Campus comes alive

Monday, August 25, 2008
DePauw sophomore Katherine Straus wrestles with an armload of clothes and hangers as she moved into the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house on Sunday.

DePauw University sophomore Katherine Straus and her mother, Anne, spent Sunday morning hauling Katherine's belongings into the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house.

"She's probably in there hugging everyone," Anne said with a smile, dropping a Bed, Beth & Beyond bag on the sorority house porch and heading back to the van to get another load.

Katherine, 19, was moving back to campus from her home in Cincinnati. Her sorority sister Jennifer Zgorka, 21, a junior, was coming back to school from Munster.

"It is so hot out here," Jennifer said, blowing her bangs out of her face. "And the bugs are terrible."

DePauw's total enrollment this year stands at just under 2,400 students -- 625 of which are new. Students converged on the campus all weekend, setting up house in their dorm, sorority and fraternity house rooms.

"The arrival of students is always an exhilarating time of year, but it's especially exciting this year," said Stefanie Niles, DePauw's vice president of admissions and financial aid.

Of the 625 new students at the university, 77 are international -- a record for DePauw.

"The name 'DePauw' is resonating on a more global level, thanks to the institution's increasingly strong reputation as well as the initiative we launched two years ago to attract more international students to our campus," Niles said. "We'll have a total of 127 international students here this fall, or roughly 5 percent of the student body."

The new crop includes 602 first-year students, 12 transfers and 11 international exchanges. Five hundred seventy-eight are enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts, with 47 in the DePauw University School of Music.

The median class rank of DePauw's Class of 2012 is the upper 10 percent of their high school class, and the group's median grade point average is 3.61. Forty-eight were their high school's valedictorians or salutatorians.

To help get the new students acclimated to the area, they have all been invited to take part in the "First Year Service Plunge" event on Tuesday.

The event, which is sponsored each year by DePauw's Hartman House, runs from 3 to 5:30 p.m.

First Year Service Plunge "opens the door for first-year students to get involved in service at DePauw while also providing the opportunity to learn about the needs and strengths of the Greencastle community" said Jessica Weasner, assistant director of Hartman House. "It's a really great event."

About 200 student volunteers are expected to participate. They will visit such agencies as Peace Lutheran School, Putnam County Humane Society, Reading Improvement Center, DePauw Nature Park and Asbury Towers to learn about opportunities to donate time.

Other students will go door-to-door throughout the community, taking donations of food and toiletries for the Putnam County Emergency Food Pantry.

"The Plunge helps first-year students form a bond not only with their fellow classmates, but with this community that will be their home for the next four years," Weasner said.

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