New Student Guide & Forms

To the Class of 2014:

As you prepare to join the St. Lawrence community, I want to talk about “social networking.”

At St. Lawrence, your face matters, not your Facebook page. We expect you to turn from Facebook connections and relationships to face-time conversations.

When you arrive in August, I encourage you to notice that the magnificence of your campus home is in the beauty of our setting, the quality of our facilities and most especially in the faces of the community. We learn best face-to-face, not screen-to-screen. Our community is built on this close-up and intense premise. While we use the most powerful technologies available, we remind you that our daily work must always be the face-to-face kind.

When you arrive, you’ll notice also portraits all over campus; they are the faces of Laurentians who were once students and teachers here. Study their faces. They made your planned education possible. As you get to know Gunnison Memorial Chapel, you will see in the stained glass windows an array of faces, some easily recognizable such as Gandhi and Lincoln. Most of them you will never have seen before, but they are the faces of people, many with familiar names, who were curious to learn, inspired to dream, and translated their principles into ambition for making a difference. Study their faces. The faces in the windows remind us that we belong to a community of experience that stands for the larger hope of humanity. Some day, I believe, the faces in the Class of 2014 shall be like those placed around campus as portraits in glass or on canvas. I encourage you to see yourself in those best ideals of human life.

Encouragement, congratulation, clarification and explanation will occur by going to the other person—professor, student, coach or staff member—face-to-face to explain or inquire further the matters on your mind. The great life skill of negotiation and the deepest pleasure in accomplishing the art and substance of conversation will carry you far in this world. This is a face-to-face kind of education. Welcome!

William L. Fox '75
President of the University

We suspect that as you begin looking through this site you will be struck by two thoughts: Wow — this is a lot of information; and why do they need me to fill out so many forms?

We’ll address the question first. You will make many choices about how you live at St. Lawrence and what you study over the next four years. For right now, we need to be sure that you are studying a topic in the First-Year Program (FYP) that you are interested in, that you have an advisor who can get some sense of the breadth of your interests, and that you are living with someone who shares some of your habits, interests and goals.

In order to accomplish these goals, we need you to give us information about yourself. So, there are a lot of forms, but they are important for us to be able to help you settle in quickly and well so that you can begin to learn, from your classes and outside of the classroom.

As you tell us about yourself, we think it is helpful for you to understand more about St. Lawrence. You will find that we offer academic opportunities that are new, and we think that in many cases you will find them exciting. So, before you tell us about your interests and about courses that you might want to take, we ask that you spend some time learning about all that we have to offer. Instead of just taking classes that you are familiar with, consider beginning your education at St. Lawrence by taking a course or two in a new area that sounds intriguing, odd or just really interesting. You may end up having academic or career goals that you cannot even begin to imagine now, and taking a course in a new subject may be what helps you to define these goals.

Similarly, read through the information about living arrangements and leadership opportunities. We offer many ways for you to make connections to other St. Lawrence students, and we have both student and professional staff who can be critical resources, from now until far in the future.

If you have questions or would like to discuss the rationales for the information and policies, please do not hesitate to contact either of us. In the meantime, if you have questions between now and when you arrive on campus, please call the First-Year Program office at 315-229-5909.

Welcome and good luck.

Valerie D. Lehr
Vice President of the University and
Dean of Academic Affairs

Joseph Tolliver
Vice President and Dean of Student Life