Building Skills, Making Memories: High Impact Experiences
Photo by Haley Bordelon
This past semester, Integrated Advising (IA) introduced the Start Strong campaign. The Start Strong campaign is designed to help freshmen build productive habits to help students create a strong foundation so that they can become successful at college. As part of that campaign, the IA office held a High Impact Experiences contest to see which freshmen could complete the most of these experiences. Some of these experiences are things that students do every day: using your academic planner, stopping by a professor’s office hours, talking with your RA, and sending a professional email to a faculty member. Other things include visiting the Student Support Center, scheduling a meeting with Ricki Rebollar, Director of Student Involvement, and attending a meeting or event sponsored by a student organization. At the end of last semester, Athena Vasquez won a gift card to Target for completing the most High Impact Experiences. Students have not missed their chance though! IA will be holding the competition again this semester. To enter, fill out the form located in the IA Instagram bio (@centenaryintegratedadvising) with what event you participated in and a picture of you participating in the activity.
Dr. Breashears says that she hopes that “as many first-year students complete as many of them [experiences] as possible.” She goes on to say that these high impact experiences are designed to help students build relationships with their professors, peers, and other key staff. Building these relationships is an integral part of college success, according to Dr. Breashears. It helps students become a part of our campus community, not just a bystander. Dr. Breashears also wants to point out that these high impact experiences offer a holistic approach. If you look at the list of experiences on the form, they all vary in what ways get you involved. There also is not an assigned difficulty to them. For one student, going to talk to Dean Miller might be incredibly difficult for them, while for another student, participating in a student organization’s event might be hard. This is what Dr. Breashears means by a holistic approach. These high impact experiences get everyone involved in all aspects of campus life.
If students are struggling, whether or not they complete these experiences, they should reach out to student services. Dr. Breashears is your go-to person for the freshmen, and Dr. Ragan is the person for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Knowing when to reach out is a skill that is just as important as any of the high impact experiences. If a student is more comfortable reaching out to a peer, IA has six peer mentors and two student workers for students to talk to. Plus, the peer mentors will be putting on events throughout the semester, so you can get those high impact experiences freshmen!
If you have any questions about the Start Strong, Stay Strong campaign or high impact experiences, feel free to contact Dr. Valerie Breashears or ask a peer mentor or a student worker. The IA office is located in the lower level of Rotary, next to counseling.