Hey, I’m Tim, and your eyes do not deceive you, I’m an old guy. I prefer non-traditional student to adult learner personally (I’m not exactly sure what adult learner means anyway). I’m a senior finishing my first year at CSU, majoring in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy. I’m from the San Francisco bay area but have lived in Colorado over twenty years, most of that time in or around Aspen.

I’m so excited to be a member of the Transfer Mentor Program and all the opportunities it will provide to make connections with my fellow students and staff here at CSU. Helping new students make a smooth and comfortable transition into life at CSU is just one of the many things I look forward to in this position. Please look for me out there; I eagerly anticipate meeting you, especially those non-traditional students like me.   

Hello, my name is Kas and I am a proud - to be - a CSU Ram! I transferred to CSU in the fall of 2011 from Front Range Community College, Larimer Campus. I moved to Colorado a few years back in search of new experiences. I am proud of my Texas roots, but I absolutely fell in love with Colorado! I tell my friends that I got to Fort Collins as quickly as I could. I love to be outdoors enjoying warm weather with family and friends. I enjoying exercising, reading, going to concerts and I spend entirely too much time watching BBC and National Geographic documentaries about space and deep sea exploration, jungle wildlife, early civilizations, and medical technology.

I absolutely love CSU and all of the people I have met since I have been here. I am very excited about the opportunity to work with incoming transfer students and the amazing team of people in the Orientation and Transition Programs department. I look forward to meeting a whole bunch of people and am eager to be a resource for them in what may be a difficult and stressful time in their life. I believe that people helping people helps make the world beautiful. I enjoy being an active member of the CSU community by participating in Alternative Spring Breaks (through the SLICE office if you were curious), the Academic Advancement Center as well as various student-led clubs on campus. So if you see me around campus say hello! I love a good chat with friends! Go Rockies!!

Hello!  I’m Dawn and I am so excited to be an Orientation Leader!  I have a passion for inspiring others and myself.  I am involved in the Wellness Club, the Outdoor Club, and the President’s Leadership Program on campus.  Off campus, I am very involved in Bikram yoga.  I have a passion for yoga and I want to own my own studio in the future.

I am part of the Orientation Team because I love leading, I love helping people through a huge step in their life, and I love being a part of a diverse and wonderful group of people.  I love learning more about myself and being an Orientation Leader will help me grow as a person.  I’m excited for orientation and I hope you are too!  

Hi everyone!  My name is Annika and I am very excited to spend my summer with you all!  

I am a senior here at Colorado State University studying History and Anthropology.  Over the last three years I've done a lot of things on campus, which includes working in the Asian/Pacific American Cultural Center and being a Peer Mentor with the First Year Mentoring Program.  In my free time I enjoy watching movies and spending time with friends, hiking the foothills of Fort Collins, and ‘adventuring’ around Colorado!  Not being from Colorado, there's so much to see and do!  

I joined the Orientation Team because I have had such great experiences with these programs and I want to give back to the university and its future students.  Working with Orientation and Transition Programs has been one of the most fulfilling things I have done on campus and I want to help students have a great start to their time here at CSU!  I will be an Orientation Leader this year so I will be around all summer working to welcome you and your families to campus.  We’re going to have a lot of fun learning about campus and all of the resources we have, as well as all of the fun things you can do when school starts in the fall!

I love working with people and learning their stories and I am so excited for this summer.  I am really looking forward to welcoming you all to campus and starting off my last year here with a lot of fun!  Go Rams!

“The milk of a hippopotamus is pink.”  

Relevancy? Absolutely none.  

The probability of you clicking on my name out of all the other Orientation Staff is less than 5%.  I know, join me in excitement.  Since you were so intrigued by the color of a hippo’s milk, I understand that you can’t help but finish reading.  Go ahead and start the next paragraph.  

In case you didn’t take the time to read my personal information, I’m from the best state in the nation – IDAHO!  I’m sure the image of “potatoes” just popped into your head.  Us Idahoans however, don’t get the luxury of eating these world-class potatoes because they ship them out to the rest of the world in order to uphold our reputation; bummer right?  

However this quick biography is not all about Idaho and our potato issue or about the milk of a hippopotamus.  It’s about getting to know the complete stranger wearing that obnoxiously colored Orientation polo.  

Especially being an out-of-state student, I know first-hand how it feels to try and find a niche in an entirely new environment.  It may seem daunting to establish yourself on Colorado State’s campus when you are still trying to learn the difference between College Avenue and college in general.  It is because of this opportunity to empower others that I wanted to become an Orientation Leader; to transmit the knowledge and comfort that I received when I first stepped onto CSU’s campus.  There is nothing more gratifying to me than sharing my passion and personal experiences with others in hopes of creating a foundation on which new students can base their collegiate years.  

One of the greatest opportunities I found at CSU was becoming involved in Greek Life.  The fraternal experience of Phi Delta Theta has truly helped me establish a strong sense of community in a place that I once knew nothing about.  It has been my bedrock in developing myself as a leader, community member, and man of upstanding integrity.  

Now that you know a little bit about my life and I know absolutely nothing about who you even are, I feel it’s an appropriate time to say: “Get excited!”  You’re embarking on a journey that many can’t even begin to fathom.  Luckily though, you might be in that 5% of students privileged to have me as their Orientation Leader.  But if luck isn’t on your side, don’t worry.  We’ll still have great opportunities to connect with one another throughout our time at CSU.   Just remember that there is no relevancy whatsoever to knowing that the milk of a hippo is pink.  It was a clever way to start my bio and will serve as a clever way to end it as well.  

Be sure to come find me during Orientation because I would love to meet you all in person instead of through a computer screen.  Welcome to Ram Country! 

Hi there! I am a Junior here at Colorado State University and am majoring in Communication Studies with a minor in Political Science. I transferred to CSU in the Fall of 2011 hoping to get to know a positive community and a larger school setting with many opportunities, and I found exactly that. I'm enjoying getting to know Fort Collins well and am working to involve myself to get to know many new people and understand what CSU is really all about. I'm especially looking forward to getting to spend more time outdoors, getting in some hiking and camping in the mountains. 

On campus here, I am involved with Alliance Scholars, an organization dedicated to creating a warm and academically successful community of students on campus. I also keep my vocal cords in action as a memember of the University Chorus.

I chose to become a Transfer Student Mentor because I have had my own experience adjusting to a very different college environment and I want to help others do the same. I feel that we all have different experiences as students, and we can grow from understanding one another's commonalities as well as our differences. 

I'm very much looking forward to helping facilitate a positive mentoring environment and helping individuals find their own path at CSU.

I am a part of a Residential Learning Community; specifically, the Key Academic Community which believes in advancing new students to achieve excellence academically through a collected sense of community.  I was invited to be a part of the Presidential Leadership Program, but I declined because of my class schedule.  Apart from this, I am an active participant of the Academic Advancement Center which helps students overcome fundamental issues needed to achieve to their best in their career at Colorado State University.  If ever you cannot find me, I am usually at the Rec Center.  

I am part of the Orientation Team because I don’t want to go home during the summer!  I love to get involved on campus and that first day I came to the University, seeing all those hopeful faces on the team that welcomed me made me anxious.  I want to explore why these people were all so full of joy, so nice and authentic.  I wanted to be that person, one that would inspire fire in the minds of those new students and their families.  I am so excited to work with the awesome team we have this year and hope to make lifelong relationships, not only with the team but with the new students as well that will in the long run make me a better person.

Hey Rams! My name is Yao and I'll be a senior student in next fall. My major is Statistics and I love my major so much! It's hard to find someone sharing this hobby in common.   Anyway, I love cooking, dancing and playing the piano in my free time. I'm interested in parties, carnivals and all kinds of events. And you can easily find me fixing my eyes on a cute baby or a cute dog anywhere around the campus.

I have a fantastic transfer experience here. So I think it is the right time for me to do something for the incoming transfer students. I'm happy to be selected as a transfer mentor with the position of International Collaborations Coordinator. I hope I can contribute my passion and creativities to our transfer team, and do something useful to the transfer students.

I'm willing to make new friends and share stories with everyone. So I'm really looking forward to meeting all of you in this summer with the beautiful sunshine of Fort Collins.

Hello; Hola y Mucho gusto.  My name is Abigail McDonald and I am a Senior here at Colorado State University studying English and Spanish with concentrations in Poetry and Latin American Studies.  You can almost always find me on campus talking to something or someone (people, shrubs, shoes, myself, etc) whether it be on-air through the campus radio station or during a prospective student tour of CSU as an Admissions Ambassador.  In my free time I enjoy cooking, film photography, and dog-watching (as in looking at other people’s dogs and wishing they were my own).  

I joined the Orientation Team because I want to contribute to something bigger than myself. Working as part of the Orientation Team has made me realize that people are my passion and that as individuals we have the power to affect one another and to form a close community.  This sense of community is why I have loved, and continue to love, my experience here at Colorado State.   I am returning for a second year as an Orientation Leader and cannot believe how much I have been able to affect others, and affect myself positively through the program.  This year I will serve as a mentor for new Orientation Team staff members, work closely with faculty, and spend time getting to know the incoming students and their families.  

I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL THIS SUMMER!  ¡NO PUEDO ESPERAR!  I am excited to help make a life changing experience possible for incoming students, and for the new 2012 Orientation Team.

Hi my name is Alissa and besides being a part of the wonderful Orientation and Transition Programs Office I am also involved in the Harry Potter Alliance on campus (we help create balance between the magical world and the muggle world…  just joking!) and a member of the Gamma Phi Beta Sorority.  When I’m not spending time on campus or in Fort Collins, I like to spend time with my family; lounging around, watching movies, playing ping pong, and going on bike rides!  

I am a part of the Orientation Team because when I went through Orientation, it was my first glimpse at a life without mommy – and I was scared.  Orientation plays a huge role in making new and incoming students feel welcomed here on campus, and I’m looking forward to helping new students make connections on campus through student centered experiences.  

I’m excited to see how I grow as a person throughout the summer.  I’m hoping to meet and have an impact on a lot of new people and I’m ready to have the best summer of my life!

I am just finishing up my first year here at Colorado State University, where I am studying both Math and Spanish with the intentions of attending law school down the road.  I have gotten pretty involved on campus this last year; I am currently one of the math tutors in the PACE center, I am involved in undergraduate research in the criminology department, and I am a member of the Honor’s Student Association.  In my free time I love being active in the Rec Center and playing volleyball.  I also love cooking and have a slight addiction to the Food Network.

I joined the Orientation Team to meet all kinds of new people and to really become an active member on campus.  The team this year is a really diverse group, and all of us have been lucky enough to come together to make this the best summer of Orientation and Ram Welcome yet.  I can’t wait to get a whole new group of freshman ready and excited to be CSU Rams!

Erin Mross spends her time on campus split between the Student Leadership in Community Engagement (SLiCE) office and the Rocky Mountain Student media office.  Erin is Chief Photographer with the Collegian, CSU's student run newspaper.  When she isn't hiding behind a camera, Erin is actively involved in leadership and social justice primarily through the President's Leadership Program, the El Pomar Student Leadership Experience, and many other leadership development activities such as Leadershape and campus step up.  She is currently the intern for the United Way of Larimer County's professional programs.  

Erin hopes to either become a photographer or to work for a non-profit organization in the future however, she is currently focused on bringing the Red-Headed Heat to the Orientation Team. Erin joined orientation because she is excited to share her summer with hundreds of new potential coffee drinking friends and hopes to be a resource for everyone.

Hey everyone, my name is Connor and I will be joining you for Orientation this summer!  I currently find myself in my second year at Colorado State and I could not be happier with my decision to attend.  In addition to being your friendly neighborhood Orientation Leader, I am an active member of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity (where I serve on the self-judiciary board), I play saxophone in the CSU Jazz Ensemble, and I am active in student life at Blessed John XXIII Parish.  

My main motivation in becoming an Orientation Leader is to give new students at CSU a sense of ownership and pride in their education.  There is a plethora of resources that we have at our disposal on and off campus, so success is always within reach.  

I hope that your experiences with Orientation and Transition Programs are useful and sustaining in all your future endeavors at CSU.  This university is full of opportunities if you make them.  Please feel free to contact me prior to your visit or say hello once you’re on campus!

Hello friends! My name is Andrea Vanderbilt and I transferred over to CSU in Fall of 2011. I am a Junior, majoring in Natural Resource Management with a minor in Sustainability and I love the Earth!!! I am so excited to be at CSU and in Fort Collins. CSU is an incredible University with so many opportunities. I spend a lot of time on campus, and I don't mind, but when I have time to play, I enjoy riding my bike, working with plants, spending time with good friends and doing anything outside (hiking, climbing, backpacking, sand volleyball, rafting,... you name it!). 

I had such a great experience transferring here to CSU and I am hoping to pass that kind of experience along as a Transfer Mentor. I hope to be a resource and friend to any student transferring to CSU (or any student in general) and I am very excited to meet the new students and really help immerse them into life as a CSU Ram!

What’s good CSU?!  My name is Chelsea and I transferred into the Ram fam in the spring semester of 2012.  After a year playing volleyball and pursuing musical studies at Concordia University-Ann Arbor, I decided that college wasn’t the right place for me fresh out of high school.  So in 2008 I had the opportunity to serve a year with Americorps National Civilian Community corps which absolutely changed my life.  Landing a job at a non profit, I moved to Sacramento where I have been living up until the big decision to go back to school at 23.  This time around, I am studying Biochemistry in hopes to eventually go onto med school to become a Developmental Pediatrician.  And for my big dreams I needed a school that would fit all of my needs which led me Colorado State University and it couldn’t be a more perfect fit.

I’m originally from a small town called Ottawa, Illinois and have moved all around the US for the past 4 years so coming to Fort Collins I didn’t know a single soul.  The Transfer Mentors were the ones who truly inspired me to become a Transfer Mentor myself.  The events that they held every week, the unlimited resources they provided, and even the laughter that they shared really made my transition a good.  I am beyond stoked to be able to make your transition an enjoyable one.  Welcome to the Ram Fam and get ready to start a whole new exhilarating chapter!

This five foot tall power-house of awesome is the one they call Vanessa Ybarra.  I am a third year student at Colorado State University studying Equine Sciences with a focus in Pre Law.  I am a member of CSU’s Women’s Polo Team, a member of the Homeless Awareness Team, and I was a Ram Welcome Leader this past fall and spring.  When I’m not on campus or doing homework, I am more than likely running, baking, hiking, or singing in the shower.  

When at home in California, I spend 50% of the time riding and showing my Morgan horse named Ultra’s Private Eye, and for the other 50% of the time you can find me sleeping on my favorite beach.  

I decided to become a member of the Orientation Team to give back to CSU as well as previous Orientation Leaders who created such an awesome experience for me during my first year here. As an Orientation Leader I will do my best to provide you – yes YOU – with information about the Colorado State campus and all that is has to offer you.  

I am so excited for what is in store for this summer and can't wait to get the opportunity to meet each and every one of you!