Self-resilience and self-reliance through collegiate outdoor orientation programs

Abstract

Incoming freshman at a university are often faced with challenges of the unknown which can make the transition from home life difficult. Many universities offer transition programs to aid in the ease and feelings of belonging. One of those is an outdoor orientation program made available to incoming freshman at UWL. Often acknowledged in helping student transition is increased self-resilience and self-reliance. Self-resilience discusses how students rely on themselves to handle problems or a view of their own power versus another person's. Self-reliance is how comfortable students feel depending on themselves versus another person. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine student's self-reliance and self-resilience enrolled in an outdoor orientation program during their first semester at a university. Specifically, our research question is, do students who attend an outdoor orientation program have an increase in self-resilience and self-reliance? This study is timely due to COVID regulations and the need to help students transition successfully.

KEYWORDS: outdoor orientation programs; self-resilience, self-reliance, college transition programs, challenge by choice