Looking for a ride home? At West Virginia University, we recognized that providing bus transportation for our students over the holiday breaks was a huge relief for our parents. To meet their needs, the Mountaineer Parents Club provides bus transportation to help families get their students home for Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring breaks. We started this program in 1998 with just two buses and it has grown to sixteen buses that travel to six different states. 

We in parent and family programming are often collaboration experts as inherent in our roles we serve to connect our families to the institution in a variety of ways. These partnerships can help to maintain current relationships or create new ones that involve our families and their students in new ways. Our event, Bringing Women Together, was hosted as part of Women’s History Month at the University of Memphis. It was a collaborative partnership with the Parent and Family Services office and the Student Leadership and Involvement office as a celebration of the multi-generational relationships of our students and their families. To celebrate all of the generations at our institution, Lindsey Bray and Rachel Koch of the Parent and Family Services office partnered with Alison Brown, Coordinator for Student Outreach and Support, who oversees programming and services for our parenting students in the Student Leadership & Involvement office. Parent and Family Services invited our parents and their current students and Alison invited parenting students and their children to attend. At the free event, we hosted over 300 students and their family members for brunch and activities with two families in attendance having four generations present. 

Program Description

For many parents and families, especially for those with first-year students or those who are first-time college parents, Family Weekend is an eagerly anticipated opportunity to reconnect and enjoy time together while exploring their student’s “home away from home.” For some students, however, Family Weekend can be an uncomfortable or even painful reminder of family who will not be visiting, whatever the reason. Especially on a small campus of about 2,000 students, it is quite obvious who has visitors and who does not.

Like many of us, I spent the last few weeks of the summer leading our New Parent Orientation, responding to Facebook posts (what size sheets to they need again?), or speaking to parents on the phone.  While their inquiries vary, I really feel that they are all asking one basic question.  How am I supposed to do this?   How do I both stay involved and detach myself?  How do I support them when I don’t see them every day? What should I do when they encounter a struggle?  My experience is that while students seem nervous at the beginning of their time in college, the parents are even more nervous about the transition—their own transition to parent of a college student. 

Established in 2006, the Dinner Dialogues program helps create a meaningful experience for students at the University of South Carolina. For some students, it can be difficult to create connections on campus. The Dinner Dialogues program was created to offer a unique way for students and university instructors to interact throughout the semester, in a more casual atmosphere than the classroom setting. It also allows students to get off campus with their peers and have genuine conversations with the people they see two to three times a week–about more than an assignment. 

Because of its terrific reputation, the program has grown from 20 Dinner Dialogues in 2006 to 117 in fall 2017. Supported by the Parents Annual Fund, professors can apply to host their undergraduate class in their home for a meal, receiving reimbursement up to $10 for each student. 

Each fall, our institutions move in thousands of eager freshman students to our campus residence halls. At Appalachian State University, over 2,000 first-year students move in on the Friday before classes start. Emotions run high, traffic moves slow and, somehow, rain always threatens the weather forecast! To give our new students and their families extra support during this rite-of-passage, parent volunteers help by unloading cars and moving students’ belongings into their residence halls.  

For the last three years, on the third Sunday evening of Block Four, during the generally chilly month of December, Bemis Great Hall on the Colorado College campus has been aglow with soft light and sparkling smiles as a small cohort of seniors gather with their families, friends and cherished faculty to celebrate the end of their undergraduate studies and the beginning of their journey into the future. (For those of you unfamiliar with the idiosyncratic measurement of time known as the “block”—which is probably most of you!—you can read more here.) While the majority of the 2,000 or so undergraduate students at Colorado College conclude their time on campus by processing across the quad on a sunny May day during Commencement Weekend, there are a few students (generally between 10 and 20) each year who, for a variety of reasons, choose to complete their programs in December, mid-way through the academic year. To honor the diversity with which our liberal arts students design and pursue their academic experiences, and to celebrate those students who don’t take a traditional path to degree completion, Colorado College established the Winter Celebration. 

Siblings Day or "Sibs Day" is a great way to not only create another opportunity to connect with your families, but also to expose a younger generation to campus life. Georgia Tech Parent & Family Programs proudly hosted Sibs Day for a third year on February 11, 2017.  Georgia Tech students were encouraged to host brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, family friends-you name it (ages 7-17) and give them taste of campus life–Yellow Jacket-style! NOTE: Parents and family members are welcome at all events, but must register as a participant as well. 

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is located in a suburb of Rochester, NY. The area is rich with history, nature, culture, food and drink. Unfortunately, because of its location outside of the city, many of RIT’s students and families do not go into the city and miss opportunities to experience the many of the wonderful offerings available. In order to spotlight for our families that their visits to campus can be more fun than a trip to Target and a meal in the dining hall, I developed a program for our Family Weekend called Taste of Rochester.

The purpose of this program is to engage families of Gonzaga University (GU) students in promoting and encouraging healthy behaviors and responsible decision-making related to student alcohol consumption. The program was created in response to a need to reduce risky drinking behaviors often associated with 21st birthday celebrations among GU students, and also in response to several student narratives that their parents had encouraged them not to shy away from the campus drinking culture, stating that 'it was a just normal part of life as a college student'.

On move-in days for first-year students we host a family lounge with refreshments, a chance to write a note of encouragement to students, and an opportunity to chat with faculty, staff, current students, and administrators. The lounge has not been well-attended in the past, so this year we provided an incentive to encourage families to visit us. We offered our families the opportunity to create a goody bag for their student – free of charge. To make this happen with our limited budget, we reached out to our colleagues across campus for swag item donations typically given at recruiting and other outreach events.

Ohio University (OHIO) is located in Athens which is in the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio. 33% of the first-year class at OHIO identify as first-generation college students and, for many of their parents and supporters, this is the first or second time coming to a university campus. Even for those parent pros, they sometimes didn’t know if they are happy or sad…or both.☺️

Wake Forest hosts between 30-35 New Student Receptions nationwide each summer to provide an opportunity for incoming first-year students and their parents and family members to meet one another before the start of school. This is one of our most popular programmatic offerings because it helps reduce the anxiety of starting the unknown.