Leaving home for the first time can be nerve-racking enough, but add in classes, meeting new people and endless lists of activities, the first year of college can be quite intimidating. However, CSB/SJU is able to relinquish these anxieties with a strong orientation program that helps to make new students feel at home in the community right as they walk through its doors.
First-years were welcomed into CSB/SJU on Sunday, August 22 with many smiling faces helping them move in. From there, the next two days were filled with speakers, tours and time for students to get to know one another.
CSB/SJU has had a strong orientation program in the past, but this year the four Orientation coordinators, Alison Gresback, Charlie Swanson, Kate Boline and Bryan Jasperson, were able to take the program to a new level. The success of this year was due to the dedication that the OC’s had to the program.
According to Director of Student Activities and Leadership Development, Maribeth Overland, “there are several facets that contributed to this year’s success: four very strong, dedicated and visionary orientation coordinators and an orientation program that has come to have a framework built around Benedictine values and solid student development theory. And finally and institution that embraces orientation for what it is … an institutional welcome in the Benedictine tradition.”
For the orientation coordinators, they could not have imagined a more successfully executed Orientation. “For me, a major success was that 989 students visited the HMML, something that has never been offered before,” Swanson said. “The flashmob was also pretty special. It was great to see all the Orientation leaders get together to perform. If showed great unity and the First Years were able to see upperclassmen make fools of themselves.”
With some of the same traditions, such as the President’s Dinner, kept from previous years, it gave the leaders a chance to see how they were impacting the first-years experience.
“During the President’s Dinner, the first-years take part in a candle lighting ceremony that proved to be nostalgic and tear-jerking for many upperclassmen in the crowd. As I lit the candles of many first-years it was clear–we made a difference” Gresback said.
The orientation coordinators hope to continue this welcoming momentum with a new program called OLTA, which in partnership with the First Year Seminar department allows a group of Bennie and Johnnie partners to mentor first year students in their FYS classes.
“It is an integrated learning opportunity that will enable first-year students to act in a manner that acknowledges and appreciates differences in others inside and outside the classroom and help them learn to take council in their academic and social practices by fostering an environment of deep change, among other things” Gresback said.
While only nine FYS classes will take part in the fall of its pilot year, the program hopes to expand to include all first year students.
“We hope this model will prove to be successful in that the first year students feel more confident in their ability to succeed within our community.
Overland said,“Only time will tell.”