Bruin Next Steps program aims to ease transitions

To respond to student uncertainty about academic and career planning, the Office of Residential Life and the New Student and Transition Programs office are co-sponsoring an event called Bruin Next Steps.

The event, which will take place tonight in Covel Commons, is organized in two parts, Getting to Year Two and Year Three and Beyond.

The goal is to help first-year students transition into their second year and continuing transfer students to further adapt to their academic career at UCLA, said Ivy Ebuen, program manager for the New Student and Transition Programs Office.

Though intended for these two groups, Ebuen said that all students are welcome to come.

This is the first time the event will be held, but it could become annual after coordinators evaluate its success, said Dayna Weintraub, co-chair of ORL’s Academic Development Committee.

The event will feature a number of workshops that are aimed at answering questions about academic and career planning as well as introducing students to resources that they might continue to use in the coming years, Ebuen said.

For example, by attending the UCLA Career Center’s Options After Graduation workshop, students might gain insight into planning for their life postgraduation or be introduced to resources in the career center that they may not have been aware of otherwise, Ebuen said.

In addition to the departments’ workshops for students, Ebuen said a number of campus groups, including the Bruin Resource Center and International Education Center, would send one or two representatives to table at the event to answer questions and provide information to transitioning students.

Ebuen said the Bruin Next Steps event is part of an effort by the New Student and Transition Programs office to expand programming for continuing students.

The office, which recently changed its name from Orientation Program to convey its expanded scope, thought that there was previously not enough outreach to students after their first year, Ebuen said.

The College Academic Counseling Office, which will host a workshop aimed at helping students plan for senior year and beyond, hopes the program will encourage students to start thinking early about their plans for senior year and after graduation.

“If they start to think about it in the spring quarter of their senior year, it’s too late to start to take advantage of all of the opportunities available,” said Corey Hollis, director of College academic counseling.

Hollis said she commonly sees students who discover what their true interests are late in their academic careers, or students who are unaware of resources available on campus until it is too late to truly take advantage of them.

She added that the Bruin Next Steps program could help students prevent these types of problems.

“We really want people to be proactive about their own futures,” Hollis said.

For Hollis, the event is particularly important in the current economic climate.

“Not just because the economy is poor, but because the market place is very competitive to begin with, and students need to think about how they are going to position themselves after they leave,” she said.

With reports from Megan Beauchamp, Bruin contributor.