Coordinators Around the World

RiceFYP

Published in

Rice O-Week

4 min readAug 8, 2014

Where are your coordinators from? And who exactly are these people that keep emailing you?

What is a Coordinator?

We Coordinators are a diverse bunch, but you should know that every single one of us is dying to meet you! We signed up for this job because we love O-Week and want to create the best possible experience for all of the incoming students.

The Coordinators started working on O-Week 2014 in January on our first retreat.

All of us have volunteered to dedicate over seven months of our lives to creating the best possible O-Week, and we’ve sacrificed sleep, free time, and only a little bit of sanity along the way. We can’t wait for O-Week to arrive because we’ll be able to (a) meet all of you, and (b) see what we’ve been working on for months become a reality. But you should know that O-Week will also be bittersweet for us, because after O-Week, the bulk of our job is done. (If a Coordinator gets emotional at the end of the week, don’t be alarmed.) We’ll still be here for you during the rest of your time at Rice, but it won’t be exactly the same. Coordinating O-Week is undoubtedly one of the most unique leadership positions we’ve ever held, and since we only have a few days left until O-Week, we’re just trying to savor every last minute.

Coordinators training advisors in April.

Your Coordinators have planned everything about the week, from choosing the best advisors possible from a group of your peers, to pairing you with your roommate, planning events, decorating the college, choosing a theme and a mission statement, and working with all of the offices involved in a comprehensive orientation.

They may look a little frazzled during O-Week, but they are all here for you, so talk to them! Nothing makes them happier than helping new students, whether its a problem you’re having, or just making sure that you know they are interested and invested in your success.

O-Week summed up in one powerpoint slide

Every college has two or three student Coordinators. Some cool stats:

3 Coordinators are on the Women’s Club Rugby Team, at least 1 Coordinator works at every Student Run and Managed Business (Coffeehouse, Pub, The Hoot, Rice Bikes), 1 invented a bathroom soap dispenser that tricks people into scrubbing their hands really well, 2 are officers in Queers and Allies, 1 is an Archi, 1 is an international student, 2 are in a cappella groups on campus. They’re all pretty cool.