The first-year experience has faced many changes in recent years, from expanding Bridge Week to include all first-year students, to the realignment from IUPUI to IU Indianapolis. Here are some of the major adjustments and improvements.
Orientation Services
Orientation Services recently welcomed new leadership, with Director Lauren Henninger beginning in October 2023 and Assistant Director Maddi Lind beginning in March 2024.
Henninger expressed the importance of becoming comfortable within the program and holding off on major changes until a year of experience within the position.
“We had to create trust within our organization, because we rely very heavily on our student coordinators and student leaders,” Henninger said. “But I think we were able to make some small, pivotal changes that really enhanced the program.”
Those adjustments included streamlining the orientation check-in process and completing it electronically. A large part of their process focused on collecting feedback on orientation from four different groups: students, guests, student leaders, and those helping to run orientation.
“We’re going to hear from the people that matter on campus, which are our students, and understand what they want to see in an orientation program and what’s going to be beneficial for them as well,” Lind said.
Another part of their process involved volunteering at and observing Bridge Week. Henninger explained that aspects of the first-year experience should flow seamlessly together, which is why she found it important to understand the ins and outs of Bridge.
“One of our jobs is to prepare brand new students for the first day of class,” Henninger said. “So, standing outside the first day of Bridge, did we really prepare them to do what they needed to do that day? We wanted to really question that thought process and be more intentional with our programming.”
Bridge Week
Bridge Week has officially celebrated its third year of including all freshmen. Heather Bowman, executive director of first-year engagement, explained that as the program has fully adjusted to support all students, it has become a standard part of college life.
“We’ve already seen that it’s become an institutionalized part of the IU Indianapolis experience,” Bowman said.
Through the expansion of Bridge, student housing has been adjusted to support the program, with the weekend before Bridge now serving as the standard move-in date.
Following the realignment, Bowman felt it was important to create a celebratory atmosphere for the beginning of IU Indianapolis. In this spirit, for the first time, all Bridge attendees participated in a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo. Students also attended the first IU Indianapolis new student induction ceremony at the end of Bridge.
“We wanted to make sure students understood that even though the name was new and there were some new things about IU Indianapolis, the essence of the campus was still there, that there were still just as many people here to support them and give them a good experience,” Bowman said.
Transfer Bridge
This year, Bridge also included a pilot section for transfer students. Bowman discussed hopes to effectively expand the program in the future.
“We want to ease into it, learn as we go, and really create something that resonates,” Bowman said. “Because the needs of transfer students are different, they’re coming to us with a different mindset. I don’t think we can just replicate what we do for regular Bridge, it needs to be a customized experience, so I want to take our time and do it right.”
The pilot transfer student section of Bridge served 25 students throughout the 3-day program. To accommodate the diverse population of students who participated, students could come and go from the program as their schedules allowed. Participants mainly included students from the School of Liberal Arts, University College, and the School of Science.
Janice Bankert-Countryman, assistant program director of student services for the Center for Transfer and Adult Students, designed and facilitated the pilot program. Within the program, students participated in shared programming with first-year Bridge sections, such as the zoo trip and IU Indianapolis induction, along with activities specifically tailored to the transfer experience.
In terms of programming tailored to the transfer experience, Bankert-Countryman ran students through an activity focused on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and self-care. A panel of career consultants from across campus also spoke with students.
Bankert-Countryman felt that sharing some programming with first-year Bridge sections was important to foster a sense of belonging within the IU Indianapolis community for transfer students.
“The thing about transfer students is we don’t want to keep calling them transfer students, we want them to identify as IU Indianapolis students,” Bankert-Countryman said.
Feedback from 14 participants within the section indicated that they found the experience useful in their integration into the campus community. One student said that it was an “excellent experience.” Another student said they “felt right at home.”
“They’re glad they did it for two reasons. They feel more confident about starting at IU Indianapolis, and they feel like they’re coming onto campus with a sense of belonging,” Bankert-Countryman said.
Bankert-Countryman explained that in her role, she works to focus on filling gaps to continue supporting transfer and adult students on their journey and feels that Bridge is an important part of that.
What all of us want as human beings is to feel felt. I think that’s what Bridge does, it helps students feel felt.
Janice Bankert-Countryman
Next year, Bankert-Countryman hopes to expand the transfer experience to include three sections. Ideally, one would be a partnership with a specific academic program with interest in building their own transfer Bridge, another section would specifically target University College students, and the third would focus on remaining open to all transfer students interested in participating.
For more information, contact the Division of Undergraduate Education Office of Communications at duecomm@iu.edu.