January

July 19, 2001

Volume 1, Number 21

If you have news, announcements or interesting articles that you'd like to share, please send them to cfey@umbc.edu by Tuesday at noon for publication each Wednesday during the Summer.

In this issue:

SUMMER BLOOD DRIVE
Digital Kids: The Wired Class of 2001
Role Models for Engagement
Young Adults Are Large Portion of Missing Persons
Public Colleges Feel Impact of the Economic Downturn
FACTOID

SUMMER BLOOD DRIVE!!! -- Help Give the Gift of Life!

The American Red Cross is in critical need of your help and support! Summertime is great time for vacations and trips to the beach, but it also means a "slow season" for the American Red Cross. The Maryland temperatures seem to go up and the donor supply seems to go down. So the American Red Cross needs our help now!

We're looking for UMBC faculty, staff, and students to join together and reach our donation goal for our Summer Blood Drive. To make an appointment or ask how you can volunteer, call the Office of Student Life, 410-455-3462 or email osl@umbc.edu. All walk-in's are welcome, but appointments are encouraged.

MONDAY, JULY 30, 10 AM - 3 PM
UC BALLROOM LOUNGE

Digital Kids: The Wired Class of 2001

4 June 2001

By Andrew Raff

The first round of "Generation Y" (generally defined as the children born between 1979 and 1994) college graduates are beginning to hit the streets and they're looking for work. As the first generation to grow up surrounded by the personal computer, this year's graduates are among the most enthusiastic users of the internet and media technology.

In May 2001, Harris Interactive released results from its "Generation 2001" survey, commissioned by
Northwestern Mutual. Among the 2,001college seniors surveyed, 99% use the internet, with 90% sending and reading e-mail on a daily basis. As highly active internet users, this year's graduates are more likely to turn to the internet than any other medium for news and information. These students are more than twice as likely to utilize online sources as opposed to daily or weekly newspapers or magazines.

College seniors use the internet frequently and actively -- spending 11 hours per week online -- and it seems that this habitual usage translates into a higher comfort level when it comes to security and
privacy. Whereas 46% of all US internet users are "very concerned" about online security and privacy, less than a quarter of the students surveyed share that level of concern.

According to Harris, 60% of the class of 2001 plan on entering the workforce upon graduation. While this year's graduates are using the internet to find jobs -- more than half of them using online career planning sites like Monster.com or hotjobs.com -- few of these students will be looking for internet-industry jobs. According to a study published by WetFeet, 5% of 2001's graduating seniors believe that
the internet ("dot-com") industry is the best sector in which to find a job this year. In contrast, more than one in three (36%) of the previous year's class ranked the internet industry as the field of choice. This significant drop in interest is reflective of the past year's deflation of internet stocks and the closure of many dot-coms. After the implosion in the internet industry, traditionally popular fields -- investment banking, management consulting and biotechnology -- are once again capturing the interest of the newest members of the workforce.

While the graduates of the class of 2001 use the internet as an integral part of everyday life, it is apparent that many do not see the web as providing a distinct and separate career path. Rather, they will bring their high level of internet use into traditional companies throughout the business world.

Andrew Raff is a researcher and
Contributing Writer with eMarketer.
eMail Andrew at araff@emarketer.com
with comments, suggestions and
questions.

Role Models for Engagement

by Paul Rogat Loeb
July 15, 2001

We hear a lot about the retreat of students from public life. The annual surveys suggest they care less each year about the environment, racial understanding, community-action programs, or even discussing political issues. So their generation has been repeatedly accused of apathy¾simply not caring. Yet as I travel to speak, visit classes, and lead workshops at campuses throughout the country, I see less indifference and more learned helplessness--the feeling that they can't change the world, so why try? Wherever I go, small groups of students do tackle the critical issues of our times: environmental threats, illiteracy, growing gaps between the rich and the poor. But most feel too overwhelmed. They'll do important work volunteering one on one, because that's tangible and concrete. But when asked to imagine themselves taking on the deeper roots of issues they care about, they come up blank. Our culture hasn't given them the models to take action.

To foster their engagement, we need to give them models and help them overcome what psychologist Robert Jay Lifton calls the "broken connection" between their values and actions, between the world they inherit and the one they'll pass on. To do that, we need to understand the barriers they face, like our society's pervasive cynicism.

Civic Resignation

Thirty-five years ago, the largest obstacle to social commitment among the young was a misplaced trust in received authorities: in government and major corporations. Vietnam-era movements challenged this blind trust, but as they faded and as their most significant accomplishments were caricatured or forgotten, they ceased to provide models of engagement. America's current cynicism feeds on the assumption that these movements and their successors failed or betrayed noble ideals. It also grows out of the contrast between pious talk of democracy and realities in which corporate lobbyists write legislation and politicians are bought and sold like trading cards. It feeds as well on our dominant culture's disdain of those who'd try and create a more humane world.

Bill Clinton fueled this cynicism with his sex scandals and the gap between talking populism while incessantly courting wealthy donors. The Bush administration threatens to increase it still further, mixing platitudes about "compassionate conservatism" with relentless service to the most powerful economic interests, attacks on the environment, and cuts in funding for child-abuse prevention and low-income health care. Too often, our students know serious injustices exist but decide they are simply the way of the world, and there's no way to change it. Their withdrawal helps make this judgment a reality.

Students also face economic barriers. Each year, they seem to put in more hours at outside jobs and go deeper into debt. They've grown up in a flourishing yet precarious and divided economy, which encourages them to take the most practical path. When the "dot.coms" were booming, working for poverty wages in an impoverished community seemed a sucker's choice, although many students did so nonetheless. Now, as the economy staggers and falters, day-to-day survival presses more harshly, which makes social commitment still tougher.

These pressures are real. "You worry that if you don't do everything right, you'll end up at the bottom, where it looks pretty mean," a young woman from the State University of New York at Buffalo recently told me. "It's hard to graduate with $40,000 in loans and try to pursue a social change career," said an environmental activist from Pennsylvania's Albright College. She took on varied causes nonetheless, but others equally pressed often don't. We need to respect the stresses on students' lives, while acknowledging the roots of those stresses in policy choices¾like decisions to let the value of the minimum wage and of federal student grants stagnate.

At the same time, we have to can address the perceptual barriers, which dissuade student involvement even more than do the material ones. Our cultural myths suggest people are either socially active or not: a few saints or crazies storm out of the womb with protest signs in their hands, but the rest of us are normal and leave the messy business of changing society to others. The two paths never cross. But as educators, we know our students can change their values, perspectives, and commitments¾and grow in powerful ways.

I think of a student at Connecticut's Fairfield University, a wealthy doctor's son I'll call Tim. "We gave the blacks a lot," Tim said, when I interviewed him as a first-year student. "Is it my fault if me or my parents make the bucks so they can't?" He wondered whether racial inequality was "maybe biological."

"I want the things I have now," Tim explained, "a nice house, a nice car, a nice boat. I want to make enough to buy a place of my own, where . . . if someone's bothering me, I can say 'Buddy, buzz off, this is mine. This is what I've paid for.'" Then Tim began to learn and to think. He was a premed student when a young professor brought environmental issues into his organic chemistry class. At first Tim resisted, then he started listening. Soon he joined a campus environmental group and went into environmental remediation as a career. Now he cringes at his earlier attitude. He says that had his teacher not had the courage to raise difficult public issues, he never would have changed.

To read the complete story, see NASPA's NETResults article

Young Adults Are Large Portion of Missing Persons

Scripps Howard News Service
By JESSICA WEHRMAN
July 13, 2001

Suzanne Lyall was a sweet-faced college sophomore when she was last seen stepping off a city bus at the Albany campus of the State University of New York on March 2, 1998.

Campus police, thinking she'd stayed with a friend, started looking for her, but waited almost 48 hours before telling state police she had disappeared. Her family, stuck in an endless nightmare, argues the time lost was crucial. Lyall has not been found.

Lyall, 19, like Washington, D.C., intern Chandra Levy, 24, presented officers with a challenge many face when dealing with missing persons in their 20s. What's the best way to deal with a missing person who is legally an adult, but socially not unlike a teen-ager?

While some young adults are abducted, others run off, forging a new identity with their newfound independence and money in their pockets. Others kill themselves and are not found for months. Regardless of the circumstance, because they are older than 18, it's often more difficult to find them.

"Every adult has the right to disappear," said Kym Pasqualini, founder of the Center for Missing Adults in Phoenix, Ariz. "And we respect that right."

As of June 1, the FBI was investigating 98,456 missing-persons cases. Most missing persons _ 39,224 _ were ages 15 through 17. The second-largest group _ 17,598 _ was between the ages of 18 and 29. Teens 10 through 14 were the third-largest group _ 14,033.

Missing adults, Pasqualini said, do not get the focus _ or the resources _ that children and teens do.

"When people think of the word 'missing,' they think of children that have been victimized," she said. "It pulls at America's heartstrings. That sensitivity for missing adults is not there."

Pasqualini said missing persons older than 30 are more likely to be men. Missing persons 18 through 30, she said, are more likely to be women.

Andrea Gibby, executive director of Child Quest International, based in San Jose, Calif., said young women are often abducted by acquaintances.

"Often times, young women become very comfortable with people that they meet," she said. "At that age you're not thinking about danger as much as you should. You're just sort of infallible."

Those abducted by strangers, she said, are rarely seen alive again.

Not all missing persons are abducted. Emotional or mental health issues, such as depression, can cause young adults to run away. Cathleen Carolan, marketing manager for the Chicago-based National Runaway Switchboard, said many runaways leave home because of problems with their families. Others simply leave.

"Some kids just decide they're old enough to try this, and see what happens," she said. "It's not typical behavior, but it's not out of the ordinary. Kids just say, 'Let's see what the world is like,' and they go."

To read the complete story, See NASPA's NETResults article

Public Colleges Feel Impact of the Economic Downturn

Many are being forced to enact large tuition increases; others face budget uncertainty

By SARA HEBEL

As states' legislative sessions wind down, the effects of tough fiscal

ALSO SEE:

Double-Digit Increases

Cuts Unlikely to Hurt Public Colleges' Strong Credit, Moody's Says

times are beginning to show up on college campuses, mostly in the form of large tuition increases, program cuts, and hiring freezes.

In some states, lawmakers are still struggling to devise final budgets, although it is clear that those won't be good ones for higher education. As a result, tuition has yet to be set for the fall at some institutions, leaving students and parents anxiously waiting to learn how much their bills for the coming year might increase.

Officials at public institutions worry that the budget crunch, caused by slowing state economies and the rising cost of utilities and health-insurance premiums, may force them to scale back their missions, or increase prices so sharply that they deny access to some students.

College officials in several states report cutting back outreach programs, research investments, and some student services, as well as not filling certain staff positions that become open. And colleges in at least eight states, including Alabama, Iowa, and Minnesota, have adopted or are considering double-digit percentage increases in tuition.

Higher-education experts fear that the worst may be yet to come. While this year the tough economic times are most severe in the Midwest and Southeast, the fiscal health of California and the Northwest is also worsening, they say. Those areas face an energy crisis, drought conditions, and the slowing of their large technology sectors.

In addition, the children of baby boomers have begun trickling on to campuses, signaling the start of an anticipated enrollment surge that could further strain colleges' purse strings.

"People are approaching the higher-education budget situation with a new dose of sobering reality," says Travis J. Reindl, director of state policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "If the economy stays in slow mode with all of the students coming at us, this is going to get tricky."

To read the complete article, see The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20 Issue

FACTOIDS

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County leads all other public research universities in the production of bachelor's degrees in Information Technology (282 in 1997, the most recent year for which data is available). UMBC also leads in the production of information technology bachelors degrees for women (92 in 1997).

Source: U.S. Department of Education statistics, as quoted in April 1, 2001 press release by UMBC.

Other "Higher Education Superlatives", compiled by the MHEC, are available at this web site .

Sixty-one percent (61%) of respondents in NASPA's NETResults instant survey answered "yes" to the question: "Do you think that campus student health should provide RU-486, the newly approved abortion pill?" To the question: "Should student fees pay for the distribution of RU-486 and emergency contraception?", seventy percent (70%) answered "no". (n=69)

See the Division of Student Affairs Web Page for the latest news about employment opportunities at UMBC. Those listed include:

Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs (1 year - acting)
Coordinator, Job Referral Service

ABOUT STUDENT AFFAIRS E-NEWS

Student Affairs E-News is a weekly electronic newsletter service provided by the Division of Student Affairs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. This is in an effort to further increase the positive communication regarding recent past and upcoming events taking place throughout campus. If you have an item you would like included in this electronic newsletter, please submit it via email to the Student Affairs by Tuesday of each week.

Our thanks to Dr. Tom Jackson, Jr, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at the Texas A&M University - Kingsville and, Vince Solis, Assistant Director of Student Development, Texas A&M University - Kingsville for the design of and permission to use the e-news logo.