Buck Rogers, McCallie’s director of College Guidance, visited 13 colleges and universities in California, all on a bicycle.
Mr. Rogers joined a group of 12 fellow counselors who braved the Los Angeles-area traffic and took in the vistas of the Pacific Coast Highway on two wheels to get to their destinations.
“Our primary goal was to get out to a part of the country that most of us haven't been in and see some colleges so we can share that information with our students,” said Mr. Rogers. “I think we accomplished that well because we did about 13 colleges in six days. It was a great opportunity to see these places in a much different way than you might on a typical trip, because being on a bike gets you pretty intimately involved in a campus.”
This is the seventh year a group of counselors has toured campuses by bicycle and the first year Mr. Rogers has participated. The bikers had to haul their personal belongings on their bicycles and stayed most nights in campus dormitories or guest housing on the various campuses.
The list of colleges visited by Mr. Rogers included the California Institute of Technology, Loyola Marymount University, Pepperdine University, the University of La Verne, the University of the Redlands, UCLA, USC, the five-college Claremont system with Claremont, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona and Scripps Colleges and President Obama’s alma mater, Occidental College.
“One of the things we try to do with every campus tour is take some decent photos,” he said. “I took about 20 to 30 photos of each and will write up a summary of each college. We hope that all of our students use the website.”
The counselors shared details of their trip on a New York Times education blog called “The Choice.”