Patricia Quinn Robertson Johnston does not want to hear it.
A professor of business law at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro who also serves as executive director of the university’s Center for Leadership Excellence, Johnston has had to listen plenty to experts, self-appointed experts and just plain people with a bone to pick about the current crop of students making their way to college saying the students are too insular, too focused on their phones, too helpless, and still too dependent on mom and dad.
Rubbish, said Johnston.
“They are different because they grew up with cellphones from the beginning,” she said. “Unlike previous generations, they’ve had a smartphone almost their whole life, but I see them exhibit empathy and caring about the world that I think is very different from some previous generations.”
It is hard to remember, but there was a time when generational traits were largely relegated to academia, a time before everyone became pigeonholed as a “boomer” or “Gen Z” or any other term bandied about for more than a decade. Yet the present cohort of students that has entered college or is about to is deserving of a closer look. The students come armed with firm ideas about work-life balance and are far more used to advocating for their own mental health.
Perhaps most interesting of all, these are the students who missed precious time in junior high or high school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That means the loss of a vital year of socializing. While not everyone has the best memories of those years, they are also the years of adjusting to new teachers, working in a group setting and learning how to communicate with others.
That said, most anyone who spends their days on a college campus would also have to say today’s students are also adaptable and whip-smart when it comes to gadgets — and not just their phones either.
“One of this generation’s greatest strengths is its comfort with technology,” said Mindy Walker, vice president for student affairs at Arkansas Northeastern College in Blytheville. “Students are quick to adapt to new platforms, communicate effectively through digital tools and access information with ease.”
Bryan McKinney, dean of Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia’s Hickingbotham School of Business, likewise feels that incoming students bring a lot to the table.
Bryan McKinney
“I’ve spent some time thinking about it, and I don’t know,” McKinney said. “All the data suggests that COVID impacted them greatly. I don’t see that as much as I see technology impacting them, to be honest. It’s harder to get them to talk in class. That’s one of the things I’ve definitely seen, and I think maybe stepping away from in-class instruction at some point in their junior high or high school journey caused them to be a little bit more self-aware of the things they might say.”
McKinney added that if there is an issue with today’s students as far as COVID-19 goes, it is their uneasy relationship with failure in the academic space and beyond.
As a sort of fact-finding mission, McKinney went back and looked at his grade distributions for years and classes past. What he found was that higher grades were assigned during the midst of the pandemic and the time immediately after — and he does not see that as an anomaly.
“I just didn’t know how to maintain the same standards when we were teaching people through a computer and all those things,” McKinney said. “I gave the benefit of the doubt, so I think that sort of reset expectations around grading. It’s been harder post-COVID to convince a student that a ‘B’ is not a terrible grade.”
Reaction to grades — and other forms of adversity — has been on the mind of Tara Kittrell, a licensed professional counselor and advanced practice registered nurse at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s department of student counseling. Kittrell said she noticed an immediate change in the students who returned postpandemic, a change she continues to see to this day.
“It was a lot of anxiety,” Kittrell said. “A lot of anxiety.”
That anxiety can take many forms, whether it is academic stress, social stress or fear of graduating into a job market where work after college is not guaranteed.
UA Little Rock is responding with pickleball. Every Wednesday at noon, the university’s counseling department hosts games of pickleball at the on-campus fitness center. There is also “Movement Monday” and “Deadlift to Uplift,” all part of a grant from the Arkansas Department of Human Services to help students regulate stress and enhance emotional well-being through proven techniques and best practices.
Aresh Assadi, UA Little Rock’s director of counseling services, helped write that grant proposal, and on a lazy weekday afternoon, a visitor must tiptoe past boxes of pickleball equipment and free weights to reach his office. The goal is not so much to build muscles, Assadi said, but rather to expose students to healthy coping strategies when anxiety hits.
“They gave us $28,000 to do a peer educator kind of format for movement-based alternatives and [addressing] substance use,” Assadi said.
Substance-abuse education is part and parcel of working with students dealing with anxiety, Assadi said. Even if a student is not in the throes of addiction, bad habits can form when they begin turning to substances as a means of managing their emotions. Taking breaks from the digital world, Assadi said, can also help calm jangling nerves.
“Basically, we are raising awareness on the benefits of movement,” Assadi said, “and we’re doing a campaign called Take 10. At least 10 minutes a day, you walk away from your computer, walk away from the sedentary lifestyle, walk away from a screen, and just get out in the sun.”
Colleges are also taking a hard look at “soft skills,” or the ins and outs of interpersonal communication. At Arkansas State, that includes an entrepreneurship program that helps students learn how to network and connect with others.
Sandra Alstadt, a former senior communication professional with Entergy and former branding consultant, serves as a mentor for several ASU students. She said teaching students how to interact is a small price to pay for the positives they bring to the table.
“Our program tends to get some of those students who honestly know they need improvement,” Alstadt said. “They’re a little awkward, and I went back and forth on thinking, ‘Is this worse now than before?’” Alstadt said. “I’m not sure it is. Maybe they just haven’t had as many opportunities, and that’s one of the things we try to focus on is putting the students with professional mentors so they have the opportunity to develop how you talk to people.”
Arkansas State’s Center for Leadership Excellence also brings in professional mentors, and sometimes those interactions do not even touch the ins and outs of working in a particular profession. Instead, the mentors share their own trials and tribulations with anxiety with the students, letting them know they are far from alone.
“They see that we’re all being real with them, the mentors, and we try to do that as much as possible,” Johnston said. “I think that’s really helped them learn some tips from us about how we manage anxiety but also realize that their path could be slightly different depending on who they are, and I think that’s been super important.”
Over at Ouachita, McKinney is doing his level best to help students work through the same exact anxiety, anxiety triggered in part by the rise of artificial intelligence. While a hot topic, especially in the business world, McKinney believes today’s students will matter more than ever.
“I think soft skills will always be incredibly vital,” McKinney said, “and I hope we never lose the importance of that with some of the technology changes we’re now dealing with. I mean, you still have to sit across the table from an investor or a banker or someone and convince them why your idea is worth funding. I think that’s incredibly important.”
