A panel of Fay Jones School students answers questions and visits with incoming freshmen and their parents in a summer orientation session. (Photo by Julia Trupp)

By Julia Trupp

Each summer, freshman orientation at the University of Arkansas brings new faces and bright eyes, and it sparks a new curiosity about college life.

This year, the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design welcomed many students to its programs. With a warm welcome from Associate Dean Ethel Goodstein-Murphree and other faculty, they were ready to start on their path to academia, architecture and design.

Katie Carson, 18, from Shawnee, Kansas, was accepted into the university as a business major, but she switched to landscape architecture on the first day of orientation.

“I have an eye for design and putting things together. Bossing people around is not really my thing. I was more interested with making things look pretty,” Carson said.

Carson also said that orientation was similar to a “well-oiled machine” and that Arkansas feels like a home away from home.

Cassidy Hooper, 19, from Lenexa, Kansas, and her mother, Carol, shared a similar experience during their stay in Fayetteville. Cassidy Hooper said she chose to study architecture because she has always enjoyed watching shows on HGTV and drawing in her art classes.

“I’m hoping to enjoy (my job) while I’m working. I want to be motivated to come to school, and I think this choice will help me do that,” she said. “I will learn exactly what I want because I get to choose.”

Carol Hooper said she believed her daughter will stick with this because “it’s something she wants to do, and she’ll be able to support herself.”

“I don’t have any concerns for Cassidy. She will succeed in whatever she chooses. She is very self-motivated, and I know this was a good choice for her,” Carol Hooper said. “We came here last year on a tour, and the architecture building – we toured the whole place. I found myself thinking, ‘Geez, I wish I could go back to school.’”

Incoming freshmen students and their parents visit with the Fay Jones School faculty, staff and students during a summer orientation session. (Photo by Julia Trupp)

During each two-day orientation session this summer, students toured the university campus and their respective schools, residence halls and the campus identification card office for their new student IDs. Near the end, they enrolled in fall classes.

During an open discussion, Kim Furlong, an interior design faculty member, encouraged students to trust in the process of finding the “versatile skills” learned in the program. Then, the students and parents in orientation heard from Sheri Lynn Tuck, the school’s academic counselor, and a panel of design students. Afterward, they left with a packet of information to help them with a successful year in the Fay Jones School.

Shane Maloney, a third-year architecture student, sat on the student panel to answer questions about what being an architecture student is like.

“In the beginning, I definitely experienced the whole, ‘Oh man, this is awful. My mom will never hang this up on the fridge” feeling,” he said. “And then, as the semester goes on, you improve and get better.”

And with the session inside Vol Walker Hall, home to the Fay Jones School, students were on their way to becoming full-fledged architecture and design students at the U of A.

“Somehow, the forces of the universe have come together, where your passion for design has brought you here,” Goodstein-Murphree said. “This is an incredible place to be as a generation.”