Campus alive with record student crowd

All kinds of artists provided animation on campus during 2003 Welcome Week

Susan Hickman

Not surprisingly, in view of the double cohort of students flooding the gates of universities all across Ontario, the University of Ottawa welcomed more new students than ever this month. And Welcome Week had all the colour one would expect of first week on campus.

Nearly 6,200 first-year students – about a 37 percent increase over last year – have swelled the student population to a record 30,000-plus.

A new welcome and integration program called University 101 was created to help all these new students integrate into university life. This Web portal, accessible from the University’s home page, is geared toward enhancing the university experience of new students and guiding them in their academic studies.

"Our orientation and academic integration goes beyond Welcome Week," says Serge Blais, director of the Student Academic Support Service (SASS). "Integration carries on until at least the middle of November, with programs designed to meet the needs of the students."

"Some 100 student mentors, paid and highly trained, offer the student population a decentralized community approach on the front lines. We define academic success beyond the classroom, to personal development, as well as professional success," says Blais.

Welcome Week kicked off the start of the academic year with a ceremony at the Sports Complex on September 1. Then, for the following two days, thousands thronged onto the lawn of Tabaret Hall for barbecues, where local media personalities flipped burgers to raise funds for the annual Shinerama campaign for cystic fibrosis research. Adding colour to the festivities were ethnic dancers, jugglers, magicians and musicians. On September 6, hundreds of students descended on the Byward Market to shine shoes for the culmination of the Shinerama campaign.

Mindful of the younger age of many of the students – many only 18 – SASS organized a series of continental breakfasts over the Labour Day weekend to defuse the anxiety of some 500 parents.

During the third week of September, the various clubs and associations introduced themselves to the students, while September 22 and 23 were reserved for an academic services fair to inform of the many services available on campus.