New Orientation Program Links Students to Pioneer Valley Community

Arriving at college for the first time can be a disorienting experience. You’ve come to a new location, you’re surrounded by strangers, and months of rigorous intellectual challenge lie ahead. Making connections can be key to a happy college initiation, and Mount Holyoke has developed a new program to help entering students establish such important links early on. “Second* Saturday,” an orientation initiative scheduled for the second Saturday of the fall semester (the third Saturday of the month), will introduce first-year students to fellow students, faculty, staff, alumnae, and community members, and to a wide variety of activities and locales in the Pioneer Valley.

On Saturday morning, September 16, a fleet of buses, vans, and cars will transport traditional students, foreign fellows, and Frances Perkins Scholars for a full day of recreation or community service. Activities range from canoeing with members of the South Hadley Police Department and hiking in the Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary, to working in after-school programs and soup kitchens, exercising stray dogs at the Dakin Animal Shelter in Leverett, and visiting the Leverett Peace Pagoda. Groups will travel north to Ashfield and Buckland, home of College founder Mary Lyon; west to Cummington, a small hilltown; south to Springfield; and east to the Quabbin Reservoir, which supplies eastern Massachusetts with its drinking water.

Response to the new program has been overwhelmingly positive, says Cathy Melhorn, MHC’s choral director and organizer of the inaugural Second Saturday event. More than 300 students will participate in projects at thirty-one sites. “All activities will locate students within the greater community, as each project is designed to introduce them to some of the rich resources and opportunities available in the region,” Melhorn says. In organizing the event, Melhorn worked with a College planning committee that examined the needs of first- and second-year students. The committee, she says, “suggested that students start off with a better sense of where they are.”

A map of western Massachusetts will be provided to each student, as well as a souvenir water bottle and a bag lunch. Students and group guides will leave at staggered times from many different campus start points, returning to campus between 3 and 4 pm. For more information about the “Second* Saturday” schedule, contact Cathy Melhorn at x2018 or at 548-1098, or by email at
cmelhorn@mtholyoke.edu.