Thursday, August 30, 2007

Parent's Breakfast at Freshman Orientation


was a huge success yesterday. We saw over and over again in the undergraduate research project that students went to their *parents* for help with their papers -everything for picking a topic to writing drafts. A light bulb went off for us - we needed to talk to the parents not just the students. Duh.

Pretty much all the subject librarians came and talked with parents over breakfast. We had a very simple theme "every class has a librarian", but really the conversations ranged wildly. We talked to parents about: balancing sports with academics, finding food late at night, file storage space, advisors, taking courses outside of the major, faculty writing of books, and yes (!) parental involvement with school work.

This year was even better than last. We had some orientation staff posted at the doors so the parents didn't get lost between the library entrance and the room where we served breakfast. We also stole (back) an idea from Auburn and did a short, though formal, welcome speech with explanation of what the breakfast was all about. Susan was terrific and it seemed to give some needed definition to the event.

We already have an idea to make next year's breakfast bigger and better - tower tours at sunrise! It's going to be fabulous.

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