Hello members of the board and faculty thank you for allowing us to share our stories. My name is Rose Arnold, I am COD student soon to be COD alumni, I am here to simply tell you my story of the positive experience I have had at COD due to the efforts of my teachers.

Before I came to COD I felt lost, I had goals but very little idea of how to pursue them. You see I am a first generation college student. I had very little knowledge of how to choose the right major (or in my case majors), how much I should pay, or what constitutes a school as being a good school. Well now that it is my 5th and last semester at COD I can confidently say that COD is a good school and it was meant for me.

I have always wanted to pursue a scientific career in environmental conservation and biology but I did not know exactly where to go for my next steps to pursue it. I had universities make me offers, but none felt right to me. I had big goals, but I felt that no matter what large university I chose that when it came to my teachers, I would be a fish lost in a large pond.

My COD professors did not let me get lost, they fished me out of the pond and helped mold me into a person I am very proud to be. The past 2 years this school has been everything to me. I received more from this faculty then I could have ever expected. All I wanted was a place to help me better direct my goals, and I have been given so much more. I have been given a place to thrive.

I have been here for 4 full-time semesters, this is my 5th and last while I prepare to transfer to the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point to retrieve my bachelors in science. My heart aches to leave the comfort of my professors’ guidance, but let me tell you what I have accomplished here because of my teachers and why for the rest of my life I will tell students that COD has the best faculty:

Through the guidance of earth science and biology faculty I became the leader of the COD environmental club for the past 3 semesters and was kindly given the Outstanding Officer award this past spring by student life. Through the encouragement of my honors environmental biology teacher I put in dozens of hours of volunteer work with COD’s Natural Areas, and I am now an employee of the natural areas. With the encouragement of speech faculty I was a student ambassador for my entire freshman year and gain invaluable public speaking experience that has helped me tremendously in and out of classroom. With the knowledge given to me by English faculty I wrote an essay that won me a Brookfield Zoo scholarship 2 years in a row. Through biology faculty encouraging and recommending me, I have become an intern of the food security initiative and community garden, studying food growth and food insecurity on this campus. And through the guidance of ALL of my professors this past May I graduated with an associates of science with honors, after having completed all 4 semesters as a Dean’s Scholar.

I would like to thank everyone who has made the college what it is today, you do not realize the gift you have built for us.

I would like to end by saying…
I do not pretend to know exactly what it takes to run a college or what is going on behind the scenes, that is for all of you to decide.

All I know is, if I could, I would give each professor here the world, because they gave me mine.