Deans and others greet the new arrivals

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. That was the message to the thousands of first-year students yesterday, as the orientation program got rolling in the face of a chilly wind. Newly arrived math students clearly weren’t daunted by it, as they gathered in the Davis Centre quadrangle to hear greetings from math dean Ian Goulden (left, photo by Jeff Henry).

“I’m having an awesome time!” one of those math students, Ryan Wilkins, reported by Twitter yesterday. “Meeting lots of people too!”

That’s certainly the goal. "Orientation week marks the beginning of the student experience for our new students, who will be introduced to an innovative series of academic and social events to help them adjust to a new environment and new expectations," says Cora Dupuis of the student success office, who is co-chair of orientation along with Becky Wroe of the Federation of Students. "It's also an opportunity for the university and its Federation to showcase services designed for students,” she added.

Orientation activities continue today with a checkerboard of events aimed at the various faculties — an aerial photo for arts students, a scavenger hunt for science, and an exploration of Laurel Creek for environment students, and so on. Engineering and math students will find time for the English Language Proficiency Exam, and various groups will drop in at “Single and Sexy” performances in the Humanities Theatre at 9:30, 1:00 and 4:00.

Tonight, arts, engineering and math are all headed for “Glow in the Dark” in the Student Life Centre and at other locations across campus. As a result, parts of the SLC will be closed to general use from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. The great hall, the turnkey desk and Tim Hortons will remain open. Thursday night, most of the SLC will be shut down for the six-faculty, semiformal Monte Carlo Night.

Architecture students are dividing their time this week between the Cambridge campus, where their classes are, and Waterloo. Today they're at the Melville Street building in the historic Galt district for academic briefings, lunch with the city's mayor, and a “Great Galt Adventure”. They'll be back in Waterloo tomorrow, but Friday is largely occupied with the vital business of studio setups in the Architecture building.

Along with scheduled activities that continue through Saturday evening, the nearly 6,000 new first-year students can participate this week in a real-time mobile scavenger hunt, called GooseChase. The Web portal hunt, developed by Goose Chase Adventures Inc., was the winning entry at Waterloo's VeloCity's end-of-term exhibition in July.

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150th anniversary grads enter St. Jerome's

A dinner last night to welcome first-year students at St. Jerome’s University was also the first glimpse of celebrations that will preoccupy the Roman Catholic “federated university” over the next few years.

A news release quoting David Perrin, president of St. Jerome’s, said his institution would begin its 150th anniversary celebrations with the event greeting the incoming class of first-year students to the St. Jerome’s community.

“This special event,” he said, “is being held to honour their unique relationship as the graduating class-to-be in 2015, the 150th anniversary year of SJU. At this inaugural event, part of the students’ Orientation Week activities, students will meet some of the alumni who were among the first students to graduate in the 1960s from our current campus at the University of Waterloo.”

One of the evening’s highlights involved an SJU graduate, Waterloo historian, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome’s, Ken McLaughlin, sharing his reflections on being part of the first graduating class from the Waterloo campus of St. Jerome’s (photo above) . “It was the year that the campus opened and we very much felt that we were pioneers shaping the tradition for future generations of students,” he says. McLaughlin was asked to touch on the past, present and future of SJU, as well as what makes the St. Jerome’s community unique.

St. Jerome’s University, currently situated in the heart of the Waterloo campus, was been started by the Congregation of the Resurrection in a log cabin in St. Agatha, Ontario, in 1865, “but its horizons have extended beyond Waterloo Region into many areas of Ontario, Canada and indeed the world,” the college says.

A plaque at the college’s original site is visible on the north side of Erb Street just before it reaches St. Agatha village, west of Waterloo. Later, St. Jerome’s occupied two locations in Kitchener before moving to the new Waterloo campus half a century ago.

“St. Jerome’s University, which became federated with the University of Waterloo in 1960, is committed to ensuring the best possible venue for its students to pursue activities both academic and non-academic, that give shape to the education of the whole person,” the college said in announcing this first stage of plans for the sesquicentennial (150th) celebrations.

St. Jerome’s has more than 1,000 of its own full-time and part-time registered students in the faculties of arts and Math, and more than 10,000 students from across the Waterloo campus take classes on the SJU campus each year.

CAR

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