Robin Andrews | Transfer Coordinator
Every Nicholls State University admissions counselor wants to help make the campus your home away from home. Before long, you won’t think twice about propping your feet up on the benches in front of the union while you read your complimentary USA Today and drink your morning coffee from Jazzman’s Café.
But Robin Andrews faces a unique task—helping students from other universities or community colleges become Colonels. Andrews works with transfer students to ensure that they know the difference between Babington and Beauregard halls and to evaluate their transcripts to determine their class placement. Andrews also recruits at community colleges.
“I enjoy being on the road,” Andrews says. “I love providing total customer service by helping students however I can.”
Students transfer to Nicholls for a number of reasons. Some are attracted by the caliber of the degree programs the university offers; others like the south Louisiana lifestyle.
“A lot of students transfer here just because they like the personal touch we have,” Andrews says.
And Andrews knows the inviting atmosphere of the campus first hand; she earned her bachelor’s degree in marketing from Nicholls in fall 1997. While in college, Andrews was an active member of Phi Mu sorority, particularly with recruitment weeks, which remain some of her fondest memories.
One college summer, Andrews had some acclimating to a new environment to do herself after she landed a job at Sea World in Orlando. She worked in the Penguin Encounter reading a script to the tourists who passed through the attraction. It may have been boring and monotonous to some, but Andrews found her niche there. She became friends with other Sea World employees and got opportunities to feed the penguins and sharks and even rub and feed Shamu.
Andrews joined the Office of Admissions staff in January 2004. Her most unique experience as a counselor has been helping the displaced students around the campus following hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
“It was something I never could have expected,” Andrews says. “I had just gotten electricity an hour before I was called into work after Hurricane Katrina. It was an unfortunate situation but we worked above and beyond 40-hour work weeks to help students in need of a campus statewide.”
In her spare time, Andrews enjoys the company of her husband and five-year-old son.