[Prof. Karen Goodlad]

This discussion board will be used to collect reflections from the pilot department orientations. Consider the following:

Were your student leaders prepared?
What task/role of your student leader would you replicate? eliminate?
What do you feel is the most important information you shared with our new students?
What information will be replicated next semester? What will be eliminated?
What happened during the session that you did not expect or anticipate? How will you replicate or avoid this scenario again?

*Note, this is a private site so only the committee members can see the discussion.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by Prof. Karen Goodlad.

[maureenarcher]

I had the opportunity to work with Karen Goodlad on Tuesday 8/11/15 . The student leaders who worked with the faculty facilitators in the academic sessions were engaging, willing to share their memories of how they developed new skills to help them be successful college students.
The most important information they gave to the new students was to be organized in their time and many said their used a similar calender like the sample that was distributed at the academic sessions. The student also encourage joining into the college community by becoming a member in a student club.
Maureen Archer

[maureenarcher]

Below are the thoughts from the Dental Hygiene Student Peer Leaders: August 13th 2015
Response 1:

Hello Dr. Archer,
Sorry for the late feedback.

I enjoyed the whole experience of introducing potential freshmen to the department. I really wish I could have had a group of people do that for me when I first started college then maybe it wouldn’t have taken me as long to decide what I wanted to do with my future.

As far as the turn out, time was the main influence in my opinion. I believe that after lunch most of the students departed. I do have a suggestion in order to make the potential department freshmen be more interested in coming to our future presentations….what if we made posters and hung them around the school (especially the cafeteria) on freshmen orientation day saying ” Come visit the Dental Hygiene department after lunch! If you are looking for a rewarding career in the dental field, don’t be shy and come say hi.” Something witty, along those lines. This will make the students even more aware. Overall I think that the power points were informative and I very much liked the idea of the one on one between the current students and potential students. Hope I can help again!

Thank you,
Gabriella Kivman

Response 2:

Dear Professor Archer,
Having each department host their own orientation was a great idea. I believe that it made the experience more intimate and less frightening for the incoming freshmen. A smaller setting also made students focus on the presentation as oppose to getting distracted in a much larger setting. It made it easier to participate as well. Having current students interact with them without any faculty was awesome. I think it made the freshmen feel a lot more comfortable and made it more relatable. Students did ask more questions with us then when the presentation was given. Next year, students should be asked to write a question on a piece of paper and hand it in. At the end of the presentation, a few questions should be randomly chosen and answered. This would be a good way to have everyone participate and give those who would otherwise be to timid to do so a chance to ask a question.

It was unfortunate that a small number of students showed up. Maybe next year, each department can serve their own lunch so that students would be deterred from leaving right after. Or each department can have their orientation during the morning and lunch should be served and eaten where ever the mandatory sexual harassment course will take place. This will also help deter students from leaving since they are already where they need to be. Or each department can raffle off a prize making it enticing for students to come back after lunch.

Hope this was helpful.
Thank you,
Xochitl

[Gretta]

Orientation to HUS Department:

There were 10 students who attended orientation to HUS department on August 13, 2015 at 2.00 p.m. I was disappointed as we had expected more students. However, there was lot of energy and passion from our faculty and two past student leaders in motivating and giving as much information to the new students. Some of the feedback from the new students was: Ninety percent of them ‘strongly agreed’ that the orientation was useful and informative, well organized and their questions were answered. they also ‘strongly agreed’ that faculty explained well about advisement and internship. when asked what was most useful they reported the following: orientation material packet, advisement and internship, and information shared by past student leaders.

Gretta Fernandes

[Susan Lowry]

Orientation feedback from the Hospitality Management Dept.

We had 27 students out of a possible 69. We were disappointed by the low turnout although we had enough leftover printed material for the transfer student orientation. There were 3 transfer students in the freshman orientation and they had the most questions especially about course requirements.

Our student leaders were on time and eager to participate. They followed directions and assisted the faculty during set up and were professional and thorough during the orientation itself. Two students ran break out sessions by themselves and one assisted Prof. Abreu with the computer while she gave an overview of OpenLab and the Hospitality FaceBook page. The students leaders that acted as tour guides were great and played a valuable role in making the incoming students comfortable.

One of the key pieces of information we shared and reiterated through most of the break out sessions was the importance of advisement and taking the right classes in the right order plus how to be successful participants in their own education through time management and volunteer opportunities.

I think we will stick with the same itinerary and schedule. It was easier having the extra half hour and we covered the material without rushing through it plus we were able to take a few questions.

I didn’t expect to have to answer transfer students questions during the freshman orientation, it was material the freshman did not need to sit through. The questions were very specific to their situations and so complex I needed to advise one students after the orientation.

[Anthony DeVito]

Anthony
Orientation feedback from Radiologic Technology & Medical Imaging.
We had 12 students attend our orientation on August 13, 2015. We would have liked to see more students attend, hopefully next year our numbers will increase. I was told by some of the student facilitators that many students left after lunch, did any of you also hear this? The students that did attend were focused and came prepared with specific questions regarding our department’s requirements. Additionally, the student facilitators were well trained and did an excellent job.
The students particularly enjoyed the tour of our energized lab conducted by our CLT, Ms. Douglass. They were amazed that City Tech has a working x-ray lab that they will be able to train in. I was surprised that we needed the entire hour and a half for the orientation, as I stated they had a lot of questions, which took some time to answer. I’m hoping our orientation committee can come up with a few ways to keep the students here after lunch, giving us better attendance for next year.

[Ossama Elhadary]

Good morning,

We had more students that expected and we had to open an additional classroom to accommodate them. The student leaders were well prepared, and in our case, we asked them to demo examples of their work. The focus was primarily on the student demos and on ice-breaking activities. The ice breaking (see below) activity was a great success and we will definitely repeat it in the future,

Ice Breaking activity:
The purpose is to get the students to talk to each other, and to emphasize the importance of working together. In the midst, the students will learn a little bit about the different IT specializations and college roles (chair, registrar, adviser, etc).

We divided each class into 2 teams. Each team was given a list of 15 people who are on a yacht. The yacht has a leak and is sinking fast. There is only one lifeboat and it will accommodate only nine people — not one more can fit and there are no more life boats or life jackets.

The group had to come to an agreement as to which of 15 people gets to go in the lifeboat and be saved. However, they also had to list those they save in order of importance — because if they run out of food and water the “less important people’ will have to be dumped overboard.
Here is the list of people:
– A pregnant woman
– A US senator
– CityTech department chair
– An ex-convict
– A male physician
– A female physician
– A database administrator
– A software programmer
– A sailor
– A professional wrestler
– A network engineer
– You
– The registrar
– A plumber
– An academic adviser

We gave the teams 15 minutes to discuss and then we allowed them to explain their decisions, and then we had a general discussion.

[sbrandt]

Hello All;
I had a great experience with the student leaders. And each of my session was full!
I took a survey at the beginning of each session asking each group why they chose Citytech. This became the ice breaker for each session.