Bookends of a Student’s Encounter with the College: New Student Orientation and Commencement Planning

This workshop will explore how we build on the admissions experience to inspire, challenge, and situate students to succeed in the college by inviting students into a long term relationship with the college. Max will conduct an orientation just as we do inside, with participants in the student role.

We will then switch gears and jump to the other bookend of students’ formal time with the college and discuss commencement planning, strategies, and principles and how to reproduce the ceremony in ways that bring the college into the prison and underscore the momentousness of the occasion. Commencement planning stands with student orientation as two core moments in which the program messages the centrality, power, and salience of the college as the relevant institution in student’s lives.