Alanna Kaiser had never been backpacking before she joined a group of other incoming first-year Penn State students on a six-day wilderness orientation program in Rothrock State Forest this month.
None of the students in the group knew each other before the trip, said the 18-year-old from Lancaster, Pa. “The first day nobody talks to each other,” she said. “At the end, we were all best friends.”
Some 240 incoming first-year Penn State students from campuses across the state take part in the ORION Wilderness Experience, a program intended to ease the transition to college. The students spend five days hiking and camping in Rothrock, Moshannon, or Bald Eagle state forests, one day either canoeing or doing a high ropes adventure, and finish up with a cookout at Shaver's Creek Environmental Center, Penn State’s nature center and field lab.