WELCOME, FRESHMEN
New students get introduced to campus, region
TROY, N.Y. » Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Sunday continued its fiveday-long welcoming program for the class of 2022 with an array of opportunities to explore the school, the campus, the city of Troy and the Capital Region.
From Saturday to Wednesday, the 1,796 freshmen are taking part in “Navigating Rensselaer and Beyond,” a program started in 2001 to make incoming students feel at home on the campus and see there is much more to it than academics. The program is the result of long hours of work by the staff from the school’s First Year Experience Office and a group of 35 student-volunteers.
This year’s freshman class is the largest in the school’s history. It has the most women and the most underrepresented minorities ever for an RPI freshman class, officials said. The school is also highly selective. There were more than 20,000 applications for the nearly 1,800 slots.
All freshmen were settled in their dorm rooms by Sunday. That’s when NRB swung into high gear.
“We do believe in the Disneyland experience,” said First Year Experience Office Associate Dean Shante Brown. “We are right there for them.”
Brown said the program was started as a way to not only introduce the students to the campus and their adopted city but
“Aspart of the program Dr. Jackson will show the students that this is their home for four years, not just where they go to school. It helps them make a stronger commitment to Rensselaer.” — Shante Brown, First Year Experience Office Associate Dean
to give them lots of opportunities to meet each other while having fun. and see that there is more to do for leisure than head off campus to the local bars.
As part of the program school President Shirley Jackson will greet each freshman with a handshake on the 8th Street steps leading to downtown Troy’s riverfront on Tuesday for the school’s Welcome Festival.
“As part of the program Dr. Jackson will show the students that this is their home for four years, not just where they go to school,” Brown said. “It helps them make a stronger commitment to Rensselaer.”
NRB has many facets. There are overnight trips, day trips on campus, a welcome barbecue, an outdoor movie, a scavenger hunt, game night, and much more.
“We had overnight trips off campus that the students could take,” Brown said. “Those trips included backpacking, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, canoeing, yoga, basketball, and kayaking. They were optional and to do them they had to move in early. For those that didn’t want to do the overnights there are more than 100 other programs as part of NRB
that started today. They can all take part in those. In fact, signing up for one is mandatory.”
The day trip programs included martial arts, ballroom dancing, rugby, theater (for stage performers and crew), orchestra, jazz band, ultimate Frisbee and, of course, Quidditch. After many of the programs have wrapped up, performances in the days prior to the first
day of classes, Thursday, are scheduled.
“The orchestra and band will give a performance, there will be three short plays performed, and there will be demonstrations by those who took ballroom dancing,” Brown said. “Monday will be game night at the Rensselaer Student Union with games, a hypnotist and an improv program. There will also
be a class photo (Sunday) as part of our East Campus After Day program to give them a chance to see all our athletic venues at the East Campus Village. As part of that evening we’ll be showing the movie “Black Panther” on the jumbotron.”
Two of the freshmen taking part in Sunday’s day trips were Varenya Gade, 19, a biology major, and Yuambo ( Tony) Jiang, 19, a computer science and electrical engineering major.
Gade, of Indian descent, was born in New Jersey but graduated from high school in Hyderbad, India. Jiang, originally from China, went to high school in Virginia and Rhode Island before coming to RPI.
“I heard about the school my junior year in high school in India,” Gade said. “I saw they were doing research in genetics and molecular biology. After visiting a similar research project in India I got inspired, so RPI was high on my list when I started to apply to colleges.”
Jiang, who was trying rugby for the first time Sunday, said he applied to the school because he knew there was a good computer science program there. After several hours of learning about rugby he said it was fun, but doubted he’d join the club.
The school has 249 other clubs he can look into joining.