklahoma City.
“I really enjoyed getting to meet my local representative, Cody Maynard, who also represents Southeastern,” said freshman Kaysun Thralls, an elementary education major from Calera. “It was really interesting because he really took time to discuss things with us students on a personal level, which means a lot because usually you don’t hear a lot of people in power hearing us out as college students. It was nice for him to take us seriously and answer all our questions about education and what can affect our state standings when it comes to education.”
“I got to speak to not only my local representative – Ty Burns (R-Watchorn) – but also the representative at my district at college, which is far from home,” said freshman Jill Scott, a communications major from Pawnee. “I was very fortunate to get to talk to both of them on a personal level and it was really interesting because I come from a much smaller community than Durant. So these two representatives are handling much different matters.”
The students completed the program from the floor of the House of Representatives for a panel of distinguished speakers from across the Oklahoma legislature and the landscape of higher education in the state.
This year’s Oklahoma’s Promise Day and Higher Education Day were combined after Higher Education Day was re-scheduled for inclement weather in February.