When it comes to freshman orientation, Chicago colleges and universities find that new students who have lived here all their lives have as much to learn about the big city as out-of-towners.
“It’s amazing, really,” said Kelly McCray, student development director at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “I’m originally from central Indiana, and I always assumed everyone here would know a lot about the area.
“Instead, I find most kids from the suburbs really don’t know anything about the city. In fact, many kids from the city don’t know anything about the city.”
Roughly 15,000 freshmen at Chicago area colleges will participate in annual orientations ending in September. The urban schools such as UIC, DePaul, Loyola and Columbia face the dual task of acclimating everyone to the usual college routines as well as navigating the city.
“The kids from the suburbs often are the most anxious about the whole process,” said Jane Neufeld, a dean of student development at Loyola. “They feel they’re expected to know about the city and are afraid to ask.”
For many, this is the first time in their lives — despite living so close to Chicago — they are learning how to use public transportation, traveling in non-gentrified city neighborhoods, shopping somewhere besides Michigan Avenue and malls and seeing sites beyond usual tourist stops.
“When I called my mom to tell her about the [orientation] trip we took and how we went by ‘L,’ she just about freaked out,” said DePaul freshman Beth Peres, of Oak Park. “I had a car in high school and that was pretty much the way we traveled.”
All Chicago area colleges schedule sessions of some nature to urbanize new students, ranging from lessons on personal safety to museum field trips. Instruction on public transportation ranks high, since tuition to most schools here includes U-passes, which give unlimited CTA travel and discounts with other vendors.
“We even show them the best places to shop for everyday things at places like Target and Jewel,” said Jenny Holmgren Cobbley, a spokeswoman for North Park University. “They’re pretty relieved to get this.”
DePaul recently was ranked by the Princeton Review as having the “happiest students” in America, and officials there think a big reason is its orientation, which is especially comprehensive.
The program for first-year students is called the Chicago Quarter, and at the start of the fall term, explained director Midge Wilson, a psychology professor, students get immersed in a weeklong, highly focused look at the city. Then, for many participants this links to a full-fledged academic course.
Wilson is leading a class called Empowering Chicago’s Women, which in the first week of orientation met with successful professionals in Chicago such as WMAQ-Ch. 5’s Renee Ferguson and South Side Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th). Students also visited Women & Children First bookstore in Andersonville and Windy City Gym, where they talked with female boxers.
“My mom works on the South Side and I know what goes on, even though I haven’t spent time there,” said DePaul freshman Yvette Lopez, from Resurrection High on the city’s Northwest Side. “I watch news on TV and see a lot of bad things all the time, but I never met people trying to make a difference like we [met].”
DePaul political science professor Harry Wray heads a Chicago Quarter course called Biking & Politics, which saw students spend the first week of orientation taking bike trips around the city.
“I’ve noticed the kids get surprised by a number of things, the Chicago kids right along with everyone else,” he said. “For one thing, everything looks different when you’re not whizzing by on a car, and a lot of students can’t believe there are so many nice areas to live.”
South Side tour
One 30-mile bike trek led by Wray, accompanied by a bike mechanic, covered such South Side spots as Bronzeville, Washington Park, Chinatown, Pilsen, Mayor Richard J. Daley’s old Bridgeport bungalow, a tortilla factory and Manny’s Deli.
“Mayor Daley’s house really surprised me,” said Molly Fannin, a freshman from Morris, Ill. “It was just a humble little place, and I figured it would be something like a mansion.”
“I was a little familiar with the North Side, like I could get around the Loop OK, and I knew my way to Wrigley Field, but I knew nothing about the South Side,” said Mike Abraham, a freshman from Schaumburg. “It’s like there’s a whole half of the city I’d been missing.”
“Pilsen was neat, and I also liked the old stockyards area,” he added. “When I told my mom we rode by Robert Taylor Homes [a Chicago public housing project], she said: `You did! I can’t believe they took you there.'”
The area’s suburban colleges and universities also make efforts to help their students become familiar with the city.
At Elmhurst College, new students were greeted during orientation this year with a special issue of the school newspaper that included such aids as how to take Metra from Elmhurst to Chicago and using the CTA once they arrived. One feature detailed an inexpensive city date on a Sunday afternoon.
Nora Collins, assistant dean of students at Dominican University in River Forest, recalled sitting next to a student from suburban Glenview during orientation who was excited to be taking a Wendella boat tour.
“He thought it was really neat to be doing something like that, but he’d never done it before because he said he didn’t want the hassle of traffic,” Collins said. “I think really getting to know the city for people in this area is something we take for granted. We put it off, like a lot of things.”
Two days of orientation
Northwestern in Evanston has planned two full days of field trips into the city for its upcoming orientation. All but one will utilize the CTA.
“We get students from 50 states and a lot of countries, and not many of them know that much about the real Chicago, even some of them from around here,” said Jen Meyers, coordinator of the Northwestern activities. “There are a lot of myths and many aren’t sure of what’s down there,” she said. “Our goal is to get them to enjoy the city when they can.”
Northwestern’s orientation concludes with an all-freshman party in the Field Museum of Natural History, but by that time there have been outings to the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Science and Industry, Blue Man Group, ESPN Zone, Navy Pier and a Cubs game.
Edith Rivera, a Northwestern senior from Clarksburg, Tenn., can recall how these same types of trips three years ago helped alleviate a lot of anxiety over a big city like Chicago.
“At first, you’re really just trying not to get lost on the campus and they keep you really busy,” she said. “But by the time you figure things out, you want to go into the city and you’re comfortable because you’ve had this experience.”
Service projects are also becoming popular.
Offering Inspiration
At Dominican, students visited the Inspiration Cafe, an Uptown social agency that works with the homeless. Loyola had RP Pickup, a Rogers Park-Edgewater cleanup effort in which students with brooms and shovels worked alongside Chicago Streets & Sanitation employees.
“We find more and more new students have had some sort of community service experience by the time they reach college,” Neufeld said, “and jump right into it. They just need some guidance in their new environment. They also recognize it’s a good way to get to know other students.”
Ultimately, it’s also another way for freshmen to see and learn about Chicago and how it works beyond Michigan Avenue, Navy Pier, Wrigley Fieldand the other mainstream stops popular with visitors.
“For schools like us in the city,” said Tim Gordon, director of Columbia College’s Freshman Center, “it’s a bedrock that the transition to college is also a transition to urban life.
“For the others, it’s telling students how to find the student union,” he added. “For us, it’s what train line to use.”
Welcome to your new neighborhood
For many new college students in and around Chicago, learning about the city is the first order of business. Here are some of the things a sampling of area schools do as an introduction to the big city.
DEPAUL UNIVERSITY
2250 N. Sheffield Ave.
New students at DePaul spend a week getting immersed in Chicago, even on two wheels if they’re in professor Harry Wray’s Biking & Politics class. Among the sites they visited was former Mayor Richard J. Daley’s bungalow in Bridgeport, where Wray told his students it is obvious the old Chicago boss was more interested in accumulating power than wealth.
University of Chicago
5801 S. Ellis Ave.
New students get a private look at the Museum of Science and Industry, which is adjacent to the campus, as well as walking tours of Hyde Park and a trip to the John Hancock Center to view the city from above. The orientation activities launch students into the school’s Chicago Life program which encourages them to take advantage of being in the city.
Columbia College
600 S. Michigan Ave.
The school, which emphasizes the arts, took freshmen on a trolley tour that included Pilsen’s Mexican Fine Arts Museum, Buddy Guy’s Legends blues bar, Second City, Wicker Park locations used in the film “High Fidelity” and a costume shop.
Illinois Institute of Technology
3300 S. Federal St.
Armed with disposable cameras, freshmen participated in a citywide scavenger hunt that acquaints them with the city by taking pictures of local landmarks such as Second City, 31st Street Beach, Field Museum of Natural History, Globe Theatre at Navy Pier and Bronzeville. They got points for getting a Chicago police officer to pose with them.
Loyola University
6525 N. Sheridan Rd.
There was an ethnic component to orientation in August with an excursion for freshmen to Grant Park for a Latin music festival, “Viva Chicago!”
North Park University
3225 W. Foster Ave.
Freshmen got a view of Chicago from the lake with a cruise — and dance — aboard the Spirit of Chicago.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
37 S. Wabash Ave.
New students went on a conducted tour of the city’s art galleries on the first Friday in September, the traditional opening date for new exhibitions.
St. Xavier University
3700 W. 103rd St.
New students got exposed to the Chicago theater scene when the school’s “Weeks of Welcome” included live performances on campus by Comedy Sportz, one of the city’s top improvisational comedy troupes.
Wheaton College
Wheaton
The freshman class took four chartered Metra train cars to Chicago one evening. Led by upper classmen, everyone broke into small groups to get familiar with Loop landmarks and to deliver food to the homeless.
