July 8, 2010
Parents need orientation, too — and every summer, First Year Programs provides it
Summer is orientation season at the University. On any given day you’ll find hordes of new students moving about in groups, getting acclimated to the campus they’ll inhabit come fall.
But at least one group looks a little older than the rest. That’s because they’re not students but the parents of students, here to attend their very own orientation.
Twice a week during summer quarter the UW’s First Year Programs offers a one-day orientation for the parents of students who have been newly admitted to the University. The program comes on the second day of student orientation, but is entirely separate. It’s planned, says First Year Programs Director Grant Kollet, as the groundwork for a partnership.
“When parents come to orientation, that’s not the only time we’re going to interact with them,” he says. “That’s the beginning of a relationship.”
The purpose of the relationship is, of course, to make sure the students have the best experience possible at the University, and First Year Programs staff believe the best means to that end is information and personal contact. As a result, parent orientation is packed with information delivered by a variety of people. The hope is that parents will go away feeling reassured about their sons and daughters’ transition to the University, and also that they’ll make contact with some of the people who work here.
“We spend a lot of time trying to change their concept of the University from a big bureaucracy to real people who have a pulse, who get up in the morning and drive to work, who have kids, who care about their son or daughter,” Kollet said.
Kollet opens the orientation day by talking to parents himself. Among other things, he tells them that one of the ways the University judges its success is by how well their kids do, so the institution has a stake in helping students succeed. He also gives parents his direct phone line should they have questions.
“I started giving families my direct line about 10 years ago and I really was concerned at first,” Kollet said. “But only a fraction of a percent will ever call. And I usually find that those who do, that’s some of my most interesting work. They’re calling because they’re personally concerned about something, they’re looking for help, they need some reassurance. And those are great human interactions.”
Dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs Ed Taylor related his own instance of a human interaction when he spoke to parents. Taylor talked of the moment after the Freshman Convocation when students go one way and parents another.
“We understand the gravity of that moment,” he told parents. “We know it’s an act of trust on your part.”
Taylor then went on to talk about a mother he met in that situation. He told how he walked the mother to her car and tried to soothe her anxiety. Then, as she got into the car, he asked her where her home was and she told him Montlake. The audience of parents laughed. Taylor smiled and said he knew starting college was a big step for both parent and child, no matter how close to home the campus is.
After Taylor spoke, the parents had a session about academics at the University, beginning with a video in which both faculty and students spoke. Then Graduate Dean Gerry Baldasty spoke as a representative of the faculty. In the Q&A that followed, one of the first questions asked was whether large classes continue throughout a student’s career at the University, which gave leaders a chance to explain that class size goes down in upper division classes. The size of the University is the number one concern of parents, Kollet says.
Adviser Kay Ballston talked about advising services, choosing majors and a number of other things. After her talk, parents broke up into sessions on residential life geared to their student’s situation: residence halls, Greek houses or commuting, then came back together to hear about financial matters and campus safety.
The morning concluded with a freewheeling session in which student orientation leaders answered whatever questions parents wanted to pose. “There are no faculty or administrators in the room,” panelist Tyrone Coleman told the parents at the beginning. “You can ask us anything.”
And they did — peppering the students for 40 minutes with questions about everything from advising services to the IMA to campus jobs. The most amusing question? “What mistakes did your parents make when you started school and how can we avoid them?”
At lunch, parents are seated at tables for nine with a variety of UW staffers, thus giving the opportunity to ask questions in an informal atmosphere. And in the afternoon, they have a choice of sessions to attend, including financial aid, counseling services, Freshman Interest Groups, career services and more.
There are about 150 to 200 people at a typical parent orientation. “It’s a nice size, because it allows for a fair number of questions,” said LeAnne Jones Wiles, the program manager in charge of parent orientation. “Our staff can give more personal attention and answer more specific questions than if there were 300 or 400 people there.”
Between 3,200 and 3,500 parents will come to orientation in a typical summer — representing perhaps 40 percent of the families of freshman class members, Kollet said. They pay $65 per person, which includes all sessions and both breakfast and lunch. Student orientation is paid for with the New Student Enrollment and Orientation Fee all students pay when they accept admission.
“I wish we didn’t have to charge a fee for parents,” Kollet said. “I wish we had a magical pot of money to cover it because the parents we’d like to see most are the parents of students who might be more at risk.”
The parents who do attend generally give the orientation high marks, and First Year Programs is constantly tweaking the sessions based on evaluations they receive.
In addition to introducing parents to the University, parent orientation has another, less obvious agenda: It begins the move that students will make from home and family into their adult lives. It’s one of the reasons students go to one orientation and parents to another. And it’s the reason Kollet advises parents attending orientation not to pick up the phone if their son or daughter calls that day.
“I tell them, ‘When you don’t answer, what do think happens on the other end of the phone? The kid says, Mom and Dad aren’t picking up. What do I do now?’ That’s when their transition really starts.”
