U of L orientation gives a taste of post-secondary

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on June 7, 2022.

For the first time in three years, the University of Lethbridge held its Ahead of the Herd event in person at the campus on Saturday.
The event is geared towards students who will be attending U of L in the fall and allows for the opportunity to meet faculty and staff who have already experienced the excitement and nervousness of starting a post-secondary journey.
“It’s just an opportunity to get them here, get them a little familiar with campus, have them start to meet with other students who are also going to start in the fall because it’s an intimidating thing — especially two years of a pandemic,” said Asheley Cowie, U of L orientation and transition co-ordinator for student enrollment services.
Students began the day with a welcoming from the senior leadership group followed by a speech from guest speaker and U of L alumni Richard Leethai, who is a connection coach.
“He found his passion, which was sort of understanding how to make real connections with people because he struggled with it most of his life,” she said, on Leethai’s talk.
“And now he’s made it a career for himself. He came and talked to the group about the importance of a connection and how to make connection, why to make a connection because that’s a huge struggle for lots of people not just university students. But, truly, if we know university students feel connected they feel like they’re not alone in a situation and more likely to stick it out.”
Cowie said this a big part of retaining the students that are coming in the fall.
“This is the summer one. It’s a little less hectic because they’re not starting classes in a day. So they get to go home and kind of process it, finish off high school or we do have some transfer students — predominately they’re high school students,” said Cowie.
Senior-level students guided the future students around campus in divided groups that may have had other peers in similar faculties or programs.
“So, again, they’re at least making friends with people that probably they’ll see in September,” she said.
Games were set up across campus for the students to participate in such as bungee run, word scramble, relay puzzles, hungry hippo, balloon balls to play soccer in and bucket ball.
Cowie said the idea was opportunities to get them to connect in a little bit more an organic way where competition does that for some people, but also just shared experiences.
“So really simple games, but the idea is shared experience and really try to start to have a little bit of fun associated with the university before they get here in the fall and start to feel those overwhelming feelings,” he said.
Ahead of the Herd had 400 in attendance for the event.

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