To: Dr. Vincent Boudreau, President of the City College of New York

From: Kareem Baalbaki, Student at City College of New York

Date: September 13, 2018

Subject: Improvement of the student orientation

The purpose of this memo is to discuss ways that the new student orientation can be improved to make kids feel more welcome and excited about starting a semester at the City College of New York.

Summary

The new student orientation that is implemented right now is very mundane and compared to the CSI (College of Staten Island) new student orientation that I’ve also attended, ours can use some work. The students sit in the auditorium for an hour or two and then are dragged around campus in complete silence. My proposal for making our orientation appealing to students is to make it more amiable or engaging. I would like to elaborate on my ideas and meet with you when you have a chance to talk about it.

Discussion

When I attended the College of Staten Island new student orientation they helped us create classes like City College did, but what made their orientation engaging is how they made the students interact and the entertainment they provided. After separating us into our majors they put on something like a jeopardy game show where one student from each major comes up on the stage and the students in their group can help them solve them questions. When I attended the Orientation at City college it was plain, and I didn’t interact with any other students. I understand a lot of people don’t like to get up and share, but some new students have trouble making friends and these little interactions we set up can help assist with that. My solution to this includes a reconstruction of the orientation but a more proactive one.

City College did one sort of nice event that lasted about 10 minutes throughout the orientation but the rest of it was just walking from building to building or just waiting in silence. The way we enter should remain the same. We sit in the auditorium for the time needed and give the required speeches and such then the kids should be separated by major for assistance with their schedule and afterwards with the remaining time we can set up relay races or like CSI a game show. The details and kinks can be discussed and altered but the requirement for a change in presentation of the school is required. The orientation is the first impression the school has on the students and first impressions last forever.

Reinventing our orientation can have many positive effects for the school and for the students. The interaction between the kids can help boost their confidence and assist them in friend making because we all know you can’t get through college alone. Also, it will leave a positive image of the school in the student’s heads, maybe even exciting them to start their first or next semester.

Recommendation

Thank you for taking your time to read this proposal and I look forward to further discussing ways we can improve this school’s orientation. We can gather kids from all age groups and hear ideas from their input on the idea. You can contact me at Baalbaki.kareem@gmail.com  to schedule a meeting.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.