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Challenge to new students: explore the world, seize the day

Noah Carville, SGA President, at the Presidential Convocation

Rau­cous cheers issuing from first-​​year stu­dents echoed throughout Matthews Arena on Tuesday morning as the North­eastern deans intro­duced the new stu­dents in their respec­tive col­leges or schools at the President’s Convocation.

Northeastern’s 117th entering class has arrived.

Some 2,800 new stu­dents were offi­cially wel­comed into the uni­ver­sity com­mu­nity at the annual event, where Pres­i­dent Joseph E. Aoun, other uni­ver­sity leaders, and upper­classmen encour­aged Northeastern’s newest stu­dents to get involved, explore new aca­d­emic sub­jects, and dis­cover new things about themselves.

You are in col­lege to explore the world,” Aoun said in his address. “You are here to test your­self, to stretch your­self, and to learn from your fail­ures as well as your successes.”

Aoun high­lighted sev­eral of the myriad ways for new stu­dents to thrive at North­eastern. He pointed to the pos­si­bility of their starting a new busi­ness with the help of IDEA, the university’s student-​​run ven­ture accel­er­ator, or help alle­viate poverty with the Social Enter­prise Insti­tute. He also noted the poten­tial for them to explore the world through co-​​op, the sig­na­ture pro­gram in Northeastern’s expe­ri­en­tial learning model that inte­grates real-​​world work expe­ri­ence with class­room learning.

You will get to know what you are good at, what you are not good at, what you like, and what you don’t like,” Aoun said of co-op’s value.

Stu­dent speaker Sarah Lom­bardo, SSH’15, dis­cussed her global expe­ri­en­tial learning oppor­tu­ni­ties with the first-​​year stu­dents. She described how her first co-​​op, which involved working on issues such as con­sti­tu­tional reform in Bosnia and Herze­govina, helped hone both her aca­d­emic and pro­fes­sional focus.Prior to the president’s address, the stu­dents were the first to see a fun new video staring the pres­i­dent in which he pre­tended to move into Stetson West.

This focus, along with the expe­ri­ence I gained, is now allowing me to reach out for many other oppor­tu­ni­ties, which makes me a little less ter­ri­fied to grad­uate this year,” Lom­bardo said.

New Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Noah Carville, SSH’15, chal­lenged the stu­dents to try some­thing new every day.

Commit to being a daily adven­turer and explorer,” Carville said. “Commit to trying one new thing, big or small, every day this semester. It doesn’t have to be rev­o­lu­tionary or expen­sive, and it should def­i­nitely not be dan­gerous. It just has to be some­thing new.”

Fol­lowing Con­vo­ca­tion, stu­dents were invited to the “A Taste of Boston” on Cen­ten­nial Common. The event fea­tured a tasting of foods rep­re­senting Boston’s many neigh­bor­hoods, from the Water­front to Chi­na­town to the North End.Con­vo­ca­tion con­cluded with stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all five classes at North­eastern lighting a torch on stage, which sym­bol­izes the lead­er­ship, zeal, and spirit of the uni­ver­sity community.

– By Joe O’Connell

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