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New Students

Peer advisor standing before Jonas Clark Hall

All first-year students participate in Clark Navigator, our first-year experience program. The Navigator program is designed to help students transition to academic and campus life at Clark.

Through Clark Navigator activities, students are introduced to the full array of campus facilities, academic resources, social and co-curricular life, and events and opportunities in the Worcester community.

During their first semester, students participate in the Navigator, through which they:

  • Meet weekly with their NAV group, sustaining connections with their peers beyond orientation and throughout the fall semester. These meetings maintain a sense of community, build students’ resilience and self-advocacy, and encourage students to make informed decisions.
  • Receive guidance from a peer mentor, an upper-class student dedicated to steering students through the calm and storm of their first semester.
  • Choose from a menu of academic, co-curricular, community, and social activities.

More About Clark Navigator

  • Build community with fellow first-year students and a peer mentor.
  • Become oriented to the academic and co-curricular resources available at Clark and the Worcester community in order to engage in academic, social, and personal development.
  • Share resources and experiences with peers about opportunities for engagement and support on campus.
  • Find resources, events, or groups that help students find their sense of place at Clark.
  • Identify skills and strategies to transition to and be successful at college, academically and socially.

Students' Reflections

I was very nervous to move away from home and adapt to a new academic schedule, so being involved in a group of first-year students without the sometimes intimidating presence of a professor was very beneficial. We were all going through similar experiences and found it easy to relate to one another when sharing our thoughts each week. … NAV was a very important course for me because being a first-year student is exceptionally stressful and putting yourself out there can be difficult.

The format of the course gave us the tools we needed to succeed while also providing a safe place within which to share and vent. We were introduced to the value system within which we were expected to operate within the Clark community, and we were provided with academic support resources. We not only learned about who to contact when we needed help with a variety of issues but also how to specifically approach them.