Carnegie Mellon Orientation a Family Affair

It's a classic Carnegie Mellon University story that touches students, alumni, faculty, staff, buggy drivers and pushers. Two head orientation counselors in 1990 become lifelong friends, marry fellow CMU graduates, and now their oldest children are attending first-year orientation this week as members of CMU's Class of 2022. Janet Ertel Gess and Conrad Zapanta were among the new wave of head orientation counselors who brought the first-year program from rural, woodsy, campsite cabins back to the Pittsburgh campus. "That was the first year it was different,” said Gess, who earned her bachelor's degree in chemical and biomedical engineering in 1991 and is now a technical writer for a statistical software company. "Anne Witchner's vision was to bring it back to campus and to focus on the academic and social things you need to know. It was more of a program to get the kids going. Witchner, who has been in charge of orientation off and on for 20 years since 1990, said Gess, a former Spring Carnival buggy driver and Kiltie Band dance line member, and Zapanta, a former buggy pusher, represented the "cream of the crop” as head orientation counselors.