Inside Furman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
Summer camp attendance dips slightly
by Jessica Taylor
Furman students may have gone home for the summer, but there are plenty of people descending on the campus to fill that void. The Office of Summer Camps and Conferences has been busy planning and preparing for the arrival of many student and adult camps and conferences.
According to Marie Burgess, director of summer camps and conferences, 80 different groups are using Furman's campus this summer, which will bring approximately 9,200 people to campus. However, overall totals are down from 83 groups and 9,800 people last year.
“This is a trend many college campuses have been seeing,” says Burgess. “In the last three years summer enrollment across the United States has been down two to five percent, but we have managed to escape that until now.”
Burgess attributes this drop to several factors. “Everyone's in the camps and conference business now, and we've seen increased competition in recent years. The political and economic situation still remains unstable. Many parents are unemployed and are unable to send their children to camps, while some adults are still apprehensive about flying.”
Many of Furman's camps also must rotate locations every few years due to rules prescribed by their national charters. “We've never lost a camp simply because they're unhappy,” says Burgess, citing the university's 98 percent retention rate of outside camps and conferences.
That satisfaction, she says, has a lot to do with the superb service provided by Furman faculty and staff during the summer months. “It's a tribute to people at Furman that this is added work on what they already do. We always get compliments on how polite and courteous our staff is, especially our student workers,” Burgess says.
Despite the slight decrease in numbers, some new and exciting groups are coming to campus this summer. ApostolicCcamp Ministries will bring 600 people to campus. The university is also holding its first lacrosse camp as well as a new Nike golf camp. The university will also host two new summer institutes for information technology in conjunction with the Rushing Center .
The largest group this summer will be the returning Sweet Adelines, an international women's barbershop quartet conference that will bring more than 1,500 women from 12 different countries to campus later this month. This is the group's third year at Furman, and they plan to return through 2007.
Looking ahead, the summer of 2005 is shaping up to be a successful one. Many new conferences have already been booked, such as Christians in Theatre Arts and a national seminar titled “Cancer as a Turning Point.”
“We will continue to market to national and international groups,” says Burgess. She hopes that as Greenville grows, so will Furman's summer itinerary of visitors, citing downtown Greenville and area parks as tourist draws for adult groups.
“Summer is very exciting on the Furman campus. You never know who you're going to run into, or who's going to run into you,” laughs Burgess.