Important Dates

Orientation is designed to introduce you to life at Occidental, from academic expectations to opportunities for intellectual, cultural, and social involvement. New Student Orientation is compulsory for all incoming new students (including transfer, exchange, and visiting students).

View the Orientation 2024 schedule

Review other important dates in the 2022-23 academic calendar.

Review other important dates in the 2022-23 academic calendar.

Convocation is one of the College's oldest traditions, and in reviving the practice this fall after two years of pandemic disruption, we are returning to its original design as an event for the whole community, rather than solely for first-year students.

Register Here

Born in Russia, Alya studied music and dance as a child and never lost her passion for the arts. As a young woman, she pursued a career in journalism, earning a degree from Moscow State University, and worked as a correspondent for Russia’s leading network, Ria Novosti, covering several of the biggest stories of the day, including the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000 and the Beslan school siege in 2004.

Farhoud Meybodi is an award-winning writer, director, and executive producer focused on storytelling projects that inspire social change. Over the past decade, he has collaborated on a variety of television and digital projects that have been seen over two billion times, raised millions of dollars for terminal illness research, and even helped overturn an unjust Presidential Executive Order. At his core, Farhoud believes in the power of mainstream storytelling to entertain and help heal the political-social divide of the present day.