New student administration is reviewing a proposal to shorten New Student Orientation to a single day as opposed to the traditional overnight two-day experience.
An advisory committee composed of administration from the colleges, Housing, Registrations and Records, Multicultural Student Affairs, as well as other administration and speakers, have assessed the proposal as a tentative approach to New Student Orientation in 2008.
Gabe Wical, director of New Student Orientation, said due to a limited amount of space on campus, a limited ability to send the right messages to new students considering the summer timing of orientation and a limited budget, administration is re-valuating the approach to New Student Orientation.
“The primary parameters are that with the increase in incoming student body and parents orientation,” he said. “When we have [a large number of students], we don’t have room. We don’t have space.”
Wical said changes being made are based on an extensive amount of research, including feedback surveys, as well as for financial reasons.
“It’s a trend that students are saying [about NSO], ‘too many presentations that are too long’,” he said. “We have a responsibility to balance what we think students need with what they want.”
Rob Cagle, a junior in business marketing and economics, said his experience in orientation would not have suffered had it been shortened.
“I can’t say an awful lot I learned in lecture-style info sessions was useful to me during freshman orientation,” Cagle said. “So unless telling me how to dodge cult recruitment is a liability thing, I think orientation could survive being shortened.”
Wical said New Student Orientation plans to utilize fall programs such as Wolfpack Welcome Week in order to help make the orientation process more efficient for the highest possible number of students.
“We’re delivering messages at a time that [students] may not be ready to hear them, so we want to focus those messages,” he said. “And then try and figure out new and creative ways to deliver some of those other messages in different ways at different times by different times by different people.”
Adam Wamsley, a sophomore in biological sciences, said more social activities during orientation would help keep students entertained and interested.
“I think they should make orientation a little more social by adding more interactive events with other students and taking out class-style lectures,” he said.
Correspondent Matt Aycock contributed to this story.
