A Family AFFAIR: Sloan hosts its inaugural Visit Day.

Hall, Olivia M.

For "Sloanies," the program is much more than just a top 20 curriculum in health administration. o them, it means being part of the "Sloan Family." So when the first annual Sloan Visit Day took place last November, current students, alumni, faculty, and staff came out in full force to welcome prospective enrollees.

Prospective students traveled from as far away as Texas and California to participate in a packed schedule of events, including the Percy Allen II '75 Sloan Lecture in Urban Healthcare Leadership, hosted breakfasts, themed campus tours, alumni lunches, student panels, the Black Health Legends exhibit, and class discussions.

"Our goal is to boost applications and increase the matriculation rate of the most qualified applicants, who often apply to many programs and get in to all of them," says Sloan Director Sean Nicholson. "We often lose some of these students early in the admissions process."

Indeed, Visit Day appears to have made an exceedingly positive impression on the students it targeted: All six previously admitted students who attended decided to matriculate, while two more applied and were accepted afterward. Daniel Jean-Philippe '15, who currently works as a physician office assistant for Atrius Health in Boston, was among several others who were planning to submit their paperwork. "I'd heard about the family feeling, but it's not one of those things you can say in words. You have to experience it," he says. "After Visit Day, I became 200 percent sure I would apply and matriculate."

Not least among the factors that impressed Jean-Philippe and other prospective Sloanies was the enthusiasm on display from current students. In fact, the entire event was organized and run by five students in Sloan Associate Director Julie Carmalt's newly created Event Planning and Leadership class and supported by a team of 44 student volunteers. Admitted student Joseph De Los Santos from Los Angeles noted the close relationship between students and faculty, as well as the participation of a dozen alumni. "The strong alumni presence was very reassuring to me," he says.

The opportunity to network informally with alumni, including former and current high-ranking executives in the health care field, was also an important component in Visit Day's efforts to attract underrepresented minorities and increase diversity among the Sloan student body. "This is why we specifically paired Visit Day with the second biennial Percy Allen II lecture and the Black Health Legends exhibit," Carmalt explains. The Black Health Legends Exhibit, which was opened in the Human Ecology Commons by Andre Lee '72, DPA, FACHE, President of the Leeway Health Education Foundation, tells the story of pioneering Black health professionals and institutions in the United States. "By combining these events, we brought to campus key alumni of color who connect with visiting students on many more levels than just position and title."

Jean-Philippe, for one, was thrilled at receiving personal advice from Percy Allen II, whose classmates, led by Clifford Barnes '74 and Lee, established the lecture series in honor of Allen's far-reaching contributions to the health care industry. This year's invited speaker was Patricia A. Maryland, Chief Operating Officer at Ascension Health, the health care delivery subsidiary of the largest non-profit health system in the United States.

As Jean-Philippe listened to Maryland describe her organization's creative, non-traditional solutions for bringing better health to communities, he caught a glimpse of his potential future: "Representation matters, and seeing so much diversity makes me--and I know it will make other people of color-cast away doubt that we cannot have long and successful careers in health care," he says. "Seeing minority CEOs made me realize I can definitely be one, too, someday."

Such positive feedback convinces Carmalt that Visit Day will play an important role in shaping the Sloan family for years to come. "It was a pleasure observing our thoughtful, enthusiastic, caring, and welcoming students and alumni representing Sloan and so graciously engaging our visiting students, and I'm thrilled with the result," she says. "We have never before had such strong early matriculation numbers, and the quality and diversity of our growing cohort blows me away. I'm so grateful, and I can't wait until next year's event."