2020
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INDIANA UNIVERSITY ALUMNI MAGAZINE
FA L L 2016
IU’s bicentennial class may have a short attention span, but it is tech-savvy, ambitious, driven, and career-minded.
By CJ Lotz
MARC LEBRYK
Incoming IU freshmen capture a moment during orientation activities in June at Ashton Center on the Bloomington campus.
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acy Gard is like many incoming Indiana University freshmen before her. When she enters IU East in Richmond this fall, she’ll have just turned 18 years old. She wants to study biochemistry and minor in math. When choosing a college, she weighed factors like cost, study areas offered, and social life. But Gard is different from past generations, too. For one thing, she set up this interview by texting her availability from her iPhone. terested in public health, epidemiology, and wants to go on to become a general surgeon. Outside of his studies, he hopes to get involved in his other passion — music. He’s interested in playing baritone horn for the All-Campus Band or Marching Hundred. Parker has visited Bloomington and knows the campus is the place he’s meant to be — plus he already likes the Irish Lion and Pizza X restaurants. His goal for his freshman year is to make friends and meet new people. “When I graduate from IU and go on to medical school, I want to have great communication skills. I want to learn how to interact and work with people well,” he says. He’s goal-oriented, something he sees in his colleagues. “This class has a drive and a motivation to work. Everyone around me wants to be better and get better. We’re competitive with our peers.” Curtis Jones, an incoming freshman who attended Huntington Prep in West Virginia, will keep busy — and in the public eye — as a guard for the Indiana Hoosiers men’s basketball team. He moved to the Bloomington campus in June to start training and get to know his teammates. Already, he says, he knows
“It won’t make any difference what they majored in in five or 10 years, it’s how they perform ... ” 28
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She has only known technology to be immediately accessible. She slotted the interview in between graduation parties and her job at a local pizza place in Richmond. Gard will enter university with more than a semester of Advanced Placement collegiate classes under her belt. “I feel like I’ve been in college for a while,” she says. “I’ve been taking college classes since my sophomore year of high school. “My goal for my first year of school? I just want straight A’s,” she says, knowing that her pre-med class load will be difficult. “My mom asked what I wanted for my birthday, and I said a desk so I can roll out of bed and study all day.” Her motivation to study is matched by her interest in getting involved with school events — she’d like to take part in Campus Life programs and help organize activities for fellow students. She’s not alone. This class is an ambitious group. They grew up with an unstable economy. Parents who lost jobs. Grandparents who lost retirement savings. Careers in business and medicine appeal to them. Incoming IU Bloomington freshman Bryce Parker from Chesapeake, Ohio, an 18 year old, already knows that he’s in-
Incoming IU freshmen engaged in numerous activities during summer orientation. As her classmates cheer, Madison Martin, of Kewanna, Ind., tosses the beanbag in a game of cornhole at Ashton Center.
he made the right college choice, because he loves the campus and town. Everyone has been friendly to him. In addition to keeping up with his workout schedule, he says his goals are to “keep my grades up, play well on the court, and meet people outside of basketball.” He wants the full college experience, just like his peers. “Being away from home will be different. I’ll miss it a little bit,” he says. “But I think I’ll like the independence.” So will Erika Ent, 18, who plans to major in communication studies and minor in event management at IUPUI this fall. The Avon, Ind., native says she’s most excited about exploring Indianapolis — a city she grew up near, but never got to know like
home. She’ll live on campus and has her sights set on renting an off-campus apartment eventually. She already has a plan — get a restaurant job at Yard House for some extra cash and devote herself to her studies and Greek life. She was so excited to move to Indianapolis before classes started that she signed up for the IUPUI Summer Bridge Program to settle into campus about a week before the majority of her fellow freshmen. “I don’t want to be that person who goes home all the time, even though it’s 20 minutes away,” Ent says. “I want to focus on being on my own, living on campus, being independent, and being part of the city. That’s the full college experience to me.” ALUMNI.INDIANA.EDU/MAGAZINE
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long with that competitive student drive comes an innate comfort with technology that professors and administrators are trying to understand. Consider that these students have never not had Google. They have probably sent a letter, but they’ve never licked a postage stamp. For them, email is “formal” communication and texting is more intimate. Most of their life happens online. Adolescent benchmarks are no longer confi ned to gett ing a driver’s license or braces — these kids were gett ing smart phones in middle school, and their understanding of driving is paired with GPS, not directions. They take online courses, Snapchat with their friends during school, and like each other’s Instagrams afterwards, all while submitt ing homework online and maybe browsing articles unless those are “TL;DR” (too long; didn’t read). A TIME headline reads: “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfi sh” before describing a 2015 study that found that people today generally lose concentration after eight seconds. The study also found a wide gap in how generations deal with boredom: 77 percent of people aged 18 to 24 said they reach for their phone fi rst when nothing is occupying their attention, compared with only 10 percent of people over the age of 65. “If you don’t have their attention in eight seconds, they’ll move on to something else,” says Caroline Dowd-Higgins, BM’89, MM’95, executive director of career and professional development for the IU Alumni Association. “This is a DIY — Do-It-Yourself — generation that will learn by doing. They’re a very interactive class and are motivated by visuals. They’ve always had YouTube.” The class of 2020 catches up on web-based TV series, which have been around for as long as they’ve been watching screens. As last year’s Beloit College Mindset List noted, “Their parents have gone from encouraging them to use the Internet to begging them to get off it.” They’ll use their web familiarity to their advantage, says George Kuh, a former IU professor who founded the National Survey of Student Engagement. He has observed generations of college students since his affi liation with the university began nearly 40 years ago. One thing that will set this class apart is its ability to use technology to prepare for internships and job interviews, he says. “The class of 2020 is not going to leave Indiana University with just a transcript,” he says. “They’ll have an electronic portfolio that will record not only what courses they took, but will have an extended map of what experiences they had. When they go to interview, they’ll have talking points, projects, papers, and testimonials. Just as artists create portfolios of their work, every graduate in 2020 should have one of these.” In modern IU history, three trends stand out among classes from 2007 to the class of 2020, says David Johnson, vice provost for enrollment management: The incoming classes have grown in number, their populations have seen a growth in Latino and Hispanic students that parallels popu-
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lation increases in the state of Indiana and the United States overall, and they have a higher academic profi le (more college credits coming in, higher test scores) which demands a superior quality of classes for career-driven students. IU is gearing up for this competitive class by rolling out a brand new enrollment system, Johnson says. When students arrived for orientation in June, they found that they had been preregistered for the classes they need for their degrees. They were able to modify the schedule or swap classes, but the pilot program was being tested to see if it makes registering easier. It’s already much easier than earlier generations’ registration, which involved standing in long lines at the fieldhouse to obtain class-admitt ance cards.
THROUGH THE GENERATIONS
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he 2020 class’s grandparents, who may have arrived in about 1964, wouldn’t recognize the things the class of 2020 has grown up with — women dunking in the WNBA or the idea that the “turn of the century” could mean one of two time periods. In the class of 1964’s fi rst year at Bloomington, the 17th Street Football Stadium (now Indiana Memorial Stadium) was fi nished. The men’s swimming team kicked off its fi rst of 20 consecutive Big Ten championships. (To be fair, generations of IU students have had swim teams to be proud of.) In 1962, James Watson, PhD’50, DSc’63, won the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA’s structure. The class of 2020 might not have heard of “Dolly the sheep,” because cloning has always been a fact for them, not something from a sci-fi fl ick. In 1962, Herman B Wells, BS’24, MA’27, LLD’62, was named university chancellor when he retired as IU president. That’s a name some students, when they fi rst arrive, only recognize from the sign outside the main library — the namesake building of IU’s legendary leader. The ’60s was an era of music and protest. An IU Folksong Club hosted at least one folksong revival concert. The class of 2020 will probably see music revival trends of its own, although in the time these students have been alive, they’ve never been to a concert in a smoke-fi lled arena, because arenas are no longer smoke-fi lled. And for them, “dude” has never had a negative connotation. Students of the ’60s brought calculators, radios, a typewriter, and perhaps a small television set. Students today will likely bring laptops in addition to the tiny computers they keep in their pockets or in their hands at all times — their cell phones. A generation ago, students who lived on campus ate their meals in the residence hall dining rooms. They ate what was served or made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Today, students have meal points to dine in any number of cafeterias or food courts. In 1972, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs was established, and the Musical Arts Center was dedicated. IU swimmer Mark Spitz, ’72, won seven gold medals at the Olympics. It was the time of student protests surrounding the Vietnam War era. There was a cultural sea
GARD, M ARC LEBRYK / JONES, ERIC RUDD
A CLASS PORTRAIT
Macy Gard
Hometown: Richmond, Ind. Macy Gard strolls through the IU East campus in Richmond, ready for the academic challenges ahead.
Curtis Jones Hometown: Richmond, Va.
Freshman basketball player Curtis Jones works on his laptop outside of Cook Hall.
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Erika Ent
Hometown: Avon, Ind. Erika Ent, walking through the Student Center, took part in the IUPUI Summer Bridge Program prior to beginning classes at IU’s Indianapolis campus.
Bryce Parker
Hometown: Chesapeake, Ohio Bryce Parker, with plans to play in the Marching Hundred and study to become a surgeon, takes in the area around Ashton Center during IUB orientation in June.
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“The class of 2020 is not going to leave Indiana University with just a transcript. They’ll have an electronic portfolio ... an extended map of what experiences they had.” change countrywide. The Black Culture Center and the Latino Cultural Center were established. In 1971, the IUPUI undergraduate campus, consisting of Cavanaugh Hall, Lecture Hall, and University Library, opened. The class of 2020 will have its own political causes. “Most of the behavior between generations is prett y similar with how many hours students spend gett ing involved,” Kuh says. “Students today are still joining fraternities, volunteering, and getting involved in what matters to them.” But the 1960s and ’70s classes saw what protests could really do. In 1968, black student protesters barricaded themselves within the Litt le 500 stadium and vowed to block the race from taking place unless all involved fraternities proved discriminatory clauses were eliminated or would no longer be honored at IU. The race was delayed one day, as much by weather as the protest. But the three-day sit-in eventually forced fraternities that had racist covenants to remove them from their bylaws. When the 2020 class’s parents arrived, many in the 1980s, IU had established itself as a sports haven. The Hoosiers counted five NCAA men’s basketball championships to their name, with recent banners in 1976, 1981, and 1987 added to those of 1940 and 1953. The 1979 fi lm Breaking Away brought new attention to that famous bike race beloved by students and locals alike. During freshman year, the class of 2020 will watch and participate in the Women’s 30th running of the Litt le 500 and the Men’s 67th running. At IUPUI in 1982, a worldclass Natatorium, Track and Field Stadium, and Classroom/Office II Building were completed. The Sample Gates at IUB were dedicated in 1987. Continuing into the new millennium, the class of 2000 saw Wells named IU’s Man of the Century in 1999 before he passed away the next year. Phrases like “No Means No” take hold to combat rape, although today’s students have watched that evolve into the stronger “Only yes means yes.” In 2000, the School of Informatics was founded as the fi rst school of its kind in the country. And today, students of this incoming class live their lives online.
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
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tudents go to school to improve their status in life. They seek careers. That has not changed over the decades. But the class of 2020 is likely to shape more entrepreneurs than ever before, predicts Dowd-Higgins. “All those big corporate giants; who will work there?” she asks. “Workplaces need to learn how to excite a talent pool that is innovative, entrepreneurial, and used to disruptive innovation like Airbnb on the hotel industry. This generation is poised to innovate.” The class of 2020 will not only hop from job to job, but will likely overhaul their entire careers during their working lives. “Even five years ago, it was a red fl ag when someone moved jobs a lot,” Dowd-Higgins says. “Now, it’s not a bad thing. It’s considered knowledge transfer and bringing in fresh ideas.” The hard skills taught at the School of Informatics and Computing and the Kelley School of Business (among many other IU programs) will come in handy, but this class of 2020 will enter an ever-changing job market that will care more about how quickly you can pick up onthe-job skills. “It won’t make any difference what they majored in five or 10 years from now; it’s how they perform,” Kuh says. “Once you get out, and you’re out for two or three years, the major is now irrelevant. People do things totally unconnected to their major or field.” This is a change from many previous generations, when a degree was considered a certification for a job. “Having a college degree just gets you into the game now,” Kuh says. “It doesn’t put you into much of an advantage position unless you leave Indiana University with transferable skills.” On a more personal level, the basic human desires of an incoming freshman look similar from year to year. Students care about forming a worldview, making friends, and figuring out what they want to do with their lives. “Every generation of students is different in some ways, but in other ways they’re very much the same,” says Kuh. “That period of life they’re in, the developmental tasks haven’t changed. They’re working toward careers, becoming independent, and fi nding their voices.” The class of 2020 has four years to grow into its legacy. And right now, Macy, Bryce, Curtis, and Erika probably would have let us know they’d lost interest 10 minutes ago. TL;DR.
CJ Lotz, BAJ ’11, Wells Scholar, is an editor at Garden & Gun magazine in Charleston, S.C. Her work has appeared in Indianapolis Monthly, St. Louis magazine, Field & Stream, and the Associated Press. ALUMNI.INDIANA.EDU/MAGAZINE
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