There are a lot of things happening on campus and thanks to one organization, several of them are free to students.

The Activities Programing Board is a student-run organization that promotes and organizes enriching and entertaining events on campus without charging students.

“Every event is for everyone on campus and it’s completely free for all students,” said Ryan Krebiehl, junior and APB Executive Director.

“There’s going to be something that will peak your interest or intrigue you in some way and we have so much to offer to all the different diverse students on campus,” he said.

Leah Kelly, the coordinator of Programming and Reservations and the APB faculty advisor said the organization receives an allotment from the university to put on these events for students at no cost to them.

“Luckily, this year, we were given additional monies through the SGA initiative,” Kelly said.

Kelly explained that SGA wanted to do more student activities and be more involved on campus.

“We’re doing a lot of collaboration with different groups so that we can try to reach other students that might not necessarily come to APB events,” Kelly said.

Some of the groups APB is collaborating with include the College of Business, Latino Student Affairs and New Student Orientation and Parent Programs.

Britta Gibson, the associate director of New Student Orientation and Parent Programs said one of the big events they are working together on is family weekend scheduled Oct. 4-6.

Families can sign up to attend as many or as few events as they’d like to, but are “encouraged to attend as many as possible,” Gibson said.

Krebiehl said he and the other APB board members are really excited for all the events planned for this semester.

“We’ve pretty much only had Welcome Week so far, which are a lot of fun events, but we have a lot of good educational and motivational events later on this semester,” Krebiehl said.

Some speakers coming to NKU are Stacey Lannert, who was raped and abused by her father and then killed him when she feared it would happen to her little sister; Donald McPherson, a former NFL player who will be talking about sexual violence; Ricky Arquilla, the CEO of Roto-Rooter who appeared on Undercover Boss; and award-winning filmmaker, Andrew Jenks.

Matt Birkenhauer, senior English and media informatics major, said he hasn’t been to any events yet but he likes that APB offers free activities to students.

“It’s a useful service,” Birkenhauer said. “I suppose the fact that I haven’t been to many of them points to the fact that there needs to be more awareness.”

Getting more students involved in events on campus is an APB goal for this year.

“I want to get more people that may be treating NKU like high school; coming here for classes and then going home,” Krebiehl said. “NKU has a lot more to offer than just the academics.”

Gibson agrees with Krebiehl and said students who just focus on class are “doing themselves a disservice.”

“My philosophy has always been half of what a student should learn in college, they should learn outside the classroom,” Gibson said.
Gibson added that employers are interested in more than a high GPA.

“A 4.0 is nice and that’s great but [employers] want to know what they were doing while they were getting that,” Gibson said. “Employers are really looking for students who stand out above the crowd.”