OSU WElcome Center
About Us
About Us
Visit programs at Oregon State University have existed for decades. As of fall 2024, the Welcome Center staff is working with historical documents from the Special Archives at OSU to construct a more thorough history of campus visits, so please continue checking back on this website for an updated history, which will ideally be published in early 2025.
Current OSU staff members have worked in campus visit programs as far back as the mid-1990s. At the time, campus visits were coordinated alongside new student orientation programs in the same department. The physical office was located in Kerr Administration Building. In 2003, the Office of Admissions took over the leadership and organization of the daily campus tours, while the new student orientation programs split off into a separate office and led the large campus visit programs. By 2007, the Office of Admissions had also taken over leadership of large campus visit programs in addition to daily tours. All visit programs, operating under the name of "Campus Visitor Center," maintained a physical office space in Kerr.
The Campus Visitor Center moved into the first floor of the Beth Ray Center for Academic Support building in fall 2017, and simultaneously, the new name of "the Welcome Center" was created. The Beth Ray Center was a relatively new building, constructed in 2012, but the Welcome Center only occupied about 1,000 square feet of space to serve visitors. With campus visit numbers growing each year as OSU's enrollment continued to grow, it was clear the Welcome Center needed more space to operate.
In 2021, plans were made to include space for a brand new Welcome Center as part of a significant $153 million renovation to the west side of Reser Stadium, Oregon State's football stadium. These plans included a footprint of more than 15,000 square feet for the new Welcome Center. Staff from the Welcome Center served on the executive construction planning team alongside Athletics staff to design a space that could welcome everyone to Oregon State: prospective students, campus visitors, alumni, donors, gameday attendees and more. The Welcome Center finally moved out of the Beth Ray Center and into their new home in Reser Stadium in September 2023.
Our Goals
In alignment with Oregon State University’s Prosperity Widely Shared strategic plan, which guides the university’s work from 2024-2030, the Welcome Center recognizes that we are an active part of moving the university strategic plan forward. The Welcome Center is well-positioned to support the goals of the plan, and we have committed ourselves to the three goals listed below that will guide our work.
The Welcome Center:
Serves as the storytellers for Oregon State University.
Creates intentional visit experiences for future college students.
Develops outstanding student leaders who are prepared to work collaboratively and solve problems in the workforce upon graduation.
Learn More About Our Goals
The Welcome Center has the distinct privilege of being storytellers for the university. Oregon State University as a premiere research university makes big discoveries that drive big solutions (Prosperity Widely Shared goal 1), and we feel honored to share those stories with our visitors. As part of this goal, the Welcome Center strives to stay in-the-know with the latest academic and research accomplishments across the institution so that we can share these with prospective students. We commit to engaging in ongoing staff training where we can learn from our campus partners about the excellent work happening in all corners of campus and beyond.
This goal also inspires the Welcome Center to be the storytellers of our own work. As part of this goal, we strive to connect with OSU departments campus-wide both to serve as a resource, providing tours to departmental visitors or new staff, and to remind our colleagues that every staff/faculty member can contribute to a positive visit experience for prospective students. Finally, we endeavor to better tell the story of our own work, demonstrating how our campus visit experiences directly contribute to university enrollment goals.
The Welcome Center creates unique and intentional visit experiences for prospective and admitted students and their family members. Our visit experiences focus on the needs of our visiting students to ensure that we provide transparent, accurate and timely information about the admissions process and the university. The Welcome Center staff commit to welcoming each student and their family with genuine enthusiasm, highlighting all that OSU has to offer to students. Our jobs are to help visiting prospective and admitted students develop an affinity for OSU and to feel like they can belong on our campus. We view our work as part of the new student onboarding process; whether or not our visiting students choose to attend OSU, we want all prospective students to know the offices and resources that support students from the time they apply for admission to the day they graduate and beyond. These efforts will support the university’s goal that every student graduates (Prosperity Widely Shared goal 2).
This goal also challenges the Welcome Center to ensure the quality of our visit experiences. We will achieve this through ongoing staff training and evaluation, and by supporting our college partners who provide visit experiences. We commit to remaining nimble to the needs of future prospective students by updating or refining our visit experiences to meet the needs of the incoming demographic of prospective students.
The Welcome Center strives to be the best student job on campus. Our student staff members are essential to the success of the Welcome Center, as they serve as peer mentors to our visiting prospective students. TOUR Ambassadors come from all across the country, represent majors within all the academic colleges, and are involved in student organizations and undergraduate research widely across the campus.
The Welcome Center’s third goal focuses on developing our student staff members into future leaders who will contribute positively to the workforce upon graduation (in alignment with Prosperity Widely Shared goal 3, fueling a thriving world). The Welcome Center knows that campus employment can increase student retention, and as such, the Welcome Center plays a role in supporting students through to graduation (Prosperity Widely Shared goal 2). We commit to being a student-centered place of employment where we grow and support our student staff members by treating them with care and empathy. We aim to provide our student staff with transferable skills that they will utilize in any future profession, including communication, teamwork, public speaking, critical thinking, adaptability, problem-solving and more.