The Office of Orientation and Student Transitions has created a New Student Week Board to improve the orientation process for the incoming Northwestern class of 2008 — using a system modeled after that of Purdue University.
Jen Meyers, student transitions coordinator, said the recently-added New Student Week Board and restructured peer advising program will better serve students during New Student Week.
“I felt like there wasn’t a lot of group cohesion, which is not good for a group trying to show new students the community,” Meyers said. “I wanted people to know who to turn to for help. For the new students and ourselves, we need to present a cohesive front.”
Meyers said she researched schools that offer a summer orientation program and said they give students a chance to bond with a small group. Purdue offers a week-long program similar to NU’s New Student Week, and Meyers said their program was a good model to emulate.
The six student board members will assume the duties of the 12 students who served last year as peer adviser coordinators.
These board members will represent the student perspective in areas like programming and coordination between Meyers and the peer advisers, Meyers said. She also selected 44 peer coordinators who each will supervise three or four peer advisers.
Meyers said she wanted to revamp the training system because the peer adviser training consisted of only two large training sessions followed by a series of e-mails. She said there was a lot of miscommunication about peer advisers’ responsibilities.
Medill freshman Alondra Canizal said her peer adviser could have been better informed about these duties.
“From the very beginning I felt ‘out of the loop’ as a new student,” Canizal said. “During the summer my roommate had already talked to her peer adviser. I hadn’t been contacted by mine, so I had to contact them first. As a new student this was nerve-wracking because it seemed like everyone else knew what was going on.”
At least one other student said she had a similar experience. Communication freshman Janelle Kwan said her peer advising experience made her feel more dissatisfied than anxious.
“I didn’t think (my peer adviser) was particularly helpful,” Kwan said. “The point of the peer advising system is to have a resource that answers all your questions. You don’t only have questions during the first two days of school, but that’s the only time they’re really a part of your Northwestern experience.”
Meyers said the renovated system is designed to address this concern. The training for peer coordinators will be a full-year process, she said.
Peer coordinators each are assigned one of the New Student Week Board members to be their board liaison. The coordinators attend a 90-minute training session every other week, and on their off-weeks, the peer coordinators train their peer advisers.
Meyers called this the “train the trainer” model.
“It gives everybody a greater sense of connection because some people are hesitant to ask questions in groups of 200-plus people,” she said.
Students who were peer advisers and peer coordinators from previous years said they hope the new system will be an improvement.
Erica Emme, a Communication junior and former peer coordinator, is now a member of the New Student Week Board. She said she likes the changes to the system, especially the additional training participants in the program will receive.
“This year there is a lot more training, accountability and extra effort that all of the coordinators and advisers are putting in.” Emme said. “I think the new students will be able to have a lot more of their questions answered from their peer adviser as opposed to an RA or a faculty adviser and also will feel a lot more like an important member of this campus.”
