With increased public pressure to impact student success, assess student learning and increase completion outcomes at community colleges, mandatory orientation can be an important first step on the path to success. Colleges also need to identify opportunities for assessing co-curricular learning in student affairs programs and functions. This study describes the process of implementing a mandatory new student orientation at a community college in Colorado. The program assessment included data collection at the individual student level to document student learning, and more broadly to demonstrate that the program contributed to increases in student retention outcomes and documented student learning from the beginning of the college transition process. The authors found statistically significant differences in student learning about key on boarding topics following orientation and the new student orientation also contributed to a seventeen percent increase in fall to spring retention of new students.