Dickinson College
EN-2: Student Orientation

Sustainability has been a distinctive part of new student orientation since 2011. Every year the Center for Sustainability Education and Eco-Reps host an information table about sustainability at Dickinson, offer rebuilt green bikes for students to check out for the semester, provide a sustainability-related gift for all first year students, and staffed all-day stations to assist students with separating waste and recyclables for "green move-in". Our Green Devil sustainability mascot was also present throughout orientation. The primary sustainability-focused program is a required program designed to all first-year orientation groups to compete against each other in a campus-wide, sustainability amazing race. This distinct offering is open to all new students, and provide our sustainability staff the opportunity to introduce themselves and important initiatives to the entire class.

For those first year students that want more than an introduction, Dickinson offers sustainability-focused pre-orientation programs. These optional 2-1/2 day intensive programs offer experiential education, team building, early involvement, and leadership adventures that introduce new students to Dickinson's distinctive characteristics such as sustainability. Approximately 50% of first year students are able to focus on sustainability through these intensive programs. Programs vary from year to year, but examples include:

• Why Place Matters: A Sustainable Local Adventure
• Change the World: A Service & Leadership Training Experience
• Cuisine, Carlisle and Climbing (C3)
• Social Justice at Dickinson: Discovering Your Social Justice Story
• Food for Thought with the Dickinson College Farm
• Kick Start Dickinson (Sustainability Innovation)

WILD Programs (WILDERNESS INTRODUCTION TO LIFE AT DICKINSON)
• Backpacking
• Canoeing
• Rock Climbing

These programs help participants learn that sustainability is about more than recycling and the environment. Sustainability is about answering a fundamental question: How do we improve the human condition equitably in this and future generations, while conserving environmental systems necessary to support healthy and vibrant societies? This is Dickinson's working definition of sustainability.

Pre-orientation programs help first-year participants recognizes that the essential needs of vast numbers of people are not being met in the present, and that poverty and inequality are amplifiers of vulnerability to environmental and other hazards. The programs stress local resources, and help define ways that they can contribute to helping to build more sustainable communities through Dickinson programs and courses.

Dickinson's Orientation program for new students is designed to facilitate the integration into the unfamiliar academic and residential setting that is college life. Through Orientation students learn about the institutional values of Dickinson. Of which, sustainability is a major component. Information tables, green move-in programs, a first year class-wide sustainability scavenger hunt and sustainability-focused pre-orientation programs introduce a large percentage of Dickinson students to this from day one.

Our approach to sustainability is distinctive for making sustainability a part of every student’s education, infusing it across our liberal arts curriculum, drawing on our strengths in global education to explore and compare experiences of different cultures, and using active learning methods that empower students to connect their classroom studies with sustainable campus operations, resources such as the Dickinson Organic Farm, and engagement with the world beyond campus borders. We take very seriously the effort to make this part of every students orientation to life at Dickinson.