Family Engagement Night will be hosted in the Northwest commons, which includes a free dinner and a college career fair.

The night will start off on March 31 at 5:30 p.m. with food and a fair, which various representatives will attend. There will be representatives from local community colleges, universities, military programs and engineering programs.

“Students can have dinner and then go visit college reps, or they can visit representatives first and then eat,” College Career Center coordinator Danea Cramer said. “It’ll be a fair format from 5:30-6:30. Then, we’re going to shift into sessions.”

Four 20-minute informative sessions will begin at 6:45 p.m. The information in the different meetings will apply particularly to each grade.

“We’re offering a variety of different sessions mainly to allow students and parents to talk to people together,” Cramer said. “We’re hoping this can be a time where parents and students can come together and get information, and help them feel like they’re well informed.”

The sessions will be specific to each grade level, but it is not mandatory to attend any certain session.

“It’s not like you have to stay right in your 11th grade track or right in your 12th grade track,” Cramer said. “You can kind of mix and match.”

There is something in store for everyone who attends Family Engagement Night.

“We’re going to have Wichita Area Technical College and Hutchinson Community College donate scholarships,” Cramer said. “We’ll have other goodies–drink coupons from Quik Trip, t-shirts–just some other fun stuff that people can win for coming out for our program.”

This is the first time Northwest will be hosting this event, and most likely not the last.

“Mr. Alvarez kind of gave us the challenge to provide a night for our families,” Cramer said. “So we decided to do this first. Hopefully next fall we’ll be providing a career for our students as well. This is going to be something we do every year, kind of a fun way for everyone to feel educated.”