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August 19 Weekly Update: Orientation and What’s Next

Bottom Line, Up Front

  • Final important to do’s
    • Ensure you have completed the Health Insurance Enrollment/Waiver process. You must enroll or waive coverage or you will be charged for WFU student insurance.
    • Enroll in optional tuition insurance by August 24 if you wish to have this protection
    • Ensure your student has registered their mobile phone with Wake Forest and enabled Alertus desktop notification
  • Family Orientation activities/using the Orientation schedule in Guidebook
  • Top 5 Tips for New Families for the first month of school
  • How we can best partner with families 
    • How to opt in to Campus Security Alerts
    • When we communicate with families
    • Our philosophy on student development and growth
    • The Stop, Drop, and Roll method
  • A-Z of WFU glossary of terms
  • We hope to see you often during your student’s time at Wake
  • Closing thoughts/what’s next

Dear parents and families of incoming students,

Our Pre-Orientation students have arrived, and Move-In Day for the remainder of our new students is almost here! Here are the critical items to know between now and the 20th..

Final important to do’s

  • Ensure you have completed the Health Insurance Enrollment/Waiver process. You must enroll or waive coverage or you will be charged for WFU student insurance. And a note to keep in the back of your mind: you must do this every year! Not just the first year.
  • Decide if you want to enroll in optional tuition insurance (deadline August 24).
  • Ensure your student has registered their mobile phone in Workday and downloaded Alertus, a tool that allows University Police to send a pop-up, full-screen laptop warning when immediate safety actions are needed. It is crucial we can reach them with texts and screen warnings in an emergency.

Family Orientation activities/using the Orientation schedule in Guidebook

  • Family Orientation activities will be on Wednesday, August 20 and Thursday, August 21. 
  • How to find the Family Orientation schedule:
    • Download the 2025 New Deac Welcome Week schedule in Guidebook: Go to your APP or Google Play store and search “WFU Orientation Programs” to access the New Deac Welcome Week 2025 guide
    • Use the graphics below to see how to view the orientation schedule for families. (If you wanted to see the schedule for students, you would choose Schedule by tracks > First Year).

      How to use the New Deac Week app to see parent and family activities (a graphic)
      the colored dots on the New Deac Week app tell you which audiences an event is meant for - green is for parents and families, red for first year students
    • Orientation sessions are open to all families, even if they say FULL in the app. The Guidebook app lets families indicate they wish to attend an event (by clicking the + to add to their schedule) and the app will say FULL once maximum theoretical attendance has been reached. BUT: on the day of the event, seating for events indicating FULL are first come, first served, and most sessions are run more than once in the schedule.
    • Note: we do not maintain a web or print version of the schedule as well as the Guidebook app version; at this time of year, things move very quickly and we do not want to risk making changes online and forget to update the app, etc. Thank you for your understanding.
    • Most of the events for families are family-only, and most student events are student-only.
      • The primary event open to both students and families is the New Deacs on the Block party Weds. evening (immediately following Flourish in the Forest for families/Living at Wake meeting for students). 
    • Not every family is able to attend Family Orientation – and that’s OK! Some families returned home after moving in their Deacs for Pre-Orientation; some families moving in their Deacs tomorrow may not be able to stay. There is no right or wrong, just what is right for you and your student.

Top 5 Tips for New Families for the first month of school

  • So dropping off at move-in is one thing. Adjusting to the first month of school is another. Here are some things to think about for the first month or so of school:
    • The transition to college/feeling at home takes at least a full semester, if not a full year – so do not panic if your Deac is three days/weeks/months in and it doesn’t feel perfect yet. Sense of belonging takes time and effort on students’ part – getting involved in clubs and organizations, meeting lots of people, etc. Students will get out of it what they put in it – so urge them to get involved and put themselves out there.
    • Bumps in the road are normal and to be expected. College is harder than high school, so your student might have to work/study differently. BUT we have tons of resources: office hours, free tutoring, advisers, faculty and staff who care – students just have to let us know they need help! There can also be bumps in the road re: friend groups, struggles to find your place, etc. All of these uncomfortable moments are a normal part of the college transition.
    • Parents and families will serve your students best if you adopt a consultant role (where you listen and give emotional support, but not answers) rather than a manager role. While they are at college, in most cases, your student should be the one to do the work, make the call, ask the question, research the website, give the feedback, take ownership, etc. Why do we say this? Your problem solving skills are already well-developed. This is their time to build their skills. And remember that your student calling you to vent frustrations is NOT an automatic call to action for the family: 99% of the time, they are venting to their safe people – you – and as soon as they hang up, they feel better for having vented.
    • Remind your students to treat their friends-at-other-colleges’ social media accounts with a high degree of skepticism. People tend to post pictures of themselves when they are having the most fun, they look great, are surrounded with 10 friends, everything is amazing, etc. – not when they feel lonely, are trying to find someone to eat lunch with, or wondering what they will do when it’s Friday night and they don’t have plans yet. Your student may think their best high school friend at [Insert College Name] is having a waaaay better time than they are based on their Instagram, but remember Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok etc. are heavily-curated. The bumps in the college transition hit every student at every college. The grass isn’t greener at [Other School].
    • Encourage your Deac to take care of themself. In order to bring their best self to their schoolwork, their relationships, etc., they need adequate sleep, some healthy food, and moderate exercise. Self-care is critical, and make sure you remind your Deac to invest in their wellbeing.
    • Urge your students to be very cautious at the start of the academic year about underage drinking, as we mentioned in our July 15 message on social life.

This is a transition year, but it can still be a great year for new students. It just won’t all fall into place on day 1 (or 30 or 60).

How we can best partner with families

At the start of each semester, we like to share some basic foundational information with families about how we can best work together for our shared goal of your student’s success. Please visit our How We Communicate page for important information on:

  • How parents and families can opt in to receive Campus Security Alerts
  • When we communicate with families: what are the circumstances, etc.
  • How we partner with families and what our philosophy is on student development and growth
  • The Stop, Drop, and Roll method that we encourage families to use when their student has a problem, a decision to make, a task to complete, or a frustration

A-Z of WFU Glossary of Terms

  • We have compiled an A-Z of WFU glossary of terms that we encourage all families to review. There are many terms that have changed in higher ed over the last 30 years, schools tend to have a lot of acronyms, and we may refer to something using a different term than you may be used to. 

We hope to see you often during your student’s time at Wake

Families, once you head home after moving your ‘29 onto campus, we still want you to be involved with Wake Forest:

  • Check our WAKECommunities website to find Wake Forest activities that are happening in your local area. You may also receive invitations to events based on your primary address – please keep us informed of any address changes so we can meet you where you are!
  • There are also many opportunities to visit on campus, and we hope you will do so. In addition to the obvious one – Family Weekend (Sept. 26-28) – your students may be involved in arts productions, research presentations, or athletic competitions. Wake Forest’s signature speaker series, Face to Face, brings world-renowned speakers to campus several times a year. We hope you will join us for as many events on campus as you can, whenever your schedule allows.

Closing thoughts/what’s next

This is our final weekly message for P’29 families as part of Move-In and Orientation! From here on out, we will keep you updated on Wake Forest activities in the following ways:

  • Important note: the New Students website (newstudents.wfu.edu) will not be updated after August 20. At that point, all parent and family information can be found on parents.wfu.edu. Please discontinue using newstudents.wfu.edu after August 21.
  • If you have not already done so, you can subscribe to the Daily Deac blog and get an email each weekday around 5 p.m. with news, information, advice, and some fun stuff too.
  • Each Monday of the fall semester, the Daily Deac will include a link to a Weekly Message for First Year Families, which will discuss the college transition and things your Deac might be experiencing that week. If you don’t subscribe to the Daily Deac, you might wish to bookmark our First Year page if you wish to read those messages.
  • Around the 15th-20th of each month, we will email a Wake Parents & Families e-newsletter to all families. Those are archived here.
  • Please bookmark the Who to Contact for… page so you have it as a reference, but whenever possible, let your student be the one to contact an office, ask a question, give feedback, or research how to accomplish something on campus. Our students need to develop relationships with campus offices, and they will be building real-world problem-solving skills when they do the work themselves.
  • You will also want to bookmark our After Hours Help page. This will help you know who to contact in the event of an urgent concern that cannot wait until the next business day.

Move-in and the start of school inspires a lot of emotions – excitement, anxiety, anticipation, joy, hesitancy – for students and families alike. But your Deacs are ready for this next step, and you are too 🙂

Wishing our 8/20 move-in families safe travels to campus, and to all a wonderful first year at Wake Forest for all our Deacs. I can’t wait to see you at move-in and Family Orientation!

Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (‘92, MA ‘94)
Executive Director of Family Communications

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