Take a walk by Mark Hopkins Hall and you’re sure to notice a brand-new, colorful addition to your surroundings. Across from the main entrance, a large rock is now sporting a fresh white coat of paint, decorated with handprints. The rock re-vamp is a result of the “Make Your Mark” event, held by the office of New Student Transition, early in the fall semester.
Spencer Moser, MCLA’s Assistant Dean of Student Growth and Wellness, spent the afternoon helping freshmen and new transfer students paint their hands and add their prints to the stone. He says giving the rock a makeover is part of the college’s efforts to create a fulfilling, useful, and memorable orientation experience for new MCLA students.
Capping the first few weeks of their time here with a handprint is Director of Student Engagement and New Student Transition Jenn Labbance’s way of giving students a permanent visual reminder of their entry into the MCLA community.
“This is her brainchild, this is her baby,” said Moser. “She’s been wanting to create more tradition and rituals here at MCLA and we know that’s important to the community. …There’s a lot of campuses, even high school or college campuses, that have these rocks, these boulders, and groups of students can make their mark on them. You walk by and say, ‘Yeah, that’s me! I put my handprint on that.’ It’s a nice recollection.”
As Moser spoke, behind him, students were lathering their hands in shades of blue, green, and yellow and pressing them gleefully onto the rock’s surface. The white base layer became more and more obscured, covered by handprints in MCLA’s school colors. The energy in the air was palpable, as freshmen and transfer students alike took part in the inaugural event.
Janeilah Vazquez, MCLA’s Graduate Assistant for Student Affairs and a former Orientation Leader, was also present to help students make their mark. She’s well-acquainted with the shifts the college has been making to improve the orientation experience for incoming students.
“We took things a little differently. We took a lot of feedback from peer mentors, as well as the first-year students who went through orientation last year,” Vazquez said. “We heard them, we listened, and we adjusted our schedule to include more things that increase socialization, but also gets everyone ready for school to start.”
Orientation is an undeniably stressful time for new students, as they work to adjust to a completely new environment, schedule, and set of demands at the start of a semester at a new school. Labbance, Moser, and Vazquez know the importance of ensuring that time is designed, planned, and executed as best as possible. Striking the right balance of fun, informative, and commemorative isn’t an easy task, but it’s an essential one.
“We integrated what was, in the past, a little more segregated between the Greylock L.E.A.D Academy activity sessions and the traditional orientation sessions, hoping they would complement each other a little bit more,” reflected Moser. “That was new and that was exciting.” The team’s hope was to make 2024’s orientation smoother and more cohesive than in years past, an aim they are constantly reaching for.
“[Our goal is] to continue the good work we do around on-boarding students. We always want to improve and look at best practices,” he continued. “There’s some stuff that students may not be totally excited about, but we know, and the research shows, that it’s really important that they’re exposed to these things, and then looking at things we can continue to do that are just pure fun for students and build a sense of community and trust amongst each other.”
Pressing palmfuls of paint onto the rock outside Mark Hopkins certainly fit the bill for pure fun. Students were laughing and joking with friends new and old as they left a piece of themselves in MCLA’s story forever. The scene made Vazquez and Moser visibly happy as they handed over paint and rinsed hands. “That’s our magnetic north,” Moser said. “That’s what we look towards.”
