This week, we’re excited to welcome Chris Blackwell to Collegewise. Chris will be heading an office in the Dallas/Ft Worth area that had recently become Collegewise-less after Monica Brown relocated and began working with students online.
Chris is joining us fresh off a stint at The Hockaday School in Dallas where he covered for a counselor out for maternity leave and guided a third of the senior class through the college application process. He had previously worked as the College Placement Counselor at Jesuit College Prep and on the other side of the desk in admissions at his alma mater, Saint Louis University. Chris’s reputation as a notably positive and encouraging force in his students’ lives was not surprising given his enthusiastic history. Voted “Most Spirited” by his middle school classmates after becoming the school’s first male cheerleader, he earned the title again after three years of antics as his high school mascot, Lobo the Wolf (the subject of his college essay). He returned to cheerleading in college where, in addition to balancing female cheerleaders above his head in one hand, he successfully accomplished a life goal of doing a standing back flip. Chris graduated summa cum laude from SLU with a bachelor of science in aeronautics, a reassuring academic commendation given that anyone who struggled to pass those classes really shouldn’t be out there keeping airplanes aloft. Like all Collegewise counselors, he gets unreasonably excited about colleges, so much so that Chris has traveled to 418 college campuses (but who’s counting). When he’s not counseling students or racking up more college visits, you can find Chris spending time with his wife and playing with his kids, usually in the form of battling imaginary dragons, attending princess tea parties, or serving as a horse, bear, or other animal deemed suitable by them to be ridden around the living room.
Chris will be joining Allison, Paul, Arun and me for training in Irvine during the first week of April before returning to Dallas—spirited as ever—to be sure. We’re really excited to have him in the family. Welcome, Chris!