For our final project at the Polytechnic this summer, Sarah, Emily and I have been helping to plan an orientation week for the incoming biomedical engineering (BME) students. It’s been really exciting for multiple reasons, 1) it’s the first year the Poly is offering BME 2) it’s the first time the Poly has attempted to put on a student run, all day every day orientation for new students 3) Sarah, Emily and I have been planning all summer and the week / 42 new BME students are finally here!
This past weekend we made our final arrangements for the week, including large daily schedules we posted on the wall to keep all the students on time and informed, and a welcome message on the dry erase board.
When Monday morning finally rolled around, we were all giddy with excitement. The first event of the week was a faculty welcome to all the new students (not just BMEs) in the outdoor amphitheater. The energy in the group was tangible. And after spending 9 weeks on a virtually empty campus, it was shocking and awesome to see so many new students everywhere.
Then, the engineering students broke off from the rest of their class and went to receive a talk from some of the engineering faculty specifically. I’m not the world’s best estimator, but there must have been around 500 engineering students all together, which is pretty incredible considering that Francis leaned over and told me his class only had about 100! After a few minutes, we were allowed to snag just the BME students for a bit before they had to go to their next event. Sarah, Emily, Charles, Francis, Andrew, Christina, Nehuwa, Eckharie, James, Florence, (the seven Poly interns who were a HUGE help in running the orientation week and serving as mentors and friends for the new students) and I all got to introduce ourselves and the BME students likewise introduced themselves. After brief introductions, we had to release the students to do more administrative type tasks, but luckily we got more time with them later in the afternoon.
As their first day at university, we felt it was important for them to get to do something fun and low stress but that would help them meet their classmates for the next 5 years at the same time. We played a couple of different games and ice breakers, but my favorite was the Human Map of Malawi. We all went outside and the students had to arrange themselves spatially according to where they are from in Malawi and based on cardinal directions and checkpoints they determine as a group. It’s a fun exercise in group communication, team building, friend-making, and overall just a cool way to visualize what a diverse and exciting incoming class they are in.
After all the fun icebreakers, we closed out the day with two talks. One was called, “What is engineering? What is Biomedical Engineering? What does a Biomedical Engineer Do?” and the other, “Introduction to the Week.” (Our titling lacks pizzazz, but the content of the talks was great, I promise.) The “What is Engineering?…” talk gave the students a broad overview of engineering and a BME’s place in engineering while also fostering a discussion about their own perceptions of engineering and engineers coming into the Poly. In “Introduction to the Week” we gave the students a brief overview of what we’d be doing the whole week and why as a way to prepare them and excite them for the upcoming activities and lectures.