{"id":140663,"date":"2018-08-21T07:41:20","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T11:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=140663"},"modified":"2023-06-27T13:04:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T17:04:31","slug":"team-preparing-opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2018\/08\/team-preparing-opening-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The Team Gearing Up for Opening Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The countdown has begun. And when the this buzzer goes off Friday morning, more than 3,550 students and a cadre of family and friends, will flood campus.<\/p>\n<p>The new faces will be met by staff and upperclassmen who have long been preparing for their arrival.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the freshmen families pull into the parking lot, it can be really cute,\u201d said Amy Crim, the associate director of housing services, Office of Residential Life.\u00a0\u201cStudents and parents can be nervous and have a ton of questions. We try to lighten things up as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Storrs, the Class of 2022 will be welcomed on Aug. 24, while upperclassmen will return throughout the weekend. More than 19,000 undergraduates call Storrs home during the academic year, and over 12,000 live in residence halls.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Amy Crim, Associate Director of Housing Services, August 2018\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Gv7zy3RJXmc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Crim&#8217;s team members greet them and tell them what is going to happen. Freshmen families are instructed to report to designated campus parking lots depending on residence hall assignments. The lots are used as staging areas because parking is not abundant near most residence halls.<\/p>\n<p>Husky Haulers \u2013 UConn upperclassmen who volunteer to come back early &#8212; are on site near all housing to and greet the newcomers and literally help them carry their possessions. Fraternities, sororities and Learning Communities often come out to help.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have hundreds of them who come back early for this job,\u201d said Crim.\u00a0\u201cOur staff gets here at 6:30 a.m. and it\u2019s really a fun day, but it\u2019s also an exhausting one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The key to an efficient move-in and start of an academic year is planning, which essentially begins in May \u2013 right after commencement.<\/p>\n<p>Aris Ristau, director of building services in Facilities Operations &amp; Building Services, oversees the team of housekeepers and general trade workers who perform maintenance on campus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs soon as the students leave in May, we being to check every single room on campus at least once,\u201d said Ristau.\u00a0\u201cWe look at beds, dressers, ceiling tiles, floor tiles, basically everything in the room. We do patching and painting to make sure the room are in good shape.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As part of the preparation, the team factors in the summer conferences and camps that use many of the facilities. Because of that, some rooms get last-minute attention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are working right to opening day, because of the number of conferences over the summer,\u201d Ristau said. \u201cThere are some rooms we don\u2019t get until a day or two before the students come in. In a word: it\u2019s nuts. But we get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Aris Ristau, UConn Diretor of Building Services, August 2018\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E8pKb1Irc-c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Beyond the physical preparation of living space, another important task for Residential Life over the summer is one of paramount concern to incoming freshman: roommate selection. It&#8217;s not automated.<\/p>\n<p>About 1,200 of the freshmen pick their own roommate, but the rest are matched by Crim&#8217;s team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do the assignments by hand and our staff works very hard at it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe get information on each student and what is important to them. Are they messy or neat? Do they like to have guests in their room or are they quiet? We take that information and come up with the best matches.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And, when students move into residence halls, they are also introduced to new food through Dining Services.\u00a0\u00a0Following the convocation ceremony on Aug. 24, each dining hall serves a special meal for the new students and residence hall directors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStudents are emotional eaters and are a very unique demographic in the food service industry,\u201d said Dennis Pierce, executive director of Dining Services, which includes eight residential dining halls in addition to a number of coffee shops and the Food Court at the Student Union.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of our dining halls are closed during the summer, so about a week before the students arrive, we bring our staff back and start to clean, go over orders and begin preparation,\u201d said Pierce.<\/p>\n<p>Once the semester gets into full swing, UConn Dining Services prepares some 180,000 meals a week for students.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks into the semester is often when new students begin to use the library, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be honest, they may stay away for a little while,\u201d said Jean Cardinale Nelson, head of\u00a0UConn Libraries&#8217; public programming, marketing and communications. \u201cWe try to make it as inviting as possible. We want them to ask questions, even silly ones, and become more comfortable. Once they get the flow of the building and find their favorite study sports, they start to use our services more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The library staff spent much of the summer preparing handouts and information for the common questions that many students have. Many members of the library staff also teach classes in September and October on how to use the library and take the summer month to get ready for instruction.<\/p>\n<p>Virtually every part of UConn plays a role in welcoming students to campus in the fall including Police Department and Transportation Services, said Crim. \u201cThis is an operation that really brings a cross-section of campus together to make sure everything goes smoothly for our students.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Added Ristau, \u201cWe want parents to feel comfortable leaving their children here at UConn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Campus life will be full swing for the beginning of fall semester Monday, Aug. 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From commencement to convocation, staff prepare the campus for the fall semester.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":140671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2225,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2113],"class_list":["post-140663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-storrs","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-31 16:50:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140663"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140784,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140663\/revisions\/140784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/140671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140663"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=140663"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=140663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}