Connections guides incoming freshmen
The highest-ever turnout – about 1,400 new students – flooded the USU campus and downtown Logan last week as part of the orientation course Connections, where they began to familiarize themselves with the college and Cache Valley.
“This program is designed to help ease the transition from high school to college. We teach [the students] everything from study skills to how to find their way around campus,” Ashley Thompson, student program coordinator for Connections, said.
Noelle Call, director of the retention and first year experience department, said the research the university has done shows Connections students are “happier with the campus and more involved in campus life.”
Connections is a two-credit class that begins the Wednesday before school starts and gives students the opportunity to get to know people, the campus and prepare for life away from home.
“This is a great tool,” Thompson said. “This is the first time students don’t have a mom or dad or guardian around, the first time they don’t have someone waking them up and making them go to class. They’re given a lot of freedom and we help them learn responsibility and manage their lives.”
More than half of incoming freshmen signed up for Connections, with the highest turnout in its 27-year history, at about 1,400.
The four-day program ran from Aug. 23-26 and offered a variety of activities. Students went hiking to the Wind Caves up Logan Canyon, socialized with other freshmen, watched a hypnotist and played games to get them acquainted with campus. They also paid $5 for a tour of downtown Logan, where they wandered Main Street, received food from several local businesses and “moshed to ’60s music” from a live band, Thompson said.
Before they came to Connections, they were required to read the book “Warriors Don’t Cry” by Carlotta Walls LaNier, complete an assignment and attend a lecture given by the author – known as one of the “Little Rock Nine.” This was designed to help them adjust to the difference between high school and college coursework, Thompson said.
The students also attended classes on how to deal with time, stress, money and college life.
Steve Bachman, a freshman in mechanical engineering, said, “I felt like it was busy work. If you’re at college, you should know how to make time for sleep.”
Marketing and finance junior Corinna Gross said she wished the classes would have focused more on “how to work the system.” She said it would have been helpful to learn more about where she should go and what she should do to get the financial aid she needed and how to navigate the Registrar’s Office.
Mallory Hockin, a freshman in accounting and interior design, said, “The program wasn’t completely what I was expecting. I thought it would show us things like where to go if you want to change your major and things like that. I’m still glad I did it, though. I got to know a lot of people and it was a helpful not a hurtful experience.”
Call said Connections is aimed at keeping students at USU.
“Freshmen are the future of USU and we want them to get involved. We have such a great group of students and we want them to stick around,” Call said.
“We had a really good group this year,” Thompson said. “They’re going to go places.”
Computer engineering freshman Wes Boggs said overall, he was glad he came, although he thought the program would be different.
Boggs said he liked getting to the campus before other people so he didn’t “wander around like a moron on the first day.”