{"id":3124,"date":"2014-09-19T18:55:20","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T22:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2014\/09\/19\/14220\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T22:46:07","slug":"14220","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/14220\/","title":{"rendered":"An Introduction with Strings Attached"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"POPH\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Navitat Zipline Canopy Adventure is only 80 miles from Greenville, S.C., but the treetop-hopping adventure park may as well be on the moon for Furman students once school starts. But school hadn\u2019t started yet last month as incoming freshman Sierra Cooper \u201918 of South Burlington, Vt., waited for her group\u2019s turn to grip a pulley and plunge down a cable suspended a couple hundred feet above a gorge, so the only thing on her mind was imagining the rush of wind in her face as she got a view of Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina she\u2019d never seen before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard from one of my friends that I had to absolutely go on one of the POP trips, because you meet so many people and it\u2019s just a great way to start out your year,\u201d she said from Navitat\u2019s cozy lobby, and as she spoke she was in the process of making new ones in the form of Johanna Swab \u201918 of Simpsonville, S.C., Daniyal Roshan \u201918 of Braselton, Ga., Emma Jackson \u201919 of Vestavia Hills, Ala., Ivy Loftus \u201918 of Raynham, Mass., Susannah Lauber \u201918 of Wheaton, Ill., and Jessica Norum \u201918 of Redwood City, Calif.<\/p>\n

For those counting at home, that would be seven different states representing four distinct regions of the United States being brought together by Furman\u2019s Paladin Outdoor Program (POP). Offered to the first 85 or so incoming freshmen who sign up, it also gives soon-to-be students the chance to kayak in the Atlantic off the coast of Charleston, S.C., camp in the quiet woods of Shining Rock Wilderness, raft down the icy rushing waters of the Chattooga or Nantahala rivers or participate in a service project in downtown Greenville.<\/p>\n

Each three-day trip is led by two faculty members and upper-class student volunteers and concludes the day before orientation official begins. That\u2014along with the opportunity to move in before your roommate\u2014is the real gift to those who participate, according to director of campus recreation Owen McFadden.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of what I like to tell my group: You\u2019ve met some faculty members, you\u2019ve met some upper-class students, so take advantage of that,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have 600 freshmen who haven\u2019t had that chance to get to know the members of the faculty in this kind of setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abigail Dahlman \u201916 did, and now she pays it forward as a volunteer herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing something like this allows you to bond in a different way than in a classroom or on campus,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to have a shared experience . . . It makes (the freshmen) feel more comfortable on campus. I love building relationships with people, and it\u2019s really important for me to know different grade levels at Furman. I think every class has something to bring to Furman, and I don\u2019t judge the students by year. I just see us as a Furman student body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furman students took over Navitat, arriving up the winding gravel road on a tour bus. There were actually two groups there because the 3 \u00bd-hour zip through the treeline was part of both the Nantahala and Chattooga whitewater trips the next day, further west into the mountains. Cooper and her classmates would head to Franklin, N.C., after dinner to spend the night before splitting up, with the more adventurous tackling the rougher Chattooga while the rest enjoyed the gentler Nantahala.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, another bunch led by Earth and Environmental Science professors Bill Ranson and Suresh Muthukrishnan was hiking and camping in Shining Rock, North Carolina\u2019s largest wilderness area as Philosophy professor Aaron Simmons and professor Tim Wardle of the Religion Department were guiding soon-to-be students through activities including jet skiing, parasailing and kayaking in the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

Chemistry professors Brian Goess and Greg Springsteen headed the Nantahala group, while David Fink (Religion) and Kerstin Blomquist (Psychology) were in charge of the Chattooga riders. If students request it McFadden will attempt to pair them with professors from specific departments, so Goess may have met some future majors. But mostly POP is about fun and connecting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a blast. One of my favorite things is watching a group of incoming freshmen who have never met sort of form a nice bond before they even officially arrive on campus,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom a sociological perspective I think it\u2019s pretty interesting. For many of them, it\u2019s the first time they\u2019re really been away from home and the first time to go out and adventure with people they\u2019ve never met before. It\u2019s a great introduction to what college life is going to be like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The service trip was led by Meghan Slining of the Health Sciences Separtment and Min-Ken Liao from Biology. The students spend their time volunteering at Triune Mercy Center, which aids Greenville\u2019s homeless population, while also getting to know the city\u2019s vibrant downtown. McFadden said the opportunity to do something not so adrenaline-based is by design.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The idea) was to reach another segment of our student population,\u201d he said, noting that many accepted applicants have been volunteering throughout high school. \u201cSince I\u2019ve been in athletics all my life everything I do is with some kind of sport or activity in mind, so if we were missing out on any students who may not enjoy that and would rather do some kind of service work we wanted to give them that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dahlman, an education major from Milwaukee, elected to participate in the service trip before her freshman year and says the experience is one she\u2019s carried with her.
\n\u201cOne of the girls on the trip is one of my best friends,\u201d she said. \u201cIt allows you to build deeper relationships, especially coming into school as a freshman not knowing anyone and being able to branch out and meet people not on your hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the whole idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would encourage any student to sign up for this trip,\u201d Goess said. \u201cOne of the great advantages is that on Friday when new students are walking in you\u2019ll already have 40 friends and you\u2019ll know their names and be able to sit down with them and have lunch with them, and in the hectic scheduling of the first week of school and the first week of class this is a quiet, calm time to get to know them pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

McFadden is entering his 31st year at Furman, with the Paladin Outdoor Program existing in some form or another for 15. Every trip this year was full, which culminated work he started in December. It\u2019s a labor of love for the Citadel graduate\u2014except for the activities themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIronically, all of these trips that I do are things I would never have done,\u201d he said with a smile from his office in the PAC, the sound of bouncing basketballs from the gym on the other side of the wall providing a steady backbeat to his words. \u201cI mean, really, I\u2019m not an outdoors person. I don\u2019t like adventure. I don\u2019t like heights. I don\u2019t really like water. Being on a zip line 200 feet off the ground for somebody who\u2019s afraid of heights\u2014it doesn\u2019t sit very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does sit well for him, however, is the chance to make Furman\u2019s experience a positive one. And he believes the outdoor program helps do just that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the students who make the program. They\u2019re the ones who bond with one another, and through other interactions it mushrooms into a really good experience for them,\u201d he said. \u201cThe last thing I tell my group is \u2018you\u2019ve met these other students, you\u2019ve met these faculty members, you\u2019ve met me. If you can\u2019t talk to Owen McFadden, you\u2019re going to really struggle at Furman University.\u2019 Take this, learn from this, and know that we are just regular people and we are here to help you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Navitat Zipline Canopy Adventure is only 80 miles from Greenville, S.C., but the treetop-hopping adventure park may as well be on the moon for Furman students once school starts. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":13711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,34,35,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administrative","category-admission","category-parent-news","category-student-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}