A New Fresh­man Lec­ture Series
BY ELISE MARIE KNABLE ’09

Wal­ter Everett speaks to stu­dents about the power of forgiveness.

LAST JANUARY, a fac­ulty com­mit­tee was formed to eval­u­ate the fresh­man expe­ri­ence on cam­pus. While dis­cussing ways to help Wes­ley stu­dents bet­ter accli­mate them­selves to the col­lege envi­ronment and increase stu­dent reten­tion rates at the same time, the idea for a fresh­man lec­ture series was sparked. The Office of Stu­dent Life worked in con­junc­tion with the fac­ulty com­mit­tee to carry out the vision for a series of seven lec­tures and one pho­tog­ra­phy exhibit through­out the first semes­ter that would offer impor­tant life lessons and new per­spec­tives to students.

“We wanted fresh­men to have a ‘shared expe­ri­ence’ and to address what fac­ulty thought were issues for many stu­dents,” com­mented Mary-Alice Oze­choski, Wesley’s dean of stu­dents. An impor­tant goal for the pro­gram­ming was to pro­vide valu­able infor­ma­tion to stu­dents while help­ing them gain the tools to deal with the pres­sures they will face in col­lege and through­out their young adult lives. She noted that many of the top­ics dis­cussed were issues that gen­er­ally affect the col­lege age popula­tion across the nation such as alco­hol abuse, diver­sity, haz­ing and body image. She also pointed out the impor­tance of address­ing these prob­lems reg­u­larly on col­lege cam­puses, not just when stu­dents first arrive at the begin­ning of the year.

Dr. Jef­fery Mask, fac­ulty com­mit­tee mem­ber and pro­fes­sor of reli­gion and busi­ness, was pleased with the lec­ture sched­ule that resulted from the group’s dis­cus­sions. “The Stu­dent Life staff really car­ried the ball in putting the series together. I think they did a good job of find­ing top­ics that are both inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant to students.”

For the many stu­dents and mem­bers of the com­mu­nity that attended the lec­ture series, there were pow­er­ful mes­sages and prac­ti­cal lessons to take away.Walter Everett speaks to stu­dents about the power of forgiveness.One influ­en­tial pre­sen­ter was Stacy Nadeau, one of the orig­i­nal mod­els from the Dove ® Cam­paign for Real Women. She is now a moti­va­tional speaker who pro­motes body image aware­ness and over­com­ing neg­a­tive influ­ences that are par­tially to blame for the fact that only 2 per­cent of Amer­i­can women feel com­fort­able call­ing them­selves beau­ti­ful, accord­ing to a Har­vard Uni­ver­sity study. Audi­ence mem­bers were also moved by Wal­ter Everett’s lec­ture enti­tled “Is Heal­ing Pos­si­ble After the Mur­der of a Loved One?” A United Methodist pas­tor, Everett spoke about the power of forgive­ness, telling his story of devel­op­ing a grad­ual friend­ship with the indi­vid­ual that mur­dered his 24-year-old son in 1987. Another lec­ture in the series fea­tured Peter Biela­gus, a finan­cial guru for young peo­ple who learned the hard way about credit card debt when he was in col­lege, and now advises how to avoid it. Biela­gus pro­vided the Wes­ley audi­ence prac­ti­cal finan­cial advice from his pop­u­lar book “Get­ting Loaded: A Com­plete Guide to Per­sonal Finance for Stu­dents & Young Professionals.”

Through­out the series, fac­ulty mem­bers were encour­aged to jux­ta­pose their own course cur­ric­ula with the var­i­ous lec­ture top­ics and many assigned atten­dance at one or more of the pro­grams as part of a course require­ment. Oze­choski stated, “Any time we can link the co-curricular expe­ri­ence to the cur­ric­u­lar expe­ri­ence we enhance learn­ing.” While steady par­tic­i­pa­tion through­out the series was promis­ing, the com­mit­tee still needs to eval­u­ate its over­all suc­cess. “Once the fac­ulty reviews it, we will decide whether or not to con­tinue this,” Oze­choski said. “I hope annu­ally, we will hold such a series,” she added.