First-year students learn the ropes with Design Your UB Experience retreat

Twenty-one first-year students began their college experience a week early this year with Design Your UB Experience, an overnight camp retreat held Aug. 20-22 by the Career Design Center.

The retreat, which was free for students, was hosted at YMCA Camp Weona in Gainesville, New York, and provided attendees with an opportunity to meet fellow new students, discover opportunities available during their college journey and participate in classic camp activities. Students also reflected on their values and interests to build a foundation for identifying and exploring career paths of interest.

“We are thrilled to offer this unique program to help students connect meaningfully with their new UB community and create their individual road map for their college journey ahead,” Steven Simpson, Career Design Center director, says.

“Employing a human-centered design approach to the program not only provides the opportunity for each student to establish a vibrant vision for their UB experience, but also equips them with an experience and tools that each student can utilize in their career exploration and pursuits ahead.”

The idea for the retreat came from the concept of Design Thinking – a process developed by Stanford’s Life Design Lab for creative problem-solving that uses a human-centered approach to tackle life’s big questions.

“The Career Design Center adopted the Design Your Life approach a few years ago to encourage students to apply these concepts to their academic experience,” says Jenna Hubbard, associate director of operations and special events in the Career Design Center. “Many students think college and careers are linear – and that’s not the case. Design Thinking allows students to take a step back and consider what they want their lives to look like, and provides tools to achieve those goals.”

Since adopting the methodology, the Career Design Center has encouraged all staff members to read the Design Your Life book and provided opportunities to attend Design Lab training. Two staff members — Lauren Khoury, student operations coordinator, and Carl Remmes, career design consultant — have become certified Design Your Life coaches. The trainings positioned them to facilitate the two-day workshop that introduced students to these ideas and exposed them to important resources available at UB.

On day one, participating students hopped on a bus at Rensch Loop and traveled to Camp Weona, where they unpacked and settled in. The retreat kicked off with an introduction to Design Thinking, which provided the group with an opportunity to get to know one another and run through the core concepts that they would apply throughout the retreat.

The remainder of the day included sessions about different views of the college experience, breaking myths and barriers about college and how to build community in the first year of college – sprinkled between horseback riding, a low ropes course and s’mores around the campfire.

Kaiyi Wang, a first-year student enrolled in business administration, was one of the students excited to talk about their experience.

“I’m really glad I registered for the Design Your UB Experience retreat,” Wang says. “In addition to learning to put myself out there and go outside my comfort zone, it’s given me time to think about what I want from my college experience moving forward. I feel more clearheaded about where I want to go.”

Day two of the retreat kicked off with quiet journaling that encouraged students to reflect on their experiences so far. It was followed by sessions on framing and reframing problems students may face during college, imagining their ideal UB future and debriefing from the experience – plus, opportunities for kayaking on the lake, rock climbing and a high ropes course and more campfire s’mores. The group packed up and traveled back to campus the following morning.

First-year political science student Izzy Ehrlich shared how much it meant to build a community before the start of the semester.

“I’m happy I registered for this,” Ehrlich says. “It was nice to have those extra few days to ease into social life and be able to meet people who also were interested in meeting new people and building their leadership and quality as a student. Sometimes it seems like you’re the only one who is struggling to adjust or not know what you’re interested in, but many people just don’t talk about it. Being able to be in a space where it’s encouraged to talk about those things makes it much easier to adjust and relate to other people.”

The Career Design Center worked closely with the Orientation, Transition and Parent Programs team to integrate the new retreat into the new-to-UB process to ensure students received relevant information and communications at appropriate points in the orientation timeline.

“This was a great model of how to collaborate among units,” Chrissy Daniel, associate director of orientation, transition and parent programs, says. “The Career Design Center was able to leverage our office's orientation experience and their team’s Design Your Life goals to design an experience that will be a model for the campus to build out similar community-building opportunities for incoming first-year students.”

Following the retreat, students were encouraged to join a group on Connect-a-Bull, which will provide them access to Design Thinking events and group discussions throughout the semester, as well as opportunities to connect with alumni in career fields of interest to them.