How do you extend a warm welcome to 4,200 freshmen? In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences it was by providing them the opportunity to meet and learn more about each other.
On August 22, an estimated 90 percent of the Class of 2009 streamed into the U. of I. Armory for the college's first-ever Freshman Welcome. For an hour-and-a-half, the students engaged in fun team-building exercises that helped them feel more at home in their new environment.
At the same time that they were getting to know each other, they were learning a little about themselves as a class.
Traditionally, graduation is the only time that students in LAS gather en masse. By holding the freshman gathering, LAS hoped to convey at the start, not the end, of students' undergraduate years a sense of the larger, and wonderful, community to which the students belong.
"We saw it as an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of our student population," says Mary Macmanus Ramsbottom, LAS associate dean for student academic affairs. "All of the activities were geared toward showing them how different they are from each other yet how much they share in common. Even if they don't remember the students they met, we hope they walked away feeling connected to something big and exciting."
