During the past 10 years, all UMR freshman engineering students have been required to enroll in a large group (about 80 students per class in a large lecture hall) orientation class. This class covered a variety of topics including library usage, ethics, time management, study skills, professional success, leadership, ROTC, classification of engineering disciplines, the Purdue Interest Questionnaire and other special topics. At the close of the semester, a short survey was administered to the students in both small classes, as well as a control group of 90 students from the large classes. The survey dealt with the students perception of the benefit of the course. This paper provides a general overview of the semester and summarizes the results from the survey of the small classes. Additional, long range results are analyzed over the next several semesters.