Fatimah Diallo’s first day of the school year is a busy one. Among her biggest battles Monday was the unexpected challenge of assembling a mini golf putting green.
“How is this supposed to work?” Diallo said, a bit frustrated, while grappling with the green’s plastic components. Diallo, a junior, is an events coordinator for Washington State University Vancouver’s Student Activities Board.
She and other students and faculty worked Monday morning to set up various games to lure students to the board’s outreach tent on campus.
The first week of school at the Vancouver campus is sprinkled with fun, light-hearted events to help alleviate the stress of a new school year, such as a barbecue catered specifically to first-year students who might feel especially nervous about a new school.
“It can be easy to feel overwhelmed on the first day. We just want to help encourage students to, even if it’s early, find time to take a break from school,” Diallo said.
As the board’s off-campus events coordinator last year, Diallo said the work helped her feel a lot more comfortable with her fellow students. Events like roller-skating were well-attended and critical to rebuilding a campus culture slowly crawling back from pandemic-related isolation.
“It was just a way of getting out there, doing something like making a craft with others,” said junior Charisma Moore-Harris, another events coordinator. “I want to have other students experience that, to enjoy campus life that isn’t just school, school, school.”
New milestones
A steady increase of events on and off campus was among last year’s highlights, Chancellor Mel Netzhammer said. A new guaranteed admissions program with Clark College that solidifies advising services for transfer students and the reinstatement of on-campus child care are two major achievements he’s excited to see flourish going forward.
“These were a few things we really felt like we had wanted to address for a while,” Netzhammer said.
WSU Vancouver is also celebrating the opening of its new Life Sciences Building — a facility that was a decade in the making and offers several new research pathways and degree options in biology, chemistry and more.
Despite those achievements, Netzhammer said the school is not yet done feeling the effects of pandemic-related slowdowns.
Enrollment figures won’t be finalized for another few weeks, but initial data shows the potential for an enrollment drop of about 2 percent this year. Were the prediction to be confirmed, he said, the school would work toward further evaluating its outreach techniques to prevent a further slide.
There is good news, however. Last year, Clark College saw a double-digit increase in fall enrollment. Because many of WSU Vancouver’s students transfer from Clark after two years, Netzhammer said it’s likely that his school would feel some sort of a boost in enrollment next year as Clark students move forward.
“It makes me hopeful,” Netzhammer said. “That would be minimal growth at first, but it will be positive.”
