Hawk Launch helps incoming first-year students soar together

Hawk Launch is a two-day, off-campus retreat put on by the Office of Orientation and New Student Programs (ONSP). This program is geared exclusively towards incoming first-year UHCL students and aims to help these students build relationships with their peers, faculty and current student leaders all while having a good time.

Since Hawk Launch is a two-day program, ONSP selects a handful of orientation leaders through an application process to help set up the programming, and to serve as a point of contact for the incoming first-years as they navigate UHCL.

After applying, I was selected as one of the six orientation leaders to serve as a “first-year guide” and I was super excited! This meant that I got to go on the Hawk Launch trip and facilitate some of the activities.

The Hawk Launch program was held at Camp Cho-Yeh in Livingston, Texas so we all gathered at UHCL to make sure that the logistics were covered before we headed out to camp.

When we got to Camp Cho-Yeh, Tyler Hall, coordinator of ONSP, ran through the guidelines, rules and expectations for the weekend. Everyone was then split into two groups: blue team and green team.

Hall explained that throughout the weekend we would be participating in multiple competition-based activities and challenges, and the team who comes out on top will win the “Battle for the Paddle” (a decorated row boat paddle) and bragging rights for the rest of the year.

I was assigned to the blue team, so I made sure to always try to hype up the group and encourage everyone to get as many points as possible. As a group, we came up with the team name Blue’s Clues, created a team flag and presented a chant in the hopes of winning the most team points.

We also ran through a bunch of timed challenge courses around camp and competed against the green team to see who could finish the various team tests faster.

Once it was time to see which team had the most points and won the “Battle for the Paddle,” it was brought to our attention that the teams had tied, and we were going immediately into the tiebreaker round.

The tiebreaker ended up being the ultimate game of paper, rock, scissors where every member of each team battled until there was one clear winner from each team. These last two winners played one last round of paper, rock, scissors and the winner was ultimately the green team.

Although my team ended up losing, the trip was a whole lot of fun and it was really rewarding seeing all the incoming first-year students becoming friends and building lasting connections before they even started their first semester on campus. On top of all that, these students were excited to start a college career at UHCL and make their mark on the campus!

Furthermore, on the second day of Hawk Launch, there was a faculty panel in which Anton Dubrovskiy, assistant professor of chemistry, answered any questions that the students had about UHCL, or college in general.

This panel really helped put a lot of students at ease concerning their inherent fears about the transition from high school to college to ease, and it helped everyone understand that professors really want to help them succeed in their journey at UHCL.