by Yoke Tassent
In many ways, college students will always be college students. They will be under-rested and over-caffeinated. Planning their days full of opportunities to prepare them for the work force while making “core memories”. They will have a large appetite they must fulfill on a small budget. Relying on ramen and a meal plan to supplement their sub-par cooking skills. They will be a side-hustler. Continuously looking for odd-jobs and applying to various on campus roles to meet the growing cost of tuition. They will be changemakers. They will suggest improvements to issues in their local community, including on their college campus. These suggestions will make us, as staff, reconsider the ways in which we carry out our roles, including in Residence Life.
This blog series features different writers responding to the prompt, “How is the rising generation of college students changing residence life practice?”
In Residence Life, we are being tasked with adapting to the rising generation of college students. While there are many generic stereotypes that fit the college student population, this generation of students are unique in the following ways: 1) Reliance on phones for information gathering 2) Value of efficiency 3) Hyper-fixated on $$$$$. In our roles as Residence Life professionals, we can adapt our processes to match these aspects of the current student population.
Technology should not only be a tool for us, as housing staff, to use, but it should also be a tool our students can implement. The push to digitize processes is not new. However, the reliance on phones for reviewing and gathering information has heightened. Housing professionals must find ways to make our processes, portals, and procedures easy to review on a cell-phone. For example, students are more likely to grab their phone, rather than their laptop, to submit their housing application or roommate agreement. Similarly, instead of inputting a massive number of QR codes into our digital resources, which would require a second device to open, we also want to include hyperlinked text. Lastly, working with your institution to approve sending texts to students for critical housing tasks leads to a higher response rate. Small adjustments to our tools will allow students to better access our materials and increase their efficiency in reviewing our information.
Similarly, unlike taking the time to read this slightly-lengthy blog post in which I have interwoven examples and anecdotes, students are keen on concise messaging. They value efficiency and love for written communication to be brief. Consider ways you can add a summary or “TL;DR” section to your email as well as text modifications that liven up your communication. These modifications can include the use of bold, italics, paragraph structure, and highlighting to quickly direct the student’s eye to the most important parts of your document.
While you may not be able to capture a student’s attention for a lengthy time to process your email, you will be able to catch their eye when they see $$$$$$ (a dollar sign). Maybe I even caught your eye with it at the beginning of this article. We are all extrinsically motivated in many ways and students are particularly keen on experiences that will make them or save them
money. As staff, we must consider the dollar sign attached to the changes we make. When considering floor plans for new building projects, we must include layouts at a variety of price points so that we can meet the needs of both the student who wants a frugal framework and a lavish living environment. Additionally, some institutions have seen success when adding monetary incentives for meeting expectations. These procedures include offering discounts to students who complete tasks by a priority deadline or penalties for not following procedures. While not being severe in nature, assigning small financial penalties for seemingly small infractions that greatly slow the operations of a housing department (ie. lock outs, late applications) can help a department see increased compliance to policy. In turn, these behavioral changes lighten the administrative load on staff.
While you mull over the ideas presented here, I ask you to think about the tendencies you have noted in your students. What behaviors are building in your residence halls? What tendencies do you want to “tend to” immediately? Supporting our students can be like tending a garden. There are the succulents that thrive off neglect; these behaviors are occurring on their own and do not need your intervention. There are the weeds that you want to treat immediately. There are also the flowers you need a green thumb for – just like there are elements within our students we want to grow but we need to be ready for it – and you are! You have the education and passion that fuel your green thumb. So, use yours! Allow yourself and your policies to grow alongside your students this year. Then, tell others about the growth you have witnessed as I cannot wait to hear about the garden you are growing!
