Boyer Center Makes Successful Transition to New Orientation Schedule
Posted by Michael Sturtevant on 8/2/2007
Academic advisor Michael Sturtevant stands beside two new marketing pieces developed for orientation and recruiting. The display board at left was updated with copies of the college posters produced over the past several years, and the display screen at right rolls up into a cartridge so that the top one-third or two-thirds can be displayed on a table, depending on available space.
"We made it!"
If you are one of the Boyer Center for Student Services staff or the orientation faculty advisors, you've probably been saying this lately. June saw a massive re-vamping of the orientation program, both for the University of Arkansas as a whole, and for the College of Education and Health Professions in particular.
The Office of First Year Experience changed the orientation format, from two orientation sessions a week to three or four. In more student-centric terms, we saw 120 or more students each week in June rather than the 70 students each week last year.
We also changed the college meeting format. We first brought the students to a general college meeting at the Grad Ed Auditorium, conducted by some (lava-lamp destroying) kid. Dianne Stout was the creative force behind a new portion of the presentation, a video of several current students talking about their experiences with our college. She also did some gorgeous design work for the presentation itself.
Then we split the students into groups by major and shipped them to their departments. The departments kindly agreed to present major-specific information to the students at these meetings, allowing the Boyer Center staff time to prepare for advising the following morning.
With Director Barbara Goodman as the mastermind behind the changes, we moved to a one-on-one advising model to better serve our students. To make this model successful, the Boyer Center staff relied heavily on the faculty advisors supplied by each department. Without them (and you all know who you are!), we would surely not have seen the success we saw this summer.
And we did see success! While we have had little or no official feedback, the anecdotal feedback we have received has been almost universally positive. We received verbal feedback from students and parents each session, and I cannot recall any negative comments.
Numerous people, in addition to those mentioned above, contributed to our success. Nancy Milmon, Shannan Freeman, Stephanie Gragg, Denise Bignar, Stephen Guzman and Aric Glover handled all the behind-the-scenes work (and front-line effort in the ISIS room!), without which the whole operation would have been a disaster. Bart Cohen, Jonah Kronenberger, Dylan Hurd and the information services staff provided invaluable support.
Finally, our orientation-staff student assistants – Geneva Quinn, Jonathan Carlsmith, Vanessa Stewart and Amy Gray – helped keep the students on task and entertained while they waited to be advised. They also handled any number of other duties. If I have left anyone out, you have my apologies! Rest assured we appreciate your contributions.
To summarize: we "Orientated" more students in a shorter time span than ever before; we implemented a very different system; and we did it all with flair and style. Or at least, we didn't mess it up.
Except when the student video blacked out on the day Dean Greenwood decided to watch the college presentation. Oh, well. You can't win 'em all.
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