About First Year Program
Schedule of Events
The Vassar First Year
The Vassar First Year is a series of events, including New Student Orientation, meant to introduce new students to Vassar College. A mix of academic events, cultural happenings and discussions about campus issues, the programs are designed to get students talking about the big ideas they face in their scholarship and their social life on campus.
The First Year Mission
Vassar College is committed to the ideal of a richly satisfying personal and intellectual engagement for each member of the college community. Vassar seeks to ensure that each new student will feel welcomed and respected, and that each student will discover unhindered opportunity for academic excellence, intellectual enrichment, and freedom of expression.
Vassar encourages each student to value and to explore cultural diversity here at Vassar and in the human community at large, to embrace the responsibilities, privileges and rights that come with membership in the Vassar community; in the larger Poughkeepsie community; in our home communities and nations; and on the planet Earth. To that end, it is our expectation that each student will respect and value individual difference and cultural diversity.
Vassar is committed to providing an environment in which each student may achieve and sustain the fullest possible health of body, mind, and personality, thereby to grow in maturity, confidence, and ability, and to meet with courage and pleasure the challenges of the college years and beyond.
The Vassar First Year is a collaborative project of the Dean of the College and Dean of Faculty divisions, coordinated by Campus Life and the Vassar First Year Committee. Collaborators include faculty, the Dean of Freshmen, Dean of Students, Residential Life, the Library, the Learning and Teaching Center, Campus Activities and other college offices.
You can also contact the Campus Life Office at Ext. 5426,
or the Dean of Freshmen at Ext. 5258.