UA camp looking for volunteers

Arizona Daily Wildcat Photo courtesy of Tom Reiner A group of campers participates in a trust game at Bear Down Camp in Oracle, Arizona, last August. This year's sessions are Aug. 16-18 and Aug. 18-20 at Camp Whispering Pines on Mount Lemmon.

"The idea is to bring all incoming freshmen together, to get them to bond and to really form friendships on this campus," said Tom Reiner, executive director of Bear Down Camp.

The camp is seeking a diverse group of counselors with a good dose of school spirit who are willing to help freshmen feel welcome, he said. The deadline for counselor applications is 5 p.m. Feb. 15, at the Associated Students office.

Two sessions this summer will teach new students how to use the library and drop and add classes, while participating in leadership and trust exercises. Camp directors will hire 50 students to teach 150 freshmen from their own university experiences.

The program's creator, Summer Katzenbach, said the program is "a grass roots effort to retain students," created and produced by and for students.

Katzenbach, a public management senior, said students are most likely to drop out of school their freshman year. She said the Bear Down program teaches students how to adjust to drastic life changes.

Staff director Ashleijh Bechtel said last summer some campers complained that their parents had forced them to attend the camp and college.

"One of the girls in my cabin...kept wanting to sit out and go home and everything and by the end of the camp she was like 'I would have never made it past the first week of school if I had never come to this camp,'" said Bechtel, a communications junior.

Of the students who participated in the program, only one dropped out due to illness, Katzenbach said.

Katzenbach said it gives students a chance to "get a head start on the U of A."

She said the students who participated in the program last year are involved in leadership around campus.

"It gives us a chance to give incoming freshmen a chance to get involved [in school]," said Bechtel.

Katzenbach created the program in 1998, while she was an ASUA senator. She was inspired when she heard about a similar camp that took place in 1994 on Mount Lemmon, but on a smaller scale, she added.

"I took it up as a senate project not realizing it was such a huge endeavor," Katzenbach said.

The camp is partially modeled after the programs used by Texas A&M in College Station and the University of Texas in Houston.

The camp directors want to work with the UA staff and faculty to gain support and expand the program to serve more students, Reiner said. They met with President Peter Likins last Friday to discuss the future of the program.

"We have quite a lot of support from the administrators - they feel it is a valuable program," Reiner said.

The camp offers three three-day training sessions for counselors during the spring semester.

This year's program will have two camping sessions from Aug. 16-20. The first session will take place the Aug. 16-18 and the second will be Aug. 18-20 at Camp Whispering Pines on Mount Lemmon.

Directors of the camp plan to charge $50 this year, down from $100 last session.

Reiner said they want to "make the fee as small as possible."

The camp receives most of its funding from ASUA programs and administrative financial commitments.

Tom Reiner can be reached at 621-4679 at the ASUA office or by e-mail at reiner@u.arizona.edu.