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Dorm dinners, floor activities, late-night talks in the hallway and shared dread of general education classes – all those things that promote bonding among freshmen during their first few weeks at UCLA – are not an element of the graduate student social scene.

While an incoming undergraduate student studying history may live next to a student majoring in math and take a class with a philosophy student, graduate students often interact primarily or only with other students in their own department, said Monica Sanchez, president of the Graduate Students Association.

“Graduate students tend to be a little isolated by department, so when they go, for example, to their classes they stay in one building, (on) one side of campus,” she said.

In order to combat this isolation, GSA has begun holding orientations for new students from all departments.

Cindy Mosqueda, GSA’s vice president of external affairs, has experienced this isolation within her department, the School of Education.

Not only did Mosqueda say she interacts mostly with students in the School of Education, but also that she primarily knows students within her own specialized study.

“Undergraduate students are a lot more likely to know students within a variety of majors ... but I know, (for example), two engineering students,” she said.

“It’s very common because we’re so specialized within our departments,” she added.

Traditionally, departments in graduate schools hold orientation for students in that department.

But though department orientations provide students with valuable information about their department, they do not inform students of campus-wide services and do promote the sense of isolation many graduate students experience, Sanchez said.

GSA’s new orientations are geared toward providing students with more general knowledge about UCLA.

“(The orientation) is intended to give them more university-wide information,” Sanchez said. “They get whole campus tours, they get the opportunity to mingle with other graduates.”

Students are provided with information about services on campus, how to set up the UCLA e-mail address, and where students can access computer labs, similar to the information undergraduates receive during orientation.

The orientation also provides information specific to graduate students, such as how to obtain funding to get articles published.

The New Graduate Student Orientation, which was held Friday, is in its second year. Sanchez said it attracted almost 1,000 students in its first year and grew by about 300 this year, adding that there are about 10,000 graduate students total.

The idea of having an orientation for all graduate students, rather than by department, is relatively new to UCLA, said Christine Wilson, coordinator of the Graduate Student Resource Center.

“There’s been the impression for a long time that, well, graduate students have been to college, they all know how things work, their departments or schools will take care of anything they need,” she said.

But many students involved in planning or running the orientation said they have seen that students have responded well to the opportunity to meet students from other departments early on and learn information about the campus as a whole.