Students Attend Comanche Nation Higher Education College, Career Expo

Students across Oklahoma gathered on Wednesday, September 17, at the Great Plains Coliseum Annex in Lawton for the Comanche Nation Higher Education College and Career Expo.

Director of Comanche Nation Higher Education Christian Boos said about 40 vendors, including colleges, universities, vocational institutions and businesses, were present at the event.

“I was just visiting with a representative from the University of Colorado at Boulder, UC Boulder,” he said. “He came down, made the trip, set up a booth, spoke with our area high school students, which is awesome. It's just a matter of communication, sending out emails, connecting with representatives that come and visit us every so often. They'll make the trip. Usually, it's for recruitment purposes. They want a larger Comanche Nation student presence on their campus, so they come down here, and they visit with us. And we exchange contact information, and we always invite them to our events, and they show up.”

Boos said the college hasn’t attended in almost 12 years and is working on getting more out-of-state recruiters. 

Several high schools, usually local, were invited to the expo.

“For the first time this year, we had Moore High School attend,” he said. “We had a student from Bishop McGinnis in Oklahoma City attend. So again, it's just communicating, getting the word out to Oklahoma City public schools, getting the word out to all the native counselors here in the southwestern Oklahoma area to bring their high school students, and it's been an overwhelming success.”

There were over 450 students in attendance. 

Boos said it takes collaboration to get the event going.

“Teamwork makes the dream work. It sounds cliché, but it's true,” he said. “And I appreciate, you know, the hard work, the organization, the planning that my staff puts into it, that Angela and her staff and Dena and her staff put into it because we're all focused on the main goal of providing great resources for our area high school students. Not only our Comanche students, not only our non-tribal students, but also non-native students. We invite pretty much everyone.”

Boos said he’s ready for next year’s event, which will include more students.

“We always want to be better than we were the year before,” he said. “We always want to introduce new vendors, invite old vendors, and just mix and match the colleges, universities, with the vocational and the professional because we want to hit every aspect of what these high school students, their future goals may be. Not just educational, maybe vocational, maybe military, maybe, you know, professional. We want to help them make a decision that will hopefully positively impact their future.”

This year's motto was “Embrace the Journey,” to emphasize perseverance, patience and progress, the turtle logo, representing a turtle race, was used.