Between adjusting to tough classes and finding his way in the city, Harrisburg, Pa., native and first-year graduate student in the School of Social Policy and Practice Kean Baxter found settling down at Penn "a little rough."
"SEPTA?" he asked. "What in the world does that mean?"
And unlike the freshmen he supervises as a graduate associate, Baxter did not benefit from a week-long orientation.
Unlike undergraduate New Student Orientation, during which students from all schools are brought together in a series of highly structured academic and social programs, NSO for Penn's 10,000 graduate and professional students is much more individualized.
Each of the 12 graduate schools holds its own school-specific orientation. There are no University-wide events for incoming graduate students. In fact, the only event they all attend is Commencement.
Gary Clinton, associate dean for student affairs in the Law School, said that the main objective of a Penn Law orientation is to make one of the nation's best law schools seem less "daunting."
On the first day of their two-day orientation, new 1L students -- as first-year law students are called -- take sample classes based on case law readings provided over the summer which, Clinton said, is "meant to do the same thing" as the Penn Reading Project for undergraduates, "introducing them to how the place works, what we expect of them and what they can expect of us."
Moreover, 1Ls are paired with "Morris Fellows," volunteer second- and third-year students who act as their mentors, much as in peer advising programs in the College and the schools of Engineering and Nursing.
On day two, the objective is not so much academic as social and practical, letting students "get to know one another as people" as well as introducing them to the Law School as a "community of support," Clinton said. This includes open houses with various student groups, buffet lunch and dinner and sessions on city life, information technology services, safety and psychological health.
At the Nursing School, orientation is packed into one day, but the emphasis on creating a tight-knit community within the larger University is the same.
Nursing master's and doctoral students are introduced to campus and city-life resources similar to those received by their Law School counterparts, but the smaller size of the Nursing class allows most students to be mentored by faculty instead of peers.
The Nursing School is also different in its emphasis on interaction between undergraduates and graduate students. The school holds a picnic lunch at which all students can mingle with each other and the faculty.
"We want them to enjoy the life of campus," said Christina Clark, the Nursing School's assistant dean of academic and student affairs.
Despite the decentralization, graduate students are not left rudderless. The Graduate Student Center -- a central hub founded in 2001 -- hosts an ongoing series of social, life-skills, mentoring, community-service and teaching-assistant support programs, catering exclusively to graduate students. It also conducts two series of voluntary generalized orientation programs in early and mid-August to supplement the academic orientation of each school.
