Sophomore year is the lost year, but DePauw is working to make it a year of planning instead of one in which students waste, with the new Sophomore Institute.
The Sophomore Institute was a daylong seminar on Monday at Prindle. Alumni and professionals came to speak to the students about ways to begin planning for their lives after DePauw. To stir interest, letters and emails were sent out to the sophomore class inviting them to attend. Just over 100 spots were available. The event drew a waiting list 20 names long and 90 sophomores attended the event.
The purpose of the event was to get sophomores into the mindset that planning for the future should begin now, not just senior year.
"The sophomore year is the lost year, it has been called the 'sophomore slump,'" Raj Bellani, Dean of Experiential Learning and Career Planning said. "The reality is that it's not a slump. It's a newer transition. You ask big, deep questions. It's about the heart and the mind. It's about the future. Its about 'I'm growing up.'"
For sophomore Julie Wittwer, the institute triggered thoughts that might not have emerged this year otherwise.
"[The institute] made me think about my future more than I had been," Wittwer said. "The Sophomore Institute did it in a way that didn't make the future sound scary, but it made me more excited than scared."
That was the goal of the event: to get students to realize that planning for the future should start now.
"It's an evolutionary process," Bellani said. "It's about starting in the second year and seeing what works and what doesn't."
For President Brian Casey, the event was about helping students find their strengths with the Strengths Finder Test.
"The idea is that you come in, you do a lot of testing on who you are as a person. And we say okay this is who you are, this is what you're interested in and you have five semesters left," Casey said. "You know what you're doing academically because you have the curriculum, but how do you think about all these other things?"
For Wittwer, the most valuable portion of the day was what the alumni had to say.
"It was really cool to see successful people coming back and telling us about how they picked their majors when they were in the same spot as us," Wittwer said. "[The Sophomre Institute] helped us build a resume, make a LinkedIn profile, and think about our lives and point us in the right direction."
This year's Sophomore Institute is a test-run of sorts, and the university is looking for ways to make it better.
"It was a high-scale event, that was uniquely DePauw," Bellani said. "My hope is that 20 years from now [students] will realize how important it was to have this at DePauw."
The institute did not end after Monday's event. It continues with a class offered for a quarter of a credit, which Wittwer is enrolled in.
"[The class] will be an hour a week where I can focus on my future," Wittwer said.
The institute is just a trigger, the idea is that it will launch conversations and actions that help students define a path.
"If it does nothing else than make people think, then we're okay," Casey said.
- Ellen Kobe contributed to this article.