This summer Student Orientation, Advising and Registration (SOAR) and Venture will partner to launch SOAR Outdoor, a five-day outdoor orientation program for freshmen and transfer students. Two groups of eight will be recruited to participate in this pilot program.
SOAR Outdoor will cost $200 per person, a below-average cost for programs of this nature, according to Marion McClure, assistant director for Venture program, which will provide hiking and camping gear, meals and weather-resistant clothing for the five-day experience. “We’ve got it all,” noted McClure. “Students just need to show up with their boots and T-shirts, and we can take it from there.”
SOAR Outdoor will be structured so that after regular SOAR activities end, participating students will meet with Venture staff and student leaders. Participants will remain on campus for the first night to experience team-building through an introduction to the Venture ropes course. The remaining four days will be spent hiking and camping in Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina. The excursion’s culminating experience will be on Venture’s high ropes course.
McClure spearheaded the SOAR Outdoor proposal and will be involved heavily in the program’s launch. She noted that SOAR Outdoor is modeled after similarly successful programs at universities nationwide.
“These types of programs are fairly common,” she said. “There are just shy of 200 similar programs at both public and private universities around the country. Other North Carolina schools such as UNC-Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University and UNC Asheville have their own versions.”
Like other programs of its kind, SOAR Outdoor is founded on the idea that the challenge and novel experience of outdoor orientation programs can foster the development of meaningful relationships amongst incoming students and their trip leaders. McClure said she hopes these types of relationships will have long-term impact on students’ experience at the University, as well as their own personal development and growth.
“A program like SOAR Outdoor is what brought me to work in outdoor programs,” McClure added. “It’s one of the things that stuck with me most from my undergraduate experience. I formed deep, great friendships with the people I met, and that in turn shaped how I approached college. I know that SOAR Outdoor can do the same for our students.”