Senior Comet Day will replace Super Saturday as the day when prospective high school students come to experience Contra Costa College before attending in the fall. The event will now take place on a Thursday, opposed to it being held previously on a Saturday.

Students from Kennedy, Richmond, De Anza, Pinole, Hercules and El Cerrito high schools will be attending the April 26 event.

Enrollment Services Outreach Program Manager Maryam Attai said that John Swett High School will have a miniature version of the event for themselves because they had to schedule their buses far in advance.

She said that the charter schools will have their own event also.

“Senior Comet Day is an opportunity for prospective students to connect with CCC staff and faculty in a very intentional way,” Attai said. “It is also intended to prepare students to be comfortable when coming to campus.

“We want this to be an opportunity where they celebrate being a future Comet and, in the past, Super Saturday was more about preparing students to register and open to everybody,” she said.

This event is aimed to make the graduating seniors more comfortable coming to CCC and giving it more of a four-year university orientation feel.

Attai said that the students will be separated into cohorts and will get an opportunity to meet students from other high schools.

Associated Student Union adviser Joel Nickelson-Shanks told the ASU Board during its Feb. 14 meeting that he wanted to reiterate the message to the members about trying to help the Enrollment Services Outreach Program.

He also told ASU members that they should go over how they are going to help for the 9:30 a.m. through 2:15 p.m. event.

Attai said, “We are inviting faculty to hold mock office hours. Other faculty and staff have already volunteered to facilitate tours of their departments. Some faculty will be opening their classrooms so students can sit in a real (college) class,” she said.

Incorporating more of campus’ modern buildings, landscape and student life is a key part in making students more connected with CCC.

“So much of the way we are creating this event is to focus on our students connecting with future students,” Attai said. “If we don’t have club rushing, if we don’t have student ambassadors and we don’t have students talking to prospective students it might not be as exciting for them,” she said.

Interim Dean of Student Services Denis Franco invited faculty and staff in a campuswide email to come together and participate in the event.

Attai said that the prospective students will be taking a survey before they come to campus. She said the surveys will help put students with the correct departments and clubs in which they are interested.

“They (prospective students) might want to say that they love English and that they want to talk to students who are majoring in that,” Attai said.

Personalizing the experience here on campus for these prospective students is the fresh approach that the college is challenging itself to take on, she said.