Dickinson College
EN-2: Student Orientation

Every year the Center for Sustainability Education and Eco-Reps host various information tables about sustainability at Dickinson for new students and parents. We offer rebuilt green bikes for first-year students to check out for the semester and host waste-sorting stations to assist new students with waste diversion as part of our "green move-in" program. Our Green Devil sustainability mascot is 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 campuswide, sustainability-focused "amazing race." This distinct offering is required to all new students and provides our sustainability staff the opportunity to introduce themselves and important initiatives to the entire class. Stations are hosted by Eco-Reps (peer educators) to highlight Dickinson's sustainability successes and encourage sustainable behaviors as part of our residential campus.

For those first-year students who 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 in sustainability. Approximately 25% of first-year students are able to focus on sustainability through these intensive programs. Programs vary from year to year, but recent examples include:

• Why Place Matters: A Sustainable Local Adventure
• Change the World: Service & Leadership
• Leadership and Adventure
• Cuisine, Carlisle and Climbing
• Social Justice at Dickinson
• Food for Thought with the Dickinson College Farm
• WILD Programs (WILDERNESS INTRODUCTION TO LIFE AT DICKINSON) Backpacking
• WILD Programs (WILDERNESS INTRODUCTION TO LIFE AT DICKINSON) Basecamps

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 and we value the importance of this in the first-year experience.

This first year experience learning goal guides our work at orientation:
Explore the interdependence of Dickinson’s strengths in global education, civic engagement, diversity, equity and inclusion, and building sustainable communities.

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 classwide 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 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.