UM’s Remarkable Program for First Year Students

New Student Orientation is a week that Missoulians are familiar with. Parents, guardians, and soon-to-be Griz wander around Missoula picking out things for their dorm.

However, the Office of Student Success at the Univeristy of Montana has made all the information shared during New Student Orientation online that incoming first years do online and the week before school there are more fun planned.

Almost Fully Student Led

Director of Student Success Devin Carpenter has been in charge of The Big Sky Experience since its start in 2019. This year Carpenter will have the help of UM Advocate Coordinators, Lauren Schulte and Delamie Schultz, and 70 UM Advocates. Carpenter said, “Orientation is an information dump, Big Sky Experience is a sense of belonging.”

First years are divided into groups led by Advocates(Advocates are also UM students) and they go off campus and/or stay on campus where they are connected with a local organization. “The role that advocates take is that we get to witness students try and find their place at UM,” Schulte said, “We get to dive in with them, and as they’re moving along we’re moving along with them and watching them grow.”

The Advocates lead almost the entire program, “From more of a student standpoint and my own experience going through this program having an advocate is more or less your first connection to a new world and gives you the opportunity where you see it’s going to be okay,” Schutz said.

What Do First Years Do During This Week?

There is a wide variety of groups that can vary from exploring the outdoors to working with professors from their major, there are so many different groups.

The Big Sky Experience is not the first of its kind, but it’s been proven to help students make it through the first six weeks of school. Another reason that makes the Big Sky Experience different from similar programs is that it is completely free whereas other programs are not.