New Student Orientation with Katie Motycki & Becki Chichester

Hello, welcome to the warm room. My name is Laila Dota. I'm a junior public relations major and I am a social media intern with Penn State's undergraduate admissions. Awesome, nice to meet you, Delilah. I'm Katie Moticki, Director for Student Orientation and Transition Programs here at Penn State. Awesome, what is your role? Right, so I'm the Director for Student Orientation and Transition Programs here at Penn State. I've been here at the university since 2013 and in that time I've always worked in the Student Orientation and Transition Programs office. Our office serves new first-time in college students through new student orientation. We also support transfer students and change of campus students as well as providing welcome week programming for the University Park campus and one of our signature events is President's new student convocation. What is the President's new student convocation? Well, that's a fun treat. At University Park, the President's new student convocation is the only time that the entire first-year class is in the same spot together. I did do that. Yeah, you did. Did you wear a colorful shirt? Yeah, I think I wore red. Yeah, red because you're in the College of Communications. Yeah, so students in the College of Communications, I'm a College of Communications grad, by the way. I also wear a red shirt to convocation and President's new student convocation is where we have the President and the Provost and the Deans of the Colleges, lots of Vice Presidents, the Board of Trustees, all join us and all 9,000 plus of the new students in the Bryce Jordan Center, the Saturday before the class of start in the fall semester, and it's really like the kickoff to the academic year. Very pomp and circumstance. There's academic regalia, the University Mace is there, and it's an opportunity, but all like I said, it's the only opportunity that the whole class has to be together because because of the size, we come to orientation in small groups. We, even when you graduate, you graduate by academic college, so convocation is really special for that reason and don't worry for all the parents and families listening. We do live stream it if parents and families want to watch it because we basically fill the Bryce Jordan Center with our new students. It's washed it. They were curious. Yeah, that's what was going on. They texted me and they were like, that looks overwhelming. So it actually was not overwhelming. I send them meeting a lot of people. Yeah, my major. Yeah, and you went with, you probably went with like the people on your floor. Yeah, it was my roommate. And she was a different, I think she was undergraduate. Oh, she had a purple shirt then. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait the shirts are still the same though. The shirts, the shirts are still the same. We have to keep them the same because tradition is important here, right? So the color shirts really matter from, from year to year. Oh, I didn't know that. I thought it was just a choice of color. Well, do you want me to tell you how we chose the color shirts? Yeah. Okay. So it was chosen before, before me. I didn't make this decision, but I understand that the committee before me that chose it, the color of the shirt has to do with the, with a color in the doctoral hood of the discipline. So like you were read in college of communications, like red is not a Penn State color, right? But you see the red shirts in college of communication, because that means something in the college of communications, like terminal degree. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there is like a rhyme to the reason, reason to the rhyme, whatever that is. Yeah. So I guess what people would like to know is what is new student orientation and what does it stand for? Well, new student orientation is the opportunity that new and new student, a new first year student has to really start to understand and experience what it means to be a Penn stator. And experience life on campus, they get to come to campus for a new student orientation visit. That's probably like the hallmark of new student orientation. But in addition to that, they have an opportunity to meet with an academic advisor, schedule their classes, and learn many, many, many things about their academic life, their social life, and the myriad of opportunities that are here for them as a Penn State student. Awesome. So what would you say like the main goal of orientation is because I know there's a lot of different aspects of it, but would you hope that students gain from it? I really hope that students are coming to to orientation, feeling prepared and ready for probably like the first six weeks of the semester, right? There's so much here at Penn State for students to know and to do and to experience. And one of the things that I try to say at new student orientation is like, if we were going to teach you every single thing that you needed to know about being a Penn State student, it would probably take us four years to do it, which is about how long it could take you to get your degree, right? But really what I hope is that when a student leaves orientation, they leave knowing a bit about the resources that are available to them, because again, we can't possibly teach them about everything, but not only a bit about what's available, but also how to help themselves, like maybe knowing a few key people about who they can ask a question to, whether that's the academic advisor or a member of the orientation team, or you know, someone that they just made a connection with while they were here, someone in student aid or undergraduate admissions, that the connections or maybe more importantly, most importantly, another new student who's here, right? So the connections that they can make with other people while they're here and to those resources can really help to make a very, very, very large place seem so small. One of my favorite things to say during orientation is I always ask students to turn and meet someone that they haven't talked to yet, right? Yeah, you have to do that. And like, okay, that's the easiest thing that you can do. You don't have to get out of your chair, and I usually give you a prompt. The prompt is probably tell me about your high school mascot. Did you have a high school mascot? I did a blue eagle. Yeah, okay, I was a cougar, right? So now we can just like the ice is broken. We can talk about it. So, so asking, asking people to talk about something that's like very low stakes and very safe, but opens up the door for us to then talk means that you might be one of those friendly faces that I see on campus, because when we come to orientation, we're here in the summertime. Stay college in the summertime is an awesome place to be, but it is not anywhere near the population of what it is in the whole, in like the academic year, right? So if you can make a connection with someone at orientation and have a friendly face or two, imagine how that makes you feel on the first day of class when it's 955 and all the classes just let out on on a Monday and there's like 20,000 people walking down Polic Road, right? And that's super overwhelming. But if you can make a couple of those connections or like feel like you know where you're going, which is another side effect of new student orientation, a side effect, a good side effect is that you get to come to campus. And, right, we tell you, come prepared to walk a long distance. Like you are going to, yes, the building that you need to go to next is 20 minutes. And we have built a 20-minute walk into the schedule. So you also can't like dilly-dally, right? You got to move while you're going. Because you have to, if you, you got to go, you got to go with purpose. I'm going to put me because when I was in, I had my new student orientation like the overnight in Polic. And then my building was right across the way. So I kind of already knew where I was going. Yeah. Dorm wise and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So we don't always use, we don't always use buildings in Polic for the overnight stay. We kind of like just move around based on what's what's available and what kind of meets all of our needs. But it's the overnight stay is a big part in helping people feel connected. And also knowing like how the dining hall works. And where to go, like we were really trying to give you as students a little slice of what it's like to be a Penn State student. Have a roommate gets to a place on time, have to navigate the campus, all that kind of good stuff. I was just telling someone earlier today that there are like basically two things you have to do as a Penn State student. And one is come to new student orientation because that's the only way you can get your first semester class schedule. And the second way is, or the second thing you have to do is I think you have to apply to graduate. Like those are like the only two things that you absolutely have to do. Everything else is like student's choice. So what happened if a student didn't go to NSL, like could they still schedule their classes? There is still a, it is very, we have a very low population of students who don't attend new student orientation. Like single digits. Like I could count them all on my two hands. And that's that like is a pretty big that is a good accomplishment for us considering the fact that we're talking about 93, 94, 95 hundred people who are coming to new student orientation, you know, the size of the incoming class. Generally speaking, people who can't come to orientation have like a very legitimate reason. The most of them from this past summer were students, international students who had visa issues and were so delayed that they arrived after the semester had already started. In that instance, we still have a touch point with them. They still like come to student orientation and transition programs. And we still help them individually because whether you're doing it in whether you're like late or whether you're on time doing new student orientation, there's still many, many, many things that you need to know to be successful here, which is what our ultimate goal is. So the answer is, yes, you have to come to the still to schedule their classes and like get the information that they are not able to get if they can't come. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's part, I mean, it's abbreviated, right. And that is not the solution that we're looking for for anybody. But in a, you know, worst case scenario, we'll help the students as best we're able to. Yes. So I guess for me, when I was here, I scheduled my classes in my academic building that I was going to be going to when I was a freshman. So how would like, do they still schedule their classes that way? How do your students schedule their classes? Yeah, we had a big change to new student orientation in summer 2025. And I'm joined today by my colleague Becky. And when Becky comes on, you're going to hear Becky talk about all the details. But, but what I'll tell you right now is that part of new student orientation, we broke new student orientation into a three-step process. There are things that students need to do asynchronously using their NSO task list. And there are the set, that's the first step. The second step is that students will meet with an academic advisor in their college and schedule their courses. And that happens virtually before the student comes to orientation. And then a student comes to the physical in-person new student orientation. And we offer those in basically in June, July, in August, the in-person programs. That's at the University Park campus. It varies across the Commonwealth. So in the new model of new student orientation, which our listeners right now would be preparing for, they will meet with an advisor in schedule courses before coming to orientation. Ask me what my favorite part about that is. What's your favorite part about it? That they come to new student orientation. And we are able to say something to them, like they're like, they're like, well, what do I do? I have a couple minutes of free time. And we're able to say, okay, pull up your class schedule and like go find your classroom building. And to see how many students were genuinely excited about that last summer was really cool. And then another cool side effect is that when they're here and then they still have an opportunity to meet with their academic college during your student orientation. And they're sitting next to somebody and they're like, hey, Delilah, what class are you in? And then they're like looking to see if they have any of the similar classes. And then they might have made a new friend in a new way or a new connection in that way because they have, they know that they're in a class with someone that they're at new student orientation with. Yeah, I wish I had that because I feel like when you come the first day, what I did when I was the first year is I walked around the campus just like to find my classes. But I guess I wish I had that during NSO because then I had got like some free time I could have done with like my parents. Yeah, I had walked with me to classes too. You probably still got lost in the first day, right? 100% I used Google Maps for a lot of my late to find a lot of my class buildings. Yeah, that's a good tip, right? It is a good tip. Yeah, put your earbuds in. Yeah. And then like have Google Maps give you the walking direction. So people think you're listening to your favorite podcast. Yeah. But indeed, you're getting walking directions. A good tip. That is a good tip. How do you schedule NSO? A great question. So students have to accept their offer of admission. And after they accept their offer of admission, basically the next business day, they'll start to get email communication from about new student orientation. The first step is that the students have to access their NSO task list. The NSO task list is meant to be a very comprehensive list of things that students have to do from making a reservation to new student orientation, to instructions on how to upload a photo for their Penn State ID card, to receiving instructions about what immunization records have to be submitted to the university. So it's it's pretty detailed and very comprehensive. We generally start to accept new student orientation reservations like in early April. And students do that via their NSO task list. So students are in complete control of what's like they see the options available to them based on their semester of admission and their academic college. And they choose a program and a time frame that works for them. And then they make the reservation on the NSO task list. They're able to add in most cases, they're able to add up to two guests to attend with them. So if they were trying to bring family members with them, they would be able to do that. And once we get family member information, we start to send information about new student orientation to those family members who were added to the guest reservation. Okay, so you can only bring two guests. Is that like are there events where it's just the two guests only or there events where you can also have guests that you can bring from outside of the two that you slow the answers to only two. Yeah, there's there's a lot of students in limited space. And the best way we can provide the opportunity for our family member is to limit limit the number of guests who can come. So we do limit it to two guests per student. Which I know sometimes makes for some tough decisions. Also, while I'm listening for my parents and family friends, when you get here, we're only able to issue one parent family guide per student. So you have to share or visit the electronic version online. But those are some things that are just like some real real limitations of what's available. Right. Well, would you say what's one misconception students have about NSO? Probably that they think it's going to be like every other visit they've ever been on. Like ever, did you go to a lot of college visits? I only went to around two. You went to around two. Yeah, two or three. So you say you visited a couple of schools and then you've signed on Penn State. Yeah, so I was going to go to another school. And then I didn't get in. So I applied to Penn State because I was like big school communications. And then I ended up loving it. I actually committed the day that I came for accepted students. Yeah. So I think I think that one of the biggest misconceptions is that people think like, oh, I've already been on a visit. I don't need to go to new student orientation. And the difference there is you do one is that everybody wants a class schedule. Right. And that's certainly an important piece of it. But also, I think that you learn about and take in the environment and the information differently when you know that this is the place that you're coming to. And like you're thinking about how you're interacting with the person sitting next to you differently because they could be you know, a classmate or a friend or roommate or something or something like that. Somebody, an old colleague of mine once told me that basically like if we think about the college admissions process and we have the admissions like through the admissions process, the admissions counselors and the admissions team is like selling you on all the reasons why you want this place. Right. And that's good and important work. And then you come to orientation and we're like if you're about a car before. Well, when you buy a car, like there's a salesman who's like selling it to you. And then there's like this little tiny tiny opportunity where someone gets in and like shows you what all the buttons do like how to control the radio or how to connect your phone. And like that's what we're doing at orientation. Like we're actually going to take it a little deeper and then show you show you that the the the details that we weren't able to tell you about in the admissions process, right? Like like what the schedule builder is. You don't need to know. No idea for NSO. Right. Schedule builder is something that you will use as a student. You don't really need to know about it as the in the in the process of the admissions process, but you do need to know about it as a student. And so that's one example of like how we drill in a little bit differently. I think the other pieces is that I don't know if this is a misconception or like a piece of advice that I would give to everybody is that everybody is at new student orientation. And it's the only time everybody else is going to be at new student orientation. And so I think that like it's really important for students to come in with that mindset and like that open mind. And like remember that the person sitting next to you either like doesn't want to be here or is super nervous like probably having many of the same feelings that you are. And it would be really cool if everybody knew that. And then like took a chance and said like, Oh, hey, I'm Katie nice to meet you. Like where are you from or like what's your high school mascot or something. So I'm remembering that like we're all in this together. Like literally as we're going through and preparing for college. It's funny because I still see the same people that I had NSO. I still see some of the people on campus. Yeah, do you have a Snapchat group chat? No, I see them through like I have an internship on campus. Yeah, I see them through like the I guess they're in like the fan club of the internship that I'm part of. Oh, that's fancy sports. I work. What's the internship? I work for Penn State Analytics about management. Okay, so what's your sport? I'm a woman's oil ball and wrestling. Fun. Yeah, so they are in the fan club of the sports. And that's where you see them. Yeah, I see them in like the I'm not sure what the name is, but I see them like behind me and like I'll turn around and I'm like, oh, he was a man. That's so great for she was in the NSO group. So yeah, that is funny. And that's happening to just you like as a regular student coming to orientation. That's so cool. It's also happening in orientation leaders everywhere. Orientation leaders, Becky will tell you more about them too, but they're like the student leaders that we hire to work with us in the summer and they like post the students throughout the student orientation. And some of my favorite things are when formal orientation leaders reach out to me to tell me in like the most random situations that they have encountered a student who was in their their orientation leader group. It just happened from someone from like 2014. So like more than 10 years ago, I got an email last week from someone who was like, I just ran into someone in Baltimore who wasn't we realized was in my orientation leader group. I feel like you wouldn't expect that though going to such a big school. Like I wouldn't expect to ever see people on campus, but then because rushing from class to class, there's so many people, but I see so many people that I know. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah. It's a small world. You can do a lot of cool things here. So for NSO, do you get to pick the day that you go or is it assigned? Not assigned. That you the student has choice. There are only 14 programs, only 14. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? 14 sounds. I don't know if it sounds like a lot or a little to you, but we used to do so many programs like up to 40 of them in it. I do remember there's so many. Yeah. So we've we've really reduced the number of programs that are available available to even be offered. So students have choice within our reservation system. So when a student logs in to make their reservation, they will see from a list, the number of options for them to attend the in-person new student orientation. And they have to choose one of those that's available. If it's not if it's not available to them, if there's like not a day that's available or a program that's available, it's either full or not available to them based on their academic college because sometimes there's a situation where not every college is seeing students every day. And so we have to only present ones where the academic college is available. Okay, so you really cut it down from a lot to only 14. Yes. That's crazy. Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah. And now we're bringing more students to to each orientation program. How many students is there? Do you think a big number will stress people out or not? No, I don't think so. I mean, people will know I guess getting accepted that they're already coming to a big institution. Yeah. We would see up to about 650 people in each orientation program. And 650 students. And then we add on the two parent families for each student. But those that group of 650 is only together in one space like once or twice. Most of the time during orientation, you're spending it in a smaller group with your orientation leader. And the orientation leaders have like 24 or 25. Maybe max of students, no more than 30 students. So each orientation leader with a much smaller number to hopefully make it be more make it feel less like a member. I feel like that's how I feel as a whole here. Like I feel like it's such a big school. And then like every class that I have that's like a little bit smaller. I end up seeing the same people over and over again, which is nice. I feel like it's as soon as NSO. Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah. You can build a really special community here. I agree. And one is NSO for the people that don't know. For the people who don't know and they're coming, they're admitted to Penn State in either the summer or fall. NSO happens in June, July and August in person new student orientation. They can access their task list in March. We accept reservations starting in April. And that the task list has activities for them to do throughout that whole time frame. But the in person new student orientation is either in June, July or August. Amazing. Well, thank you for talking to Katie. You're welcome. It was so fun. I can't wait for you to talk to Becky. Me too. Hello. Now we have Becky. Becky, would you like to tell me about more about what you do? Sure. My name is Becky. I am the Associate Director for New Student Orientation here in student orientation transition programs. So what I do in my role is I provide a lot of leadership on the logistics and planning and execution of new student orientation at the University Park campus. Awesome. Katie told me you were going to tell me about students scheduling their courses. Yeah, I'd be happy to talk a little bit more about that because this is something that is new. We revamped our new student orientation model at University Park last summer. Katie kind of mentioned that. So if you are an incoming first year student and you have a sibling or cousin or a neighbor or someone who's gone through new student orientation prior to 2025, your new student orientation is going to be different than what we did back then. I think you kind of talked a little bit. It was very different than how it is now. Yeah. I think one of the really big pieces of that is when students scheduled their classes. You scheduled your classes when you came to NSO in person. Now students scheduled their classes virtually with an academic advisor in a small group or individually prior to coming to campus. So Katie talked about the task list being like this being your first entry point into checking off some of those important parts of new student orientation. The second piece would be that we call it an academic consultation and course scheduling window, which is when you have a consultation with an advisor in your academic college and then you also schedule your classes on your own after you have that. Will that academic advisor be your advisor or will it be great question? Not necessarily. Sometimes you might have the same advisor once the semester starts that you had during NSO but not always. So you might have the opportunity to meet an advisor during NSO and have a different advisor once the semester starts. But every student does have an academic advisor whenever they're here at Penn State. Yeah. I know that when I had my academic or I spoke to an academic advisor when I did it. I have a different academic advisor but I still see the senior advisor or I'll meet with him during like the office hours I have. Yeah. So I see them from out your face. Yeah for sure. Katie also told me about orientation leaders. Can you tell me more about them? Yes. So our orientation leaders at university part are really a super key super important part of not only making the day happen but really helping new first year students transition into life as a Penn stator. You know our orientation leaders they are current Penn State students so they're the experts they're the ones leading a lot of sessions and sharing a lot of information with the new students about how they can use resources all the tips and tricks of being a Penn State student. So we have a team of it depends on the year but anywhere from like 24 to 30 orientation leaders who are all current Penn State students and they lead sessions and they're a really important part of our program. How do they apply for that? That's a great question. We recruit new orientation leaders every year so every fall semester we have our applications open usually middle of November applications open to be an orientation leader and we could recruit until the end of January and anyone is welcome to apply if they are undergraduates students who will have at least 24 credits by the end of the spring semester. So any major anything like that we we love having a wide array of experiences and viewpoints on our orientation leader team because that's pretty representative of the Penn State student experience. Are they trained? Yes. Oh my gosh we do so much training. We have training opportunities in the spring semester for the new cohort of orientation leaders and then we also do training once the summer starts. So about two weeks before our first NSO program we have the orientation leaders come and we train for two weeks on you know some of those detailed things like they need to know what they're doing and when you know during NSO but we also do a lot of teaching on resources and skills to be successful that they'll share with the incoming students. That's awesome so they kind of like to be trained before they get thrown into it. Yes and we really make sure they're the experts on all kinds of information because I'm sure you can imagine we get a lot of questions at NSO. It's nice and they have the answers to like question or they might not know them and how they do know based on the training. Yes 100 percent. So what would you say something what would you say that something unique about Penn State's NSO? Oh good question. I think off the top of my head I can think of two things. First I think here at the University Park campus it's pretty special that students have the opportunity to stay overnight in a residence hall as part of NSO. That really gives you a good glimpse into what it's like to live in a residence hall. Most students don't have any experience with that. So being able to kind of see what it's like in one of our residence halls and have as is really important for NSO. So that's another thing too. The roommate that you have for NSO might not be the roommate that you have once the semester starts you know it we randomly assign for new student orientation. And I think another really unique part about new student orientation University Park is that we have an interactive musical theater performance as part of NSO. Yes I'm sure you do. It is called Resultable Vary and it is an interactive musical theater performance. I was written by Penn State students for Penn State students about the Penn State student experience. It's so much fun. There's some crowd interaction involved. They're learning a lot through Resultable Vary students learn a lot about the resources that we have some tips on how to stay healthy and stay fun campus. It's a really fun way to learn some of that information that isn't just like a PowerPoint presentation. What's your favorite part about NSO? I am a big Resultable Vary fan. You will hear me singing some of the songs from it throughout you know. In my personal life I'm singing all those songs all the time. But I think my favorite part of new student orientation is and it might sound a little cheesy but it really is my favorite part is being able to see students interact with each other and start to form some of those connections like my favorite thing is when we are at NSO and I see two students like chatting with each other and sharing like Snapchat information or contact information or something like I love being able to see students make connections with other students and start to build their connection. That's a way for them to when they come in here if like they don't know anyone or the dad who they're living with it's like a nice opportunity for them to be like okay I know somebody at least that I'm going to see on campus rows of where they are. Absolutely. Yeah that's important. What would you say are some popular questions for students or like in their families? That's a good question. I think a lot of students have questions about getting involved on campus and how they can make friends. I know that's the involvement fair. Yes the involvement fair shout out involvement fair. Making friends on campus can be kind of challenging. How did you what did you do to make friends? I know right when I came here I had a couple of people that I knew from high school a couple of my childhood best friends when your or came with me but I got involved physically. I joined like as many clubs as I could in my major specifically and I just went to the involvement fair at the hub. The one that they do like for two days or something like that and I went with people that I had met or I was just like do you want to go? Yeah I just signed up. Yeah and students are always so concerned about getting involved finding their people finding where they belong on campus. So I think we get a lot of questions about that. We do have a whole session for students where we talk about some of those ways to get involved on campus whether it's a Greek life getting involved with athletics clubs and organizations working on campus is another way to get involved so we kind of cover a lot of those different things. So I think that's a really big one for students and a question that we get a lot of times whenever it comes to questions from families. We get a lot of questions about what's a pack and what to leave at home. How should they prepare? Oh yeah I know. Oh so how to prepare for NSO. We recommend that they wear good shoes because they're going to be doing a lot of walking. Yep you're walking. Bringing a water bottle, completing all of the items on the task list that are required before orientation will really help set you up for success. That's one nice thing about the task list is there's deadlines on some of those items and if students complete them before the deadline and before they come to orientation once they're here they're ready to rock and roll because they have all of the information that they need. So what if they don't complete it by the deadline? Do they get like an extension or they have to. We'll send them some reminders. Yeah we'll send them some reminders to make sure that they're able to do it. And then will my commonwealth campus have NSO? I don't know if I asked that correctly but will the commonwealth campus have NSO other commonwealth campuses? Yeah new student orientation is required for all first year students at all Penn State campuses, all undergraduate students at all Penn State campuses. So yes all students get to go to new student orientation but what that experience looks like varies by campus. Every campus has its own unique traditions and resources and things to learn. So we talked a little bit about what NSO looks like here at the University Park campus but it might look very different at different commonwealth campuses. So would there be an NSO for like a two plus two student like once they leave campus they come to another one. Do they have to do that NSO experience? New student orientation is not required for change of campus students who started at a commonwealth campus and come to a different one. Another population that kind of fits into that would be transfer students. So students who started at another institution and are transferring to Penn State. Some campuses require orientation for transfer students. Some campuses don't. So here at the University Park campus for example, New student orientation is not required for transfer students but if you go to a commonwealth campus your orientation might be required as a transfer student. And for change of campus students it is not required to attend orientation if you're changing campus to University Park but we do still offer orientation opportunities of course because there's still a lot to learn being a new member of our community. So we offer virtual orientations for transfer students for change of campus students that they're able to participate in so they can learn more about University Park before they get here. Is that something that would you say like the virtual sessions are popular among the transfer students or the change of campus students? Oh my gosh yes sometimes they like max out like you can only fit so many people in a Zoom room and so we have to set the you know the capacity of how many people we can allow to sign up for one of those programs and sometimes they do fill up so yeah there's a lot of really great information that's shared during those sessions and you know of course like transfer students they know how to kind of do college because they've done college somewhere else but they're new to Penn State or change of campus students they know Penn State but they're new to the University Park campus so we really tailor the messages that those students get in their orientation programming to make it really relevant to their unique experience. Are there any events on campus for them when they come? Yes yes yes yes no we have an in-person program it's usually the Sunday before the semester starts here at University Park it's our change of campus and transfer student welcome where there's some information sharing you know there's presentation that talks about some stuff but a big component of that program is having them get to know each other as well so there's kind of like a social component to that welcome event because that's a really important part of being new to any community whether you're a first-year student transfer student change campus student is finding your people and so we give them the opportunity to do that the in-person welcome event the day before the semester starts. I kind of like an opportunity to meet people that are in the same boat as them. Yes 100 percent. Like they're technically first-year students in a way also. They're new to our they're new to our community and they're adjusting and learning and yeah it's great to know other people who are going through a similar transition as you. What feedback have you gotten about like first-year students in their NSO experience? That's a great question and we do you know send out a survey so we get lots of good feedback from students and their families overall I think one thing that was really interesting about the survey feedback this past summer was a lot of students were so much less stressed and didn't find NSO to be a stressful experience because they had already scheduled their classes in advance right. You're stressful for me. I know when I got there I was like where am I going what am I doing? How am I getting my classes then it's like when people would have their program before I would or they're like date before mine I was like did I now let like get the classes that I was supposed to have? It's so stressful yeah it used to be really stressful to have to schedule classes in person at NSO but we removed that and so our feedback from students really reflected that this past summer so students were able to engage with the programming and the campus and everything in a different way without feeling like that panic yeah that is relatable yeah because then they're like where am I supposed to go like the class wise and like location wise too like you want to get classes that are kind of close 100% so I think that's important yeah yeah and what personal advice what personal advice do you have for students that are heading to NSO? I think my biggest piece of advice is to keep an open mind. I mentioned results will vary our interactive musical theater show if you heard that and you like cringed at it you know that's not for everyone I totally understand that go into it with an open mind if you hate doing icebreakers and you're so nervous about having to do icebreakers with your orientation leader small group keep an open mind engage in the program with an open mind and I think you will be able to learn some unexpected things about yourself and about campus and how we can how we can really shape your Penn State experience so keeping that open mind. I feel like I have to keep an open mind. Yeah I came because at the beginning I was like well I don't get to pick I didn't get to pick my roommate for NSO overnight so that's free to me. Can be scary. And scared me because I was like okay why can't run by friends so it's like a good opportunity if you're coming into school like random that you randomly selected for me but I guess I was just nerve-wracking because it's like you don't know who you're gonna get. Yeah it's really pushing you outside that comfort zone I feel like there's a number of pieces of orientation that puts you outside your comfort zone and part of that is by design because as a first year student you are going to be outside your comfort zone constantly so kind of getting some of that practice at NSO on you know meeting new people and getting outside your comfort zone is really important. Yeah. Thank you for joining us Becky. Of course. Enjoy talking to you. Yeah thanks for having us we appreciate being able to talk about new student orientation and we hope to see everyone who's listening in the fall semester. 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