The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experience and positive results in this year’s freshmen orientation at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Before classes started in the fall freshman in Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering Technology (ECTET) programs were asked to work with faculty as they programmed an inexpensive robot and built maps of the RIT campus for the robots to navigate. The paper discusses these activities in detail, provides the tutorials that were developed and discusses the student survey completed after the orientation. The goals met in the orientation were: faculty-student interaction, student-student interaction, increased student knowledge of the campus, team participation by all, students meeting the office staff, and students working with their advisors to review their schedule before classes began
