This week has been Welcome Week here at Maynooth, and we have had over 4000 new students joining us for the start of their degrees. It’s an exciting time, and one of the busiest weeks of the year for my fantastic team. The planning for this week, and the wider Orientation programme, takes months and there are so many people involved that I couldn’t possibly do them all justice – but I will flag the super leadership of Ian, Eddie, Aisling, Marianne, Gemma, Barbara, Derry and Mary. My main role during this week has been to give welcome speeches and generally try to help without hindering our well-oiled machine. Personally, I love having this opportunity to see all of our new students and feel all that nervous energy and excitement in the lecture theatre. I’ve been doing these sorts of welcomes for years now. When I was Associate Dean I would give the talk to all the new science, engineering and design students. Then as Dean it was to all the health and sciences students. Now as Veep, it’s to every student starting with us – that’s eleven sessions over five days!
It was while I was writing my welcome speech that I had a most unsettling realisation. I started university myself thirty years ago this month. Thirty. Years. Ago. Thirty years. Three zero. The Corrs had just released their debut studio album. Braveheart was on at the cinema. A new record football transfer fee had just been witnessed – at £8.5 million. What has been compounding this feeling of getting old, is that my own son is now 18 and is off to university too. Not at Maynooth, mind you, he was appalled at the very thought of studying where his father worked. Appalled. He didn’t even sugar-coat it.
This realisation (actually, unsettling is not a strong enough word…) has brought back a whole host of long-dormant memories. I was an undergrad at Sheffield University and it was a three and a half hour drive from our family home within the shadow of the A25. I was in Ranmoor, which was a large hall of residence on the edge of the city. My room was in a long corridor with over a dozen bedrooms and a single shared shower facility. Back in my day we didn’t have these new-fangled mobile telephones, so once we were dropped off, that was it. The hall had a payphone but that was all. It was the first time I’d lived away from home, and once there I didn’t go back until the Xmas break. It was nerve-wracking stuff.
Now as it happened, the guys that I met on that first night in the hall canteen became good friends throughout my time at Sheffield – we ended up living together (up in Crookes, if you know Sheffield) and were tearing up the pitch in our 6-aside football team. I think we were in Sheffield at its peak with the music, the films, venues like The Leadmill, the smell of the Henderson’s Relish factory. Christ, I’ve just remembered Pop Tarts, the notorious Sheffield SU event. Probably best I tuck that memory back into the vault as quickly as possible. And we’ve stayed in touch over the years. In fact one of them lives just outside of Dublin and was super helpful while I was prepping to move across, and now that I’m here has been very welcoming – his recommendations for things to do have never missed the mark!
My Welcome Week was a functional affair. Department introductions (a bit tricky for me as I was dual honours and had to constantly dash across the city to the two departments), then the usual clubs and societies fair, a plastic bag with some vouchers, and a poster sale. The classic Pulp Fiction poster was the most popular. Everyone had it. Thirty years, remember. We do things a bit differently here at Maynooth. For a start, there’s no poster sale. Our Welcome Week has week-long activities, but is structured such that you only need to come in for one day to get everything done. We have a lot of commuting students, and so it’s not really fair to expect them to travel for a couple of hours over two or three days. Welcome Week is just the start too, because our Orientation runs across the whole academic year. We curate monthly touch-points with our students to give them timely advice, flag interesting events, or just to check in. Plus we have Parent/Guardian Orientation sessions too, to help ensure that everyone is comfortable with what lies ahead. The whole experience is called My Maynooth and I genuinely think it’s an exemplar of how to support students beginning their studies.
I was chatting to one of our team on Monday as we were reflecting on the first day’s activities. The point that he was making, which was absolutely spot-on, is that the importance of Welcome Week is not in all of the info that the students get, but in the opportunities to make connections with other people – other students, the academics, the professional services team, the Students’ Union. We view Welcome Week as an important time in community-building. That’s why it’s an ongoing experience, and not just a single week.
Our theme is Believe, Belong, Be You. It’s a theme that carries along throughout our students’ time with us and it sums up what we think is important for our new students. You only get one chance to make a first impression, as they say, which is why is critical to invest time and resources into getting it right and setting a firm foundation for success.