The annual population explosion is about to happen on college campuses nationwide as students return in droves. Suitcases will be unloaded. Posters affixed to walls. Pencils sharpened, cell phones tested, and laptops booted. Minds opened. At Mary Baldwin University that means a rolling schedule of move-in dates and start-of-the-year events. Here’s your guide to the first few weeks of the 2006–07 academic year:
August 15:
- Watch for green-clad students in uniform marching on campus: “leeft, leeft, left-right-left” when new students (nULLs) in the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership (VWIL) move in.
- A joyful noise spreads across campus as the Dining Hall opens for business once again with its tasty meals morning, noon, and night.
August 21:
- Teachers teach teachers as new graduate students attend Orientation to the Master of Arts in Teaching program.
August 23:
- New students, who are members of American ethnic minorities (which now represent more than 35% of the student population), will begin learning to spread their wings and fly through Orientation in SOAR (Survival Opportunities and Resources). They will discover quickly that they have become part of an inclusive community.
- New students in the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted (PEG), now in its 21st year, move in to their state-of-the-art center and discover that Mary Baldwin is very different from their middle or high schools.
- Faculty and staff powwow at the annual opening meeting, and later gather to dish on the lawn at the President’s House at the Friends and Family Picnic.
August 24:
- Keep your eyes open for excited students, scattered luggage, boxes, and items meant to be room décor, when the newest members of the Residential College for Women (RCW), the Class of 2010, move in. Their comprehensive Orientation, with its theme: The Perfect 10, salutes the rollout of the Mary Baldwin University Advantage (with its ten steps) as well as the “10” in the Class of 2010.
- Most VWIL cadets are back on campus by this time, organizing, drilling, scheduling, leading nULLs in their basic training.
- New students in the college’s graduate program in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in Performance (MLitt/MFA) attend Orientation, asking, methinks: “Wherefore art thou a student of the Bard?”
August 27:
- All the summer marching practice is tested for the first time in public at the VWIL nULL Induction Parade, the first parade of the academic year.
August 28:
- And so begins the 2006-07 academic year as first classes are called to order. Returning students to the Residential College for Women will have been streaming into residence halls and houses in the day or two preceding the start of classes.
August 30:
- “Believing in the principles of student government, I pledge myself ?” Freshmen recite the time-honored Mary Baldwin Honor Pledge and sign their names in covenant to the charter during the annual Charter Day ceremony.
September 4:
- Students rush, don’t walk, to Club Rush to find out more about Mary Baldwin’s myriad offering of clubs and organizations.
Dates to Note in Your Planner
September 19
- Open to all: public showing of a documentary film about the poignant humanitarian work of artist Claudia Bernardi, our Doenges Visiting Artist. Bernardi and filmmaker Penelope Price will answer questions during a talk-back session after the film. More information: go.marybaldwin.edu/lectures/bernardi.php
September 26
- Opening day of student Senate
September 29
- Plan to register and attend Family Weekend
October 4
- A revered Mary Baldwin tradition, Apple Day
October 5
- Founders Day, with speaker and alumna Susan Schmidt ’75, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and reporter for The Washington Post.