While parents and students are worrying about getting the latest necessities for dorm rooms, making sure schedules are in place and taking final tours around the campus of Auburn University (AU), leaders of the Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM) are working on getting in touch with incoming freshmen.
Each year, the BCM receives thousands of names of incoming freshmen who claim Baptist as their religious affiliation. And each year, the names are sorted through in order to contact new students who might need help finding a Bible study, a friend or simply someone to show them around Auburn. Ministers and current students send handwritten notes and personal e-mails about what the BCM has to offer.
During Camp War Eagle, AU’s summer orientation program for freshmen, the BCM sets up a table to meet face to face with incoming students and tell them about how they can find a place where they are cared for, loved and accepted.
“It’s one of the best ways we have to meet incoming freshmen,” said Gary Rossin, BCM campus minister. “Camp War Eagle is the starting point for them to get to know us.”
Rossin said freshmen orientation provides a way for students and parents to meet with the ministers and older students at AU and even take a tour around the BCM’s facility.
“It’s a good way to get plugged in with us,” he said.
The BCM’s outreach to freshmen continues once they arrive on campus with Welcome Week, which takes place the first week of the fall semester. Each day, the BCM holds an event for freshmen.
Senior Campus Minister Stephen Thompson said he has seen a lot of students who have become really involved with the BCM because of the contact established during the summer months.
Melanie Hyatt, a rising sophomore at AU, is one of them.
Hyatt said she learned about the BCM through an e-mail she received after orientation. She started attending BCM events a month after school started and found it helped her balance her college career and her relationship with Christ. She said being involved with the BCM helped her meet people on campus with whom she shared common interests.
“Before I started coming here, I was in my room all of the time,” Hyatt said.
For more information, visit www.aubcm.com or call 334-887-8600. (TAB)
With fall classes beginning Aug. 20 at the University of Alabama (UA), the Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM) is getting ready to welcome a new class of freshmen.
Most likely, those incoming students have already received some kind of greeting from the BCM this summer as contact is initiated through e-mails, phone calls, postcards and Facebook, a social-networking Web site.
BCM leaders learn of these students in several ways: churches, parents, information cards from summer camps such as Centrifuge and Student Life and from the university about religious preference and new student orientation.
The BCM relies on its student leadership team to connect with students and maintain relationships.
“Student involvement really comes down to relationships and ownership,” said Nate Young, BCM senior campus minister. “We are staff led and student driven. Leadership development is a large part of what we do.”
Rising sophomore Mary Beth Hindman is an example of that philosophy at work. It was the intentional relationship building that kept her coming back to the BCM.
“People at the BCM made sure I knew what was going on and they remembered my name,” said Hindman, who now serves on the BCM fellowship committee. “They make you feel welcome — it’s the personal contact.”
This year, Young, Campus Minister Kim Andrews and leadership team members will start building relationships with freshmen during the BCM’s 10 Days of Insanity. Beginning Aug. 17, the BCM will participate in UA events as well as host its own to meet freshmen and other students.
There are plans for a BCM booth at UA’s street fair, called Plaza Live, where students will be given information and stadium-style cups with the BCM’s regular weekly schedule.
Other events will include Survival, a banana-split party/church fair, a church road trip and a new student retreat.
Young said Survival will be half party and half orientation from a faith-based perspective. There will be worship times, small group times and breakout sessions on topics from dating to dealing with roommates to avoiding the dreaded “Freshman 15.”
And the ice-cream party is no regular sundae-making social. Ice cream and toppings will be served from rain gutters. The accompanying church fair and subsequent church road trip are designed to help students find a church home in Tuscaloosa.
(TAB)
EDITOR’S NOTE — Some names changed for security reasons.
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