We are three days post-Commencement, and in my building at least you can feel it.  There is so much upfront work and the devil is in countless details, that when it is over a lot of the folks here take a few days off to rest and recuperate.  So it is quiet in our neck of the woods.  For now.

The real work for Parent Programs in the coming weeks is going to be the successful onboarding of new parents and family members – the P’18s (parents of the Class of 2018).  This, like much of our work, is done by web.  If you are a new parent or family member of the Class of 2018, please be sure to visit the New Students website (that is the general page for your ’18 students), but especially the Parents and Families section of same.  That’s where we put content specifically for moms and dads and the family members of the ’18s.

We are currently doing a ton of work on the New Student Receptions program.  Those are receptions in areas of the country where we have a goodly concentration of incoming ’18s, and these receptions give the new students and parents a chance to meet each other and build a WF network over the summer.  Class of ’18 and parents, please sign up for one if one is available.  These are not mandatory, but they are fun.

Parents of sophomores, juniors, and seniors – here is where you can really help us.  We always want to have a few upperclassmen at each of these receptions, so they can be there to help us with Q&A and such.  If you live in one of these areas (or if your student is there over the summer for a job or internship), please encourage your student to email us at parents@wfu.edu and tell us who they are and which one they would like to attend.  We obviously can’t have every upperclassmen in every populated area attend (or we’d outnumber the new ones!), but we would love to have some energetic and caring ambassadors at these events.

And if you are in a part of the country where there is no reception scheduled, don’t panic yet.  One of the goals of the summer for our office is to try and move some of the talking points we cover at these receptions into some sort of online/digital format.  No promises yet about what that might look like, but we are talking about how to make it happen.

Changing topics, here are a few observations about campus now that it is empty.

– it is QUIET.  just not much to see and hear as you walk around the place.

– parking is plentiful (hooray!)

– the weather has been stunning all week – low to upper 70s, sunny, beautiful

– Commencement tent was still up as of the writing of this post (check out the Quad Cam).  The grass appears either to be in better shape than I expected, or the graininess of the visuals hides a multitude of sins

Finally, wanted to have a proud moment about one of my former advisees who just graduated.  Matthew Teller (’14) was one of my freshmen advisees back in August 2010, and I still remember meeting him and his parents the first day or two of school.  As a lower division adviser, I only get to keep my students until they declare their major, but Matthew and I always stayed in touch.  It was a joy to follow his WFU career and to be a thinking partner with him from time to time.  He was a fantastic student and it was a pleasure to watch him grow and mature into a campus leader.  There is a great story on the Commencement web page about him.  I am proud of him like he is my very own.

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