Recent Program Features

Summer orientation is usually just the beginning of the excitement surrounding a new upcoming school year. Typically, students can sign up for a one- or two-day orientation to prepare for their first fall semester at Minnesota State University, Mankato. During their visit to campus, they register for classes, receive their MavCard, meet other students and talk to different departments on campus.

This year, however, the office of New Student and Family Programs had to think outside of the box and move programming completely online as a COVID-19 precaution. As a result, the Maverick Online Orientation and Registration (MOOR) programming was created on the University’s educational platform, Desire2Learn, or D2L, where students typically go for class-related items like viewing their syllabus, turning in assignments and checking their grades.

Jeremy Riesenberg, Assistant Director of Orientation and Transition Programs, spent the early summer months trying to figure out just how to use an educational platform to create an interactive and informational orientation.

 “My main goal for orientation is building excitement for [the students], that they’re looking forward to starting college,” Riesenberg says. “I hope that orientation is their first chance to see what they’re in for, the environment they’ll be in and the other fantastic students that they’ll meet. I hope that by the time everyone leaves orientation that they’re like ‘I can’t wait for this to all start again in the fall.’”

Riesenberg’s final product included weekly modules that were posted every Monday morning over a six-week period that provided students with information about campus resources, videos from current students, virtual resource fairs and fun activities for students to get to know the University better.

With the help of student Orientation Peer Assistants, known as OPAs, the office successfully implemented the new orientation style online. OPAs, like Lizzie Putnam, a junior Special Education major from Las Vegas, Nevada, were tasked with helping students transition to campus, while never actually getting to meet them physically.

“I feel like we’re the first face at the University that the students see and we’re also the student perspective, which I think is really important… There’s 16 of us and we help students with registration, we do the activities, and we perform a welcome dance right at the beginning which they always love on the two days,” Putnam says.

Although OPAs were bummed they didn’t get to perform their annually coordinated dance, they still sprang into action to help incoming students. Students were asked to fill out surveys throughout their orientation experience, which the Peer Assistants read through and responded to individually. Additionally, they held office hours for students to attend, hosted virtual labs for building relationships with other students and even hand packed “swag envelopes” with Maverick themed t-shirts, flags and lanyards to provide students with Maverick gear before they even moved to the Mankato area. Some days, they spent up to 12 hours on Zoom, providing resources for incoming students.

“The OPAs did a great job adapting, and I was very proud of them. They made the best of it, and I appreciated all of the work they did. They were the pulse of making it run, just like they are when they’re here in person,” says Riesenberg.

Overall, the online platform was a success. Students seemed to really engage in the process, despite the fact that it may not have been exactly what they expected, and participation was high throughout the summer.

 “I was happy to see that [the students] were still engaging,” Riesenberg says. “I was worried about that at first. But I also thought, ‘They had such a crazy end of their high school experience that maybe they’re looking for some normalcy and thinking about their next chapter.’”

With the uncertainty expected to continue over at least the next few months, orientation for students starting in the spring semester will also be done through the D2L online format. Fortunately, though, the orientation modules will continue to be used for this process and will stay open on D2L for the entirety of this next school year to provide students with a way to refer back to resources when they need it.

Good afternoon,

Thank you all for helping us get the year started on a positive note. Our continued goal is help students move through fall semester and complete their studies, and most importantly – to stay healthy.

I hope you have had a chance to review our weekly COVID-19 dashboard. You may have noticed some changes from last week’s dashboard. The updated information reflects a few changes in the data the System Office and Minnesota Department of Health have asked us to report, and I wanted to put those numbers in context.

• A new data point that the System Office asked us to begin tracking on our dashboard is the current active student cases with self-reported campus contact. That total is 56 this week. Those are cases where a person tested positive and reported to contact tracers that they had recently been on campus prior to testing positive. I think you can see why those are the cases that are most concerning for our campus community.
• We are also sharing the total number of students with active, self-reported cases. The current number of self-reported, active cases among all of our students is 128, or less than one percent of our total unduplicated student headcount. This number includes those who reported to us they tested positive. Some of those cases have been confirmed with the Minnesota Department of Health and others have not. That number could change and we will update it frequently. It is an increase from 31 last week.
• We are also reporting our on-campus quarantine and isolation data. This number on the dashboard indicates how many of our dedicated quarantine/isolation beds on campus are occupied: 13 of 97 available beds. The second number, 27, is the total number of students on campus in quarantine and isolation. That includes students in dedicated beds plus those that are able to quarantine within their existing housing location.

The increase in these numbers is concerning, and I encourage everyone on to continue following the rules we have in place under our current Yellow COVID-19 safety status level. I would also again ask that everyone continue to avoid situations where others are not being safe.

If you have questions about the dashboard numbers or about anything else, please contact Interim Provost Matt Cecil at provost@mnsu.edu. I look forward to keeping you updated with brief reports from time to time.

In closing, thank you for working so hard during this second week of classes. I could not be prouder of the way our campus community has all pulled together. Thank you.

Richard Davenport

President

Good afternoon,

As we reach the end of the first week of classes, I wanted to write and thank everyone for all they are doing. We knew this would be difficult. I have heard more than one person say this was one of the most trying weeks of their professional careers.

I couldn’t be prouder of our campus community. So many of you have risen above the frustration to solve problems for our students this week. Thank you.

I want you to know we have just posted a campus data dashboard where you will find our most updated information on the number of active cases on campus, the percentage of our 96 quarantine beds that are occupied and other pertinent county data. You will find it on our campus dashboard page here.

Our current campus safety level is “yellow.” It is important to note that while we have not met all of the indicators for “yellow” status, the Minnesota Department of Health advised all campuses in the state to open up with that status level. The data points and status on that page will be updated weekly based on the information we receive from the Minnesota Department of Health and local public health officials. It is the same information we share weekly with the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities System Office.

It is certain we will face more challenges in the coming weeks. It is important that we work closely and in partnership with one another at the University, as well as the City and the Public Schools as we strive to address the pandemic challenges. We need to maintain our focus on following safety rules. We all need to avoid situations where others are not being safe. And importantly, doing work this difficult means we must be kind to one another.

In closing, I want to share something that inspired me this week. Our Minnesota State University, Mankato Concert Choir, directed by Dr. Aaron Humble of the Department of Music and Entertainment Industries, recorded this socially-distanced, masked version of our school hymn on Thursday. It is a great reminder of why we are doing this work. We are all working hard so that our students can inspire us like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Sq9I2kO7U

I hope everyone has a safe and restful weekend.

Kind regards,

Richard Davenport
President