Behind-the-scenes of an Orientation Coordinator

On Friday, August 23, Cabrini University welcomed the 390 members of the Class of 2023 to campus by kicking off Orientation.

Throughout the weekend, freshmen participated in a variety of activities from social events such as a carnival and an informational session where students got acquainted with various school policies. They were welcomed by nearly 90 orientation leaders, upperclassmen who were eager to help them adjust to college.

The planning and execution of the whole weekend rested on the shoulders of two students.

Daisy Rodriquez, senior political science major, and Francesca Maslin, senior writing major, took on the position of Orientation Coordinators (OC).

The role of OC is responsible for all aspects of planning the orientation, primarly logistics and budgeting. In addition to training all of the orientation leaders.

Preparations for orientation weekend began in February 2019 when recruitment for Orientation Leaders began. Initially, their target goal was 60 students. However, Rodriguez and Maslin ended up extending the deadline when they thought they were short 30 students.

“We ended up thinking we didn’t have enough….It was because our spreadsheet was hiding people like it was filtering it for us. Some people were hidden. When we thought we had 30, we really had 60…” Rodriguez said. “After we had interviewed and said ‘yes’ to everybody we wanted, one of us was messing with the spreadsheet and then it showed 93 people. Oh, now we have 93 orientation leaders!”

After the spring semester ended, Maslin and Rodriguez got right to work planning orientation. At the beginning of summer, the hours varied, but they typically worked between 10 a.m and 4 p.m. When August arrived, their hours intensified. Some days they started work at 7 a.m and they wouldn’t finish until 1 a.m

Maslin and Rodriquez were responsible for putting together orientation groups, reserving rooms, reserving vendors for carnival, catering food, designing t-shirts, preparing residential hall move-in day material, reserving vendors and deciding where to establish ice and water stations.

“Every day there was a new challenge,” Maslin said, regarding the planning process.

What brought them a great sense of satisfaction was witnessing their work come to fruition during Orientation. Rodriguez loved to witness how close the orientation leaders got by the last day of training.

“For training, the most rewarding part was the last day…seeing people open up their mailboxes and seeing all the notes from friends they just made this week,” Rodriguez said.

Maslin was blown away by the caliber of leadership the orientation leaders possessed.

“There were some outstanding leaders,” Maslin said. “I was really floored by their energy and spirit. That was really uplifting.”

Even orientation leaders, who gave up the last week of their summer vacation for training, found the sacrifice to be rewarding.

Riddi Parmar, junior biology pre-med major, saw a transformation in the freshman as the adjusted over the weekend. “[The] freshmen seemed really nervous and unsure of what to expect…It was so nice seeing that they grew as freshmen by the end of the orientation. It’s very priceless to see that.”

The weekend was not relinquished of its struggles. Due to rain, the class photo on the Edith Robb Dixon field was canceled. This left a significant block of open time on the schedule. The solution? Maslin and Rodriquez threw together a last-minute student panel in the gym. Maslin noted that it was a wild success.

Maslin and Rodriguez could not have done their job without the help of SEAL directors Dr. Amber LaJeunesse and Lisa Podolsky.

“Amber and Lisa were really supportive throughout the whole process,” Maslin noted. “They helped us where they needed to. [They] would add more tasks or take some tasks off because they had done it.”