by Brian Asare Staff Writer
Manhattan College’s Center for Academic Success has recently announced a new peer mentoring initiative that is aimed at all incoming students to help them in familiarizing themselves with the campus and college life faster and easier.
This initiative is known as the Manhattan Open Doors program (MOD). This program was created this year, and it extends the role of the orientation leaders into the fall semester to continue to make them available for programs, questions and any kind of help that students may need during their introductory phase to Manhattan College campus.
Acacia Mauriello, the student success coordinator, is the advisor for the program and she believes the program will have many benefits.
“So the advantages of the programing is that you can turn to people for help. Particular students who aren’t in the dorms and don’t necessarily have an RA that they can turn to,” said Mauriello. “We hope that they will continue to turn to orientation leader in a similar way and it also gives us admins an idea of what the students need and what we could do better with.”
She continued.
“It’s also an advantage for the student leaders that are part of the program. When you are doing something for the first time and you are building it from scratch, there is a lot of work that needs to happen,” said Mauriello.
Sophomore Jeremy Capuder, one of the orientation leaders and member of this year’s MODs program, is excited to be part of the program’s pilot year.
“I think it has a lot of potential very excited to be apart of it to behind and assisting with the creation and development of it, to see what ideas work and what ideas don’t and to contribute new ideas and just make the best program that it can be to assist the freshmen and incoming students part of it,” said Capuder.
Another one of the MODs, sophomore Angelica Schwartz, expressed a similar sentiment based on her experiences as a freshman commuter.
Schwartz said, “I’m interested to see how it gets created, how it continues on. I think it’s a very good idea because I kinda wish I would have stayed in touch with my orientation leader a little bit more and gotten to know people so I think its great and it’s always nice especially as a commuter student to have someone to guide you when your are lost on campus sometimes.”
Though the program is new, it is a program students would have liked to see before.
“I would have [liked it]; I feel like it would have been very beneficial and I definitely wanted to see more,” said Capuder,.“Like I saw my orientation leader around campus but I felt like it would have been great to have had more meetings and interactions.”
As of right now, the MODs program intends to send weekly outreach emails to all new students informing them of on campus events, resources and tips that students should know. The MODs will also be hosting informative and social events throughout the semester aimed at educating new students about different topics related to college life and getting new students to connect with each other.