Every orientation team wants new students to feel they belong. The easy move is to say it from the stage. Janssen, who works on orientation at the University of Georgia, doesn't think that works.

"Belonging is very personal and individual to that student," he says. Staff can create opportunities, introduce people and resources, and describe the community they hope for. Students have to experience it for themselves. In Campus Notes Episode 5, Janssen explains how UGA designs for that.

What is student belonging?

Student belonging is a student's sense that they're accepted, valued, and connected on campus: that they fit, and that they matter there. It isn't the same as attendance or satisfaction. A student can show up to everything and still feel like an outsider. That's why so many orientation and first-year teams treat it as the goal behind the events. We cover it in more depth in what student belonging is and how to measure it.

Create conditions, not declarations

UGA's orientation goal is simple to say and hard to do: create as many chances as possible for students to find their people, take risks, try something new, and start building their own version of community.

Janssen is clear about what it isn't. "It's not a flick of the switch. It's not an epiphany." Orientation sets up the conditions. The student does the rest.

One UGA: a message students actually hear

The program Janssen points to first is One UGA, a spoken word experience that orientation leaders prepare and deliver live. It has gone through a lot of versions over the years, some theatrical, some practical.

This summer, he says, the team found a version that meets students where they are. The reason was listening: to students, to orientation leaders, and to people who'd been through the program before. The message that came through is that community takes time. It takes choices, risks, and putting yourself out there. Sometimes your community isn't in the first place you look.

What the program avoids is the party line. UGA isn't telling students they belong. It's showing them the community the university is trying to build, and the part they play in it.

At 40,000 students, small things carry

Janssen names something every orientation professional knows: "Everybody only gets one orientation experience." UGA runs its programs more than 20 times each summer. Each one still has to feel like that student's only session.

At a university with more than 40,000 students, it's easy for a new student to assume they'll be one fish in a big sea. So the staff model small moments on purpose:

• Using people's names when they meet them
• Making a personal introduction to an office instead of pointing the way
• Getting name tags right, with preferred names and the right city

The name tags take real time to prepare. Janssen thinks they're worth it, because they tell a student on arrival that they won't be anonymous here. Not "student XYZ." Joe, who chose UGA.

Growth tests the design

Janssen says UGA had the most students in its orientation program this year, after a strong enrollment cycle. More students strains every belonging promise. "If we have a small group of twenty six people, that's no longer a small group. That's a room."

So the logistics have to keep students at the center. Janssen credits Guidebook with giving the team "the infrastructure that we need so that we as humans can do our job." Information lives in one place participants can reach. The team doesn't have to print a thousand things. Staff time goes to people, not paper.

Measuring what a dashboard misses

How do you know a program like One UGA is landing? Some of it is trial and error. Some of it is what the team hears afterward: a student who saw themselves in an orientation leader's story, or a parent who says their student really needed to hear that.

Janssen doesn't pretend the numbers don't matter. People on campus want to know resources are being used well, and he points to UGA's retention as part of the longer story. But he's comfortable that some of the most important outcomes are ones "you can't put numbers to." He describes orientation as the doorstep, the entryway. It's not about the orientation team succeeding. It's about students succeeding.

What to take back to your campus

• Design for discovery. Build chances for students to find their people, rather than telling them they've already found them.
• Rewrite with your audience. Keep revising key programs with input from students, leaders, and past participants.
• Protect the small moments. Names, introductions, and correct details tell a student they're seen.
• Watch your group sizes. Growth can quietly turn a small group into a room.
• Count, and also listen. Pair your metrics with what students and families say after the session.

Running orientation at scale? See how teams run new student programs with Guidebook, and read how to measure orientation success.

Watch Janssen's full conversation in Campus Notes Episode 5.

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