In order to have a temporally closer proximity to Welcome Week and instill a better sense of community, Earl Warren College will combine its freshmen orientations into a single September session beginning this fall.
“”We saw Welcome Week as an extension of orientation,”” Warren Dean of Student Affairs Paul DeWine said. “”Wouldn’t it be great if orientation led right into Welcome Week?””
Warren previously hosted four back-to-back freshman orientations in June and one in September. The new format has one orientation for all 650 expected freshmen.
The single orientation, according to DeWine, will provide a seamless transition from move-in day to Welcome Week, and will also create synergy in the freshman class by bringing all of the students together at once.
Incoming freshmen will most likely experience new and different activities from those seen in the past. The larger orientation size allows for activities with a larger group than was possible in the past, DeWine said.
At the same time, more orientation leaders will be hired to maintain individual groups of approximately 15 students — allowing for the more close-knit activities of orientation to still take place.
“”It’s really encouraging us to look at orientation differently,”” DeWine said.
Orientation leaders will be hired and trained entirely in the spring, and will only be required to come back in September, just a few days before the session.
Although they will only be working for one weekend, the training will still be intensive, according to DeWine, and OLs may even work with the Warren resident advisers or Sixth College, which already has just one orientation.
Parents of incoming freshmen will be faced with less pressure during this new orientation. One trip for both move-in day and orientation will save families money, and the activities for parents have been reduced from a day and a half to a single day.
This is more convenient, according to Warren Provost Steven Adler, because it “”gives [parents] a little spare time to walk around and do their own thing.””
Adler stressed the importance of placing orientation next to Welcome Week, which he said he hopes will help freshmen absorb the skills necessary for college faster because they are forced to apply what they learn right away.
“”We hoped that when they were here in June they would get excited … in truth, they’re still high school students,”” Adler said.
Students have difficulty remembering the issues covered, both administrative and social, when a whole summer sits between orientation and Welcome Week, Adler said, pointing out that several students work and go on trips over the break.
“”A lot of these kids are going to be going off … their minds aren””t set to be here,”” he said. “”Students are more apt to be paying attention in September.””
Ideally, several traditional topics covered in orientation — class schedules, requirements, major options and other rules and regulations — will be transferred to online tutorials for incoming freshman to complete before they head to UCSD.
Enrollment for incoming freshman switched to an online system three years ago and Warren is hoping to follow a similar model to extend orientation past just the one and half days.
“”We are actually going to start orienting them before they get here,”” DeWine said.
The session is scheduled all day Thursday and Friday morning the week before Welcome Week activities begin, and will ideally be held all day Friday and half of Saturday in the future, DeWine said. The orientation will be hosted earlier this year in observance of Yom Kippur, which is celebrated Friday night into Saturday.
