Thanks @zuchinicakes!! I’m happy to help in any way I can and give my perspective and hindsight.
A lot in-staters are probably driving from their home town/city to Kansas City for orientation. Those outside of Missouri are likely to be flying in and possibly staying at a motel/hotel, maybe even renting a car. I think part of the thinking is that they don’t keep people too long as a lot of people just want to go back home to enjoy summer vacation (a big motivator to people coming is that until you go to Orientation, your account is put on hold when it comes to registering for classes). Not everyone has a relative that lives in the KC metro area so they would have to pay an extra day (so another day of staying at a hotel and another day of renting a car - which can be quite expensive depending on where you stay and where you rent from). I do agree on the logistics of what you are saying though, they would probably be just better off to have one day in which BA/MD students can attend with all the rest of the incoming freshmen – maybe check out the Volker campus in its entirety, the facilities, etc. And once that is fully done, the next day go to the orientation specifically for BA/MD students. The truth of the matter is, and Year 1s will figure this out quickly, that we’re not like the “regular” undergrads when it comes to our curriculum and how things are structured. It’s really not a bragging thing, it’s just the reality. Just keep in mind though that even with the best of orientations, it won’t cover all the nitty gritty. It’s kind of a balancing act of keeping students/parents attention and not put people to sleep, while also hitting all the high points and getting the required stuff out of the way (i.e. registering for classes), and serving more as a springboard to getting to know the university/med school better which students delve into much more once they’re actually enrolled.
I am guessing that the medical students that talked with you guys are the Year 2 peer mentors: http://med.umkc.edu/sa/peer-mentors/ (this is a little dated, but it does show what they do in their entirety). The peer mentors job according to the website is to “help answer your questions, orient you to UMKC and Kansas City, and provide you with helpful information as you are making your transition to the School of Medicine”: http://med.umkc.edu/accepted_offline/peer-mentors/. The peer mentors’ jobs don’t just end at Orientation, but work throughout academic school year with the current Year 1s, to help with the school’s retention efforts - i.e. if there is something easily fixable or for which there is a solution (for which the student may not know there is one), for someone who may be thinking about leaving the program. They probably won’t go into the negatives outright necessarily, just because everyone has already made their decision to come here, so it’s more like ok, what do we do now to go from here and approach this head on, rather than maybe leaving things on a slightly more negative note. Hope that makes a little bit of sense (If it doesn’t, I’m happy to try to explain further). The much bigger use of the peer mentors for Year 1s can be used to answer the MANY questions that Year 1s will ask: What do I need to bring from home to the dorms? Where should I get my books? How do I approach this class and that class? What undergraduate class are one of the easier ones that I can use to fulfill my undergraduate degree, how do I sign up for classes, what majors can I do?, etc. The list of things a Year 1 can ask is pretty endless as it’s often a mix of academic and non-academic things.
I am actually quite surprised about the comment that was made regarding not expecting your kid to be home for that Labor Day weekend. I remember Year 1 quite well, and we all left for Labor Day weekend, especially those of us who weren’t from Missouri, since it was the first extended holiday for all of us that fall semester. In fact, it even says in the handbook, that Year 1 & 2 (yes, it’s 2015-2016 but it’s literally the same every year), follows the UMKC Volker campus academic calendar quite closely. You can see on Page 58 here: http://med.umkc.edu/docs/sa/MD_Handbook_2015-2016.pdf, under section, “Vacation Time” and it kinds of shows you per year how vacation works. Now in later years, like in Years 4-6, that may not be the case, but at least as a Year 1 this wasn’t true at all. The schedule of holidays on the Volker campus is already set which you can see here on the academic calendar: http://www.umkc.edu/registrar/acal.asp. So Labor Day, Thanksgiving Week, etc. My guess is they’re just doing is what is called “CYA” protocol, where in the past, students skipped out early of a required component of a course without telling and then expecting to be given leeway or they whine and complain when they say they’ve already gotten plane flights scheduled. When I was there, every course (this includes your Medicine courses as well - Docent, Med Term, and LBMS) had a syllabus which lays out class procedure, class schedule, exact days of midterm exams, finals, all due dates for assignments, etc. I know that the Docent course now has a lecture component every Friday afternoon (why they chose to have it on a late Friday afternoon, when people can get an early start to their weekend or go home is beyond me). But anyways, you pretty much know the exact dates of things and if it comes to worst, none of us were afraid to directly ask or email during the first few weeks of classes, if there was anything scheduled before a holiday so we knew when to go home/schedule a plane flight, etc.
What exam are they talking about after only 2 weeks of school administered by the School of Medicine? Is it a standardized exam or one for a specific course? Let me know, so I can kind of guess what the point is (if there is one).
That’s a shame with the ETC. My guess is the person is inundated with questions from a student and/or their parent then multiply that with the entire class of ~120 people. That can be a lot to wade through before even starting the work day with meetings and what not. One thing I would say is that email is the best route to get in contact with the ETCs by far. Things like what to bring to the dorms, bringing a car, blah blah that are more non-school/non-academic policy related in nature can probably be better asked of the Peer Mentors in which you’ll get a better response (since they are closer to the age which your child is at). Everyone has a UMKC email and is expected to go thru it. The phone system is still bleh, and in this day in age, who wants to leave a message on an answering machine that can be erased without a trace? Also, YOU don’t do it, your daughter should do it. If it’s one thing that annoys the administration more than anything is when a parent calls on their child’s behalf when the child is the one who is enrolled in college and is a legal adult. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be involved at all, but at least the initial point of contact should be the student. Several benefits: 1) the student learns to take responsibility, stand up for themselves, be involved in their own education, 2) it’s taken more seriously since the student is the one one officially enrolled in the system, and 3) it’s an important life skill, which it does takes some practice for all of us. You can see what the job of an ETC is on page 38 of the handbook link above under “Education Team Coordinator”, but it’s more academic housekeeping (for lack of a better term), although the student will sign up for classes themselves, etc. They’re also to point you in the right direction when it comes to certain resources (i.e. research, student organizations), which you also learn from the handbook and peer mentors. It’s a hard habit to break to not fly in to be SuperDad/SuperMom, but trust me, it will to your daughter’s benefit, I promise (which reminds me to add that to my Google Doc in the thread!)
