So, within the first three weeks of school, a group of three administrators will be traveling to each first-year hall to discuss common stressors during the first year; acknowledge that students experience the transition in various ways; and introduce students to the Barnard community.

During weeks 3-6, another team of administrators and faculty will visit each first-year hall to facilitate a forum for students to explore diversity within the Barnard community and to get to know faculty and administrators who are committed to cultivating this ideal. They will engage students in discussions centered on living and learning in diverse, communal spaces.

First-year students entering Barnard College in the fall are currently reading By the Shore, a coming-of-age novel by the British-born writer and actress Galaxy Craze, and when they arrive for campus orientation later this month, the author herself, a Barnard alumna, will be on campus to lead a discussion of the book.

Craze, a 1993 Barnard graduate, will join students for the discussion on Friday, August 29. This will be the fourth year that new Barnard students will have read a novel by an alumna author who comes to campus to talk about the book during first-year orientation. (The media is invited to cover the discussion from 1-3 p.m. Please call Petra Tuomi in the Office of Public Affairs, 212-854-2037, in advance.)

In addition to giving students a common text to bind them together as a class, the choice of an alumna author for this common experience draws attention to Barnard's alumnae network as a source of professional and intellectual support from the start of their college years.

"I wanted students to have the excitement of hearing from the author of the text and the pride in knowing that the writer is a Barnard alumna," said Dorothy Denburg, Dean of the College, who introduced the shared reading program. Barnard has many famous alumnae authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners Jhumpa Lahiri (Class of 1989) and Anna Quindlen (Class of 1974) and acclaimed novelists Mary Gordon (Class of 1971), Edwidge Danticat (Class of 1990), Hortense Calisher (class of 1932) and Lionel Shriver (Class of 1978). Barnard is also honoring its faculty, alumnae, and visiting writers throughout the fall with the launch of a public readings series, Books Etc., featuring many of today's most admired writers, including Lahiri (Oct. 16), Quindlen (Nov. 5) and Alice Walker (Oct. 3). Check www.barnard.edu/writers for details.

"Why I chose North Toward Home: Although I never knew Willie Morris, I know many people who did know him. He was a student folk hero when I was in college: a student editor who stood up to the Board of Regents in the conservative 1950s. What better book for a UT freshman to read than this classic story of a very green freshman from Yazoo, Mississippi, who comes of age at The University of Texas?"-Patricia Kruppa, professor of history.

"I've always thought that successful education combines the intellectual with the social. The Freshman Reading Round-up will give new students a great start on meeting classmates and sharing ideas with them. Whatever else they do in their years at UT, whatever majors they choose, these students will have at least one book in common, and they will all know at least one faculty member whose door will always be open to them."-James Garrison, professor of English.

"The university's commitment to teaching must always be judged first by its sincere commitment to lower-division students. It's the foundation of their experience and success here…What I've learned is that this first encounter with UT faculty is the key to 'feeling' the sense of an academic home."-Michael Adams, professor of English.

Smith College President Carol T. Christ will focus her annual talk to incoming students around the theme "On Being a Member of the Smith Community: A Matter of Integrity." A matriculation ceremony will follow the speech, during which each student will sign her name to the college’s academic honor code and code of social conduct. A few weeks later, as a follow-up to orientation, first-year students will attend a talk by Randy Cohen, author of the New York Times "Ethicist" column. He will discuss "How to be Good."

The CIE is a two-semester class required of all first-year students, which grapples with central questions of human existence: "What does it mean to be human?" "How should we live our lives?" and "What is the universe and what is our place in it?" This year, nearly half the faculty will teach a CIE section.

"The reason that we expect Ursinus students to take this course, and Ursinus faculty to teach it, is that it deals with the questions that are confronted by everyone, the questions that lie at the heart of liberal arts education," said CIE coordinator, Professor of Biology Robert Dawley. "Seeking answers to those questions is something we all share in common. And since Ursinus is a liberal arts college, we will not leave that seeking to chance, but will engage in it deliberately from almost the first moment of arrival."

The Epic of Gilgamesh was chosen because "it addresses those central human questions . . . and because it resonates with so many of the texts that we will read throughout the year," said Dawley. The epic is a cycle of poems surviving from the third millennium B.C. E., which tells of the hero-king's adventures and quest for immortality.

First-year students will be housed in two residence hall centers. The "freshman clustering" fosters an academic learning community, with a faculty apartment on site, and a special floor, Community Catalysts, for students with an interest in community leadership. A first-year advisor from the Dean’s Office works with students as they become part of the academic community.

The orientation goal of introducing responsibility, academically and socially, also emphasizes values and decision-making. "With newfound independence, choices -- especially in the first semester of the first year -- are fraught with risk," says Debbie Nolan, Dean of Student Life. "National research reports that most social responsibility problems occur in the first semester of the first year. We try to prepare students for this new responsibility." During orientation, Ursinus students will also spend a day in Philadelphia visiting the Museum of Art and Constitution Center in order to feel more connected to the region.

The new Ursinus students, who move in Thursday, Aug. 21, comprise one of the college’s largest classes, at 450 students. It is also one of the best classes academically, with a greater percentage of students in the top 10 percent of their school classes (44 percent), and higher average SAT scores.

On the semi-light side, the some 400 new students will be immediately divided into "Quest Teams" of 15 members each. These teams will engage in a schedule of activities, beginning with a get-acquainted gathering in which they are introduced to the New Student Week schedule, etc. Another activity is a photo scavenger hunt -- students are given disposable cameras and sent off to find and photograph different campus points and places. (Obviously, the endeavor is designed to get students acquainted with the physical campus.)

On another day, team members will participate in volunteer service projects in the Richmond community. Project sites might include the Hope House for disadvantaged and homeless women, the Boys and Girls Clubs, Red Cross, etc. Later, the new students will express the personal impact their volunteer service through the creation of "Reflection Quilts" made from 8.5-by-ll sheets of artwork taped together then hung at different sites around campus.

As a final NSW day activity, team members join at the Athletics & Wellness Center for a couple of hours of "Quest Team Olympics,"a series of largely silly games all designed to provoke laughter and entertainment.

The primary goals are to build affinity groups within the class that will bring together students with similar interests--and then connect them with each other, faculty, staff, and administrators--and to help students create strong, stable social communities outside of the residence halls and classrooms that will last them throughout their academic careers.

NRB was launched two years ago, and its sessions are fine-tuned each year. Since its inception, more and more groups on campus have created their own NRB programs, and larger numbers of Rensselaer staffers have volunteered their time to help out, says Lisa Trahan, dean of the Office of the First-Year Experience (FYE) at Rensselaer and organizer of NRB. One new example is a session titled "adVENTURE into Entrepreneurship", during which students team up with local businessmen to develop business plans and venture pitches. Trahan attributes NRB's expanding depth and scope to a greater desire on the part of campus groups to become more involved in the lives of students earlier on in their time at Rensselaer. "These organizations want to build awareness of their programs, and lay the foundation for relationships with students on the first day of their academic career at Rensselaer," Trahan says. "They want to help make a lasting and positive impression on incoming students." For more information on NRB, go to www.rpi.edu/fye/nrb/.

Building a sense of "community" among these students is achieved by:
* Having a yearly theme for the New Orientation Program. This year's theme is "Rose Rules," after the popular MTV television show "Road Rules," in which college-age students take cross country journeys to complete missions/tasks. Nine missions have been designated for the new students at Rose-Hulman. These could include attending an information session on college traditions and history, attending a beach party and fiesta dance, and completing an experience called "Unleashing Your Inner Monster."

* A day-long Outdoor Adventure in which teams of students have to work together to complete skills such as climbing over a 20-foot tall wall; catching classmates on a "free fall" from a tree stand; and successfully navigating through a spider web project.

* Students living in each of Rose-Hulman's five freshmen residence halls wear special T-shirts that designate their hall and floor -- developing an even smaller "community" within the residence hall "community." Residence Hall Advisers and Sophomore Assistants encourage students to spend valuable time together in the first weeks of campus life -- out of their residence hall rooms. For example, groups go play miniature golf, explore caves in southern Indiana and play paint ball games.

* Faculty and staff members serve ice cream sundaes and cones to incoming students at an Ice Cream Social on the day before classes begin -- welcoming them to campus and starting to develop relationships with students. Personal attention is important, with a 13-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio.

Another notable aspect of Rose-Hulman's New Student Orientation program is the amount of time students participate in taking academic tests to judge if the students qualify for advanced credit in mathematics, science and foreign language subjects. Nearly half of this year's incoming freshmen class will be able to skip Calculus I classes due to their Advanced Placement scores, which shows the academic strength of the class. Rose-Hulman's New Student Orientation program begins on Aug. 29 and continues through Sept. 3.

Cosby 101
All new students and their parents are invited to their first (un)official class at Temple, "Cosby 101", as Cosby imparts his signature brand of advice at what promises to be a spirited New Student Convocation. Cosby went through the freshman experience at Temple many years ago and now plans to offer words of welcome and guidance. New students will also be eligible for a range of exciting raffle prizes, including USAirways tickets, a trip—by limo—to watch the Owls open the football season at Penn State and tickets for Broadway shows. The event is scheduled for Friday, August 29, at 10 a.m. in the Liacouras Center on Temple’s Main Campus.

Summer Reading Project
All first-year students were asked to read Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen for a shared summer reading project. The book calls into question the myths upheld by many American history textbooks and Loewen has criticized some of Philadelphia’s landmarks in the past for being historically inaccurate. The author will jump-start the academic year on Sept. 23 when he squares off against history and social studies professors and area educators in a University-wide debate during a campus visit. Loewen will also lead a group of freshmen on a tour of Independence National Historical Park to point out misrepresentations of history at the site.

Community Service Initiative
Temple is promoting the value of its community outreach programs to new students. In past years, Temple has had sessions during orientations for out-of-town students when they wrote letters to children at Temple’s Children’s Hospital or entertained kids from the local YWCA. This year, they’ve extended that initiative to local students as well. The idea is to expose students to the value of community service and make them aware of the many outreach programs available at the University with the hope that they’ll continue to serve the community throughout their college careers.

Fifteen groups, totaling 180 students, will participate in the wilderness-based trips in the mountains of Colorado. Thirty-eight groups, totaling 380 students, will perform a variety of community service projects throughout New Mexico and Colorado. The groups will depart for their trips on Wednesday, August 27 and return Saturday, August 30. In addition to hiking and community service, first-year students will engage in reflection and discussion twice each day, led by 107 upper-class leaders. Discussion topics will include the New Student Orientation programming they experienced earlier in the week, academic expectations, and anxiety about leaving home, among others.

The skills that they learn in this program are easily translatable to the challenges they will face in making the transition to college. This program will help them to not only develop the skills, but to gain confidence - to say nothing of having a great deal of fun.

Freshman Summer Reading Initiative
This year, Ithaca College started a new reading program intended to both create a shared academic experience for incoming students and engage the entire campus. The choice of the inaugural reading is James McBride’s The Color of Water, his memoir of growing up in New York City as the son of a Polish Jewish mother and an African American father. Each student was given a copy of the book at summer orientation, along with a set of questions intended to stimulate the student’s reflection on the narrative. On August 26, they will participate in small-group discussions on their reading, led by faculty facilitators and other members of the College community who volunteered to take part in the initiative. James McBride himself will make a special appearance on campus September 2 to discuss his book in a public presentation.

Opening Weekend/Convocation Programs
The Office of Residential Life is starting a new program for opening weekend called PIECES (Providing Ithaca Experiences Connecting Every Student), which will involve first-year students in activities designed to connect them to each other, to their class, and to Ithaca College. Faculty and staff volunteer facilitators will take part in a variety of activities with incoming students (including helping them learn to sing the College’s alma mater!).

Living/Learning Initiatives
The Office of Residential Life and Office of Academic Affairs continue to work together to identify ways to integrate our students’ residence hall experience with their classroom experience. To that end Ithaca College will be piloting a new Faculty Fellow Program in one residence hall this year. We have hired a faculty member who will work with the residential life staff to plan programs for the hall. He will be conducting a series of group discussions with the building residents and attend many of the building events in order to establish relationships with the students. Additionally, we have expanded the Freshmen Seminar in Residence Program to offer six seminars this year. The School of Humanities and Sciences freshmen who select these seminars will be assigned to live in the same residence hall. Some of the class meetings and events will also occur in the residence hall.

Curricular and co-curricular life at Hampshire blends more seamlessly than on many other campuses, due to the college’s nontraditional curriculum. This year, during orientation, students will meet with their tutorial groups, so that each student bonds intellectually and socially with this peer group and their advisor from the very beginning of the Hampshire experience. In addition, "peer mentors" (older Hampshire students) will work with some tutorials, assisting first-year students with the blending of curricular and co-curricular interests for an enriched experience. The peer mentor’s role includes being a resource about social and organizational opportunities on campus, providing a one-to-one "social safety net" in those early college days. Examples of tutorial topics are: Philosophy of Education, Pollution and Our Environment, and The Anthropology of Human Rights.

They sent 23,400 messages to each other.  "It's been staggering," said Marcus P. Robinson, the 26-year-old founder of the initiative and director for development and strategy for UD's Internet development division and Web partnership.  "This is how they communicate. I'm amazed by how readily they reveal things.  They jump right in and say whatever is on their minds.  "If we can only keep them this engages" he quipped.

When first-year students arrive this weekend (Aug. 23), they'll be greeted by a comforting sight: more than 100 upperclassmen clad in blue "Ask Me" shirts.  "They're the blue crew," said Jolly Janson, director of educational and special programs.  "They'll be driving golf carts, moving boxes up to rooms and checking IDs for keys."

Several new programs have been added to orientation weekend activities to help students get a jumpstart on their University of Dayton education.  About 100 students will arrive early to participate in a pre-orientation day of service on Friday, Aug. 22.  As a Catholic, Marianist university, the University of Dayton prizes community service.  More than 60 professors have built community service opportunities into their courses.

Professors asked all incoming students--and any interested parents--to read Cass R. Susteina's Boston Review article, "The Daily We," which reflects on "whether the Internet is a blessing or burden for democracy," according to Patricia Johnson, associate dean for connected learning in the College of Arts and Sciences.  Nearly 200 parents accessed the article online, with half expressing interest in meeting with humanities faculty during orientation weekend to explore the issues their children will talk about in classes this fall.  It's all part of the University of Dayton's mandatory humanities-based general education curriculum for first-year students.  They read common books in English, philosophy, history and religious studies--such as James Joyce's The Dubliners and Plato's The Apology--and attend the same plays, performances and speeches throughout the year.

"We want the students and their parents to understand that these classes are all connected, that we deliver general education in a unique way here," Johnson said.  We introduced this to orientation weekend because we wanted to set the tone that we're providing students with the best academic experience as we can."

In another new program, four seniors will talk to incoming students about "binge" drinking, alcohol poisoning and other issues in "The Real Deal on Drinking at UD," a mandatory program.

They'll talk about preventing alcohol poisoning and how to respond to it.  One student will challenge the expectation that you have to get wasted to fit in.  Another will talk about the consequences she faced when she was caught with an open container and drinking underage," said Scott Markland, coordinator of alcohol and drug abuse prevention at the University of Dayton.

Why ask students to talk to one another?

"Students listen to their peers, particularly those who are more experienced than they are," Markland said.  "They view them as legitimate, credible sources."

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