Family Weekend
Travel/Vacation Arrangements
Emergencies
FERPA Regulations
Welcome to Trinity!
We at the Dean of Students Office share your interest in helping your sons and daughters reach their greatest potential. As you are undoubtedly aware, a student’s first year in college can be full of transitions that are at once exciting, frustrating, surprising, and overwhelming. Returning students also face many changes: second-year students as they hit a “sophomore slump” and feel bored or unchallenged or unmotivated after several years of school; juniors as they find themselves having to create a new support network when most of their friends leave for a junior year abroad; or seniors as they begin to interview for job opportunities after college and feel torn between two worlds. Of all the factors affecting a student’s growth in college, academics and social life are most significant. The first two to six weeks of school are critical. You can help ease your sons’ and daughters’ transitions by talking with them about ways to anticipate and handle the challenges that they will face in their shifting environment so that they can enhance their success and satisfaction.
We expect students with insufficient academic preparation for college to struggle. But we forget that students who were in the top of their class in high school also face major academic challenges in college; and we sometimes forget that classes become increasingly challenging as students specialize in their major or venture into subject areas that are new to them. In fact, it is often the students who have always performed exceptionally well who have the greatest difficulties adjusting to the changing demands of college life, for they do not think that typical pitfalls apply to them, they may never have needed to make use of resources nor needed to learn more effective study strategies in order to excel, and so frequently these students do not seek assistance when they first sense they want it. The academic challenges these students experience in college can lead them to question their very identity. Some students take courses in areas well covered in high school only to learn that the standards, pace, degree of difficulty, structure, even content and methods of evaluation in a college course are considerably different. Many do not realize that most students in their college courses were, like them, in the top of their graduating classes and that academic expectations have risen accordingly. Some do not realize that unlike many high school classes, most college courses expect four or five hours of work for each hour in class and that a slow reader or a student who has difficulty mastering the material will need to put in even more effort and perhaps develop new learning and study strategies. Balancing course loads and using academic advisors effectively are crucial to academic success in college.
Many First-Year students also struggle to adjust to a new social environment, for the first time in years having to build new friendships or struggling with relationship issues without the support of family and old friends while feeling out of place in a new place. Some have never shared a room and feel uncomfortable negotiating to create a fair, academically conducive environment. Some students feel disoriented by demographic shifts, by New England weather, by unfamiliar architecture on campus, or by an urban setting. For some, strong connections to family and high school friends actually keep them from taking full advantage of opportunities in their new environment that would help them to create a larger support network and gain more from their liberal arts education. Some experience difficulties managing finances or work schedules and feel quite unsettled by perceived inequities. Some eagerly join many extracurricular activities, spreading themselves too thin to participate effectively in any one organization or failing to dedicate balanced time to academic pursuits.
As a parent, you can make a considerable difference in easing your son’s or daughter’s transitions through college. If they say they are working hard but are discouraged by their grades, ask them how and when they prepare for individual assignments. Ask them if they have spoken with their professor or faculty advisor or mentor or one of the deans about strategies to study more effectively. Ask them if they have taken advantage of every opportunity to revise a paper, to attend a T.A. session, to attend an “Academic Excellence” workshop, or to make use of the Writing Center or Math Center where tutors are available. If they seem unusually unhappy or anxious or ill, ask if they have found someone helpful to talk with—a friend, a Resident Assistant in their dorm, a coach, a faculty member, a dean, a counselor, or a nurse. Ask what they are eating, when they are sleeping, how they are getting regular exercise, and what they do to relieve stress. See if alcohol, smoking, or drugs (their own use or use by others around them) is affecting their lives. Ask how they have met new people and what they have enjoyed doing most at Trinity. At the same time, give them space to work things through for themselves. Ask what they think would be most helpful to facilitate their transition and respect their need for independence.
This is a rich time. Most students go through complex developmental changes during their college years. The key to a student’s success, educational theorists stress, is involvement, or the degree to which a student feels connected to the academic and extracurricular life of the campus. You can help encourage this connection. Your support through their struggles and triumphs, your ability to hear between the lines of conversations and truly listen, your demonstration of trust in them to form their own questions and find their own answers, and your encouragement of their initiative and assumption of responsibility will contribute generously to your sons’ and daughters’ personal, social, and academic successes at Trinity. Show them you care, appreciate your differences, encourage them to make full and healthy use of their liberal arts education, and respect their ability to make choices, to speak for themselves, and to learn from their mistakes. Be patient. You have given them roots. Now let them develop wings.
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Family Weekend
September
This annual weekend is designed to increase parents’ familiarity with Trinity and provide the opportunity for you to see how your sons and daughters are faring at the College.
The three-day program includes faculty lectures, sporting events, panel discussions, tours of campus facilities, open houses, and informal meetings with faculty and administrators. More than half of Trinity parents attend each year.
For more information, click here.
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Travel/Vacation Arrangements
Please note that while school is in session and until exams end, missing class can result in serious academic penalties. Please make travel arrangements accordingly.
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Emergencies
Should a family emergency arise, contact the Dean of Students Office and we will assist you in any way possible. In the event of an emergency in the evenings or on weekends, call Campus Safety: they can contact the Administrator-on-Call.
Dean of Students Office: 860-297-2156
Campus Safety: 860-297-2222
Health Center: 860-297-2018
Counseling Center: 860-297-2415
Hartford Hospital: 860-545-5000
Hartford Police: 860-527-6300
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F.E.R.P.A. Regulations
The Dean of Students Office encourages students to develop intellectually and socially, think critically, and act responsibly and respectfully as members of a liberal arts and global community. Believing it is important for students’ growth to deal with their personal, educational, and disciplinary issues as young adults, we deal directly with students when problems arise.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (F.E.R.P.A.), also known as the Buckley Amendment, was passed in 1974 to protect individuals’ rights to their education records by limiting transferability of those records without their consent. Within the limits of F.E.R.P.A regulations that prohibit disclosure of information about your student’s record, the deans in the Dean of Students Office are happy to answer general questions regarding College regulations or discuss concerns you might have about your son or daughter. Please feel free to call the Dean of Students Office at 860-297-2156.
Most questions about policy or procedure are also addressed in the Student Handbook.
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