Duluth Superior Magazine / August 2011 / Colleges Get Ready for New Arrivals

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Colleges Get Ready for New Arrivals

How colleges get ready for fall

As faithful readers of this magazine know, summertime isn’t what it used to be, as far as higher education goes. In our June issue, representatives of our local Duluth~Superior colleges made it clear that the ghost-town depiction of summer on a college campus is a thing of the past, and modern campuses are now bustling with all manner of activity during the three months that traditional classes aren’t in session. So, the question, then, is how is the fall semester planned out if school essentially never stops? We wondered how administrators and educators at our local colleges smoothly ramp up into the fall in an era in which the summer doesn’t offer as much time for rest and reflection.

“A lot of the academic folks use the second half of May, after commencement, as an intense period of departments’ and schools’ retreats, looking at assessment data, planning for the next year,” explains Dr. Beth Domholdt, Vice President for Academic Affairs at the College of St. Scholastica. “Of our full-time faculty, significant numbers of them work year-round. Even those who are nine-month contracts, a lot of them are very engaged updating courses, doing scholarship, accomplishing clinical practice – things that take a concentrated period of attention that you might not get during the school year. There’s a vision of the faculty life as a cushy year with three months of downtime during summer. That doesn’t characterize our faculty members.”

The same is true for other area colleges. “Planning for the next academic year goes on in all offices and departments throughout the year,” says Al Miller, Senior University Relations Specialist with the University of Wisconsin-Superior. “By the time the spring semester ends, we already are preparing to start the fall semester. This year, we’re offering five sessions of Summer Orientation and Registration. The first session began the Monday after our spring commencement ceremony.”

SOAR sessions bring next fall’s new students and their parents to campus, he explains. The students tour campus, learn how to use the UWS computer system to access the library and maintain their personal records, become familiar with student services available to them, take placement tests, learn how to plan their academic career, and register for fall courses. Many parents also attend these sessions to learn about UW-Superior and the Twin Ports, and to learn more about campus services that can help their students, he notes.

Over at Lake Superior College, even the fall semester is stubbornly insisting on leaking over into the summer. Fall classes start at the community and technical school on August 22.

“We are working with students for summer registration at the same time as students registering for fall,” says Rody Jo Bowers-Hughes, Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs. “Students attending our student orientation, placement testing, and registration sessions are able to register for their summer and fall courses during the same session. The SOAR sessions begin in the spring of the previous year and run through the beginning of the fall session.”

Of course, the fact remains that, no matter how busy things get in the summertime on our campuses, the time between August and September is a flurry of activity.

“The pace of campus life really picks up in the second half of August,” Al Miller says. “New faculty members are arriving on campus, undergoing employee orientation, and setting up their offices. Returning faculty members are preparing programs and offices. Staff members in many offices are preparing for the first days of September, when our ‘Weekend of Welcome’ begins.”

From September 1 to 3, students will move into campus residence halls, and new freshmen and transfer students will arrive on campus for further orientation. This is an opportunity for students to meet each other and make new friends, to learn more about the Twin Ports, meet with professors and their academic advisors, to learn more about expected student conduct and academic integrity, he says.

The story is much the same at each school. Without a doubt, fall semester takes much preparation, but instead of it being something that is only thought about while sitting with a cold ice tea on a deck chair, it’s being planned long before the spring even begins, if not earlier. It’s another reason to be impressed by the educators and administrators that keep our little college town humming.