Orientation weekends for incoming first-year students occurred from June 16-28. To help organize the annual event, new coordinator Thomas Morgan, Director of Student Activities and Orientation, chose eight students to serve as orientation leaders (OLs) and help guide the incomers into life at Lasell.
OLs connect first-years with their classmates and fellow peers, while also ensuring that they learn about the campus, review their academic plans, schedules, and are able to prepare for the fall semester. Morgan spoke very highly of the students he was able to recruit for this summer, even with the limited number that applied for the position.
“The orientation leaders were awesome, we had eight, when we usually have twelve… Having a smaller staff did present some challenges, however they worked really really hard, and they were great. They all were really attentive to the needs of the students and very knowledgeable about the university after a great training session.” said Morgan.
Along with Morgan, a few of the orientation leaders agree, believing that even with the smaller staff they were able to make the best experience for incoming first-years. Junior psychology major and OL Grace Couto believed the staff was great and did the best they could with who they had available.
“We definitely had bigger groups of students, which felt kind of overwhelming. But I feel like we all work together really well and we got the work done,” said Couto, “I definitely had a moment before the session started, like am I really qualified to be an orientation leader? But I just had to trust my knowledge of the campus so it worked out really well.”
Sophomore sports communication major, Elliot Pototsky, another OL who worked alongside Couto, also had some positive things to say about his experiences from the summer orientation weekends.
“There were times where we definitely felt like we could have had more hands on deck but for the most part, we felt it was handled pretty well. There were times where we could feel, you know, there was some pressure to get work done, but we managed,” said Pototsky.
The issue that seemed to worry the OLs and Morgan most was that there wasn't the ability to have as much one on one smaller group time where the students could connect with the leaders and other students of the group more easily.
“The groups were larger than I would have liked, they weren't huge, they were still manageable, but small group time should be small group time,” said Morgan, “I still think it worked out well, students in their small groups were able to meet more students.”