When I think of the student experience, what I first think of is orientation and
move-in day. From the moment that you step on campus and you get all of your
boxes whisked away into your room by the residence life and orientation teams to
the very last day before your classes start,
we give you tons of opportunities to get to know your new classmates and your hall mates.
One of the main things that sets Rose-Hulman apart is just the
environment that we create here. Our residence halls, they feel like family.
It's not like just a place you live, it's a place where you're making friends,
where you're making connections. One of the best parts about living in the
residence halls is that the resident assistants and sophomore advisors are
all there to support you. They truly are there to not just be a rule enforcer, but
your friend. They're more about community building. About, you know, connecting
people with resources on campus to make sure that they can succeed.
As an incoming freshman, you'll be able to choose from six different residence
halls in the housing process. Similar to your experience in the classroom, we try
to be as individualized and personalized as we can.
So if you're looking for a roommate who likes to stay up a little later or maybe
someone who prefers to go to bed a little earlier, we try to pair you with a
roommate that will have a similar housing request as you. We also help
provide programming within the Union itself which is a huge hub for students
to hang out. Since its newly been renovated, this has become the place for
students to do homework, to get their coffee, to just sit around and visit with friends.
Somebody's always playing pool on the pool table or the piano
constantly serenades us in our offices. We also have a huge big-screen TV in the
living room where students sit and play their video games. There's always
something happening in the building. The coolest activity, without a doubt in my
mind, is greatest floor. It is the competition between all of our residence
halls, every floor, with 24 events in 24 hours. It's highly competitive and it's
really just something that's so unique to Rose-Hulman and our students
absolutely love it. We have over 90 student organizations on campus ranging
from hobby based clubs like art club, board game club, to teams that focus a
little bit more on your engineering technical skills like Team Rose
Motorsports and Human Powered Vehicles. We also have the identity affinity
groups like the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Asian
Scientists and Engineers. You can also be a performer with our performing student
art groups like the drama club, dance company. On campus there's always
an opportunity to get involved with a student organization and if you can't
find an organization that works just right for you, there's always the
opportunity to create a new student organization and bring in new friends
and a new group to campus. Our Student Government Association is part of the
student experience that you can have here at Rose-Hulman. Within SGA, each
residence hall and our commuter population is able to select a senator
to represent them within the SGA body. Throughout the academic year, those
senators have the opportunity to vote on different things that might impact the
student body and also help give the student body a voice. One of the really
neat things that came out of SGA this past year was our bike share program. SGA
was able to provide about 50 bikes for our campus community for students to
check out at anytime they would like. Fraternities and sororities play such an
important role on this campus. Every weekend I feel like there's another
Greek organization doing some philanthropy event around campus and I
couldn't see Rose-Hulman without it. We have all kinds of different community
service opportunities on campus. People from the local Terre Haute community
reach out to us all the time with projects. Whether that is going to the
local food pantry and helping stock shelves to going to just a local
neighborhood to help clean up their yards, there's always a different
opportunity. We always have two large service events throughout the year,
fall day of service and then spring campus beautification, and those are just two
opportunities that the whole campus comes together and does projects all on
the same day. We've had upwards of 600 students participate before and it's
super great to see everybody to get out and give back to the local Terre
Haute community and even sometimes within our own Rose-Hulman community as well.
My favorite aspect of the Rose-Hulman community is just how comfortable
everybody is being themselves. I mean we have so many nerdy and dorky students
here, it's fantastic and I was one of them. We could also have these
student athletes who become captain of the football team but guess what, they're
4.0 students working hard and all these people get along and work together and
collaborate and I think that's really my favorite thing about Rose-Hulman
is just that we have this atmosphere where people trust each other
and where people feel comfortable being themselves. If you have any questions
regarding the student life experience here at Rose-Hulman, please feel free to
reach out to the office of Student Affairs. We look forward to seeing you next fall.