In the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, Juliet laments that Romeo is from the Montague family, detested by her own family, the Capulets. At first, she beseeches him to "deny thy father and refuse thy name," but then she retreats to what may be characterized as a sophisticated epistemological observation for a not-quite-fourteen year old: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other word would smell as sweet." This afternoon I would like you to indulge me for a while as I consider some of the names that help to define our mission and our identity as Frostburg State University. I have titled these remarks "What's in a Name? A Lexicon for Today's Educators."

I'd like to begin with some of the labels or neologisms associated with today's students. Most of us will recall that we have a tendency, as a society, to characterize certain generations with terms like the "Lost Generation" following World War I; the Beat Generation of anti-establishment poets and writers like Jack Kerouac; the Flower Children who protested the Vietnam war; the so-called self-centered "Me Generation"; Baby Boomers and Echo Boomers; and so forth. Today's college students, as a group, are often referred to in articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and in professional journals as "the Millenials," the "Net Generation," "Digital Natives," or, more negatively, as the "Attention Deficit Generation."

Each year, Dr. John Lowe shares with our new faculty and staff a profile of our traditional-age entering students. Each year Beloit College publishes a "Mindset List" describing these students nationwide. And each year for the past several years I have used this opportunity to remind us of who our students are and of the challenge we face as educators in providing for them a meaningful learning experience.

First, then, a few details from the Beloit Mind List for the Class of 2009. The compilers of the list are Humanities Professor Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief of Beloit College. McBride states that we need to "think about the touchstones and benchmarks of a generation that has grown up with CNN, home computers, AIDS awareness, digital cameras .... We should also keep in mind that these students missed out on the pleasures of ... walking in the woods without fearing Lyme Disease, or setting out to try all of the 28 flavors at Howard Johnson's." The authors note that their list is not the result of "serious in-depth research," but it is "a good reflection of the attitudes and experiences of the young people that we must be aware of from the first day of their college experience." (from Website release)

Here are some of the things we are prompted to remember (all from the Beloit list):

• Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
• Philip Morris has always owned Kraft Foods.
• "Whatever" is not part of a question but an expression of sullen rebuke.
• They may have fallen asleep playing with Gameboys in the crib.
• Dirty Dancing has always been acceptable.
• Southern fried chicken, prepared with a blend of 11 herbs and spices, has always been available in China.
• It has always been possible to walk from England to mainland Europe on dry land.
• Les Miserables has always been on stage.
• Lever has always been looking for 2000 parts to clean.

And, from last year's list, three of my favorites:

• Harry has always known Sally.
• Martha Stewart has always been cooking up something with someone.
• Rogaine has always been available for the follicularly challenged.

While we can laugh at some of these observations, we are sobered by the challenges set forth in recent articles like one in the October 7 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. In that article, one position cited is that "today's college students, sometimes called the 'Net Generation' or 'the Millenials' will soon alter the way professors teach, the way classrooms are constructed, and the way colleges deliver degrees." These students are "smart but impatient. They carry an arsenal of electronic devices -- the more portable the better. Raised amid a barrage of information, they are able to juggle a conversation on Instant Messenger, a Web-surfing session, and an iTunes playlist while reading Twelfth Night for homework." As a result, it is argued, classrooms of the future will "incorporate more videos and video games ... meet electronically to fit students' schedules" and students will choose more and more "to learn from each other rather than a professor." (Scott Carlson, "The Net Generation Goes to College")

A contravening argument, reflected in the same Chronicle article, is that "We are not teaching students, Sit by yourselves, take a walk by yourselves and think -- think through a problem." (Ibid, quotation from Naomi Baron of American University). One of my favorite poems is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. Having taken walks like that with my parents in childhood and with my children when I became a parent, I can still visualize in my mind's eye and feel in my inner being the tranquility and wonder of such moments. Most savants about higher education urge us to find a balance between acknowledging and in some ways accommodating the fast-paced, multisensory worlds in which our students live and the need to help them take those inner journeys that will ultimately define them as well-rounded and well-grounded individuals.

In addition to their intellectual journeys, students embark during their college years on personal journeys that will help to shape their lives. One of those journeys involves learning to form healthy relationships with others. An article in the Sunday Sun a little over a week ago noted, for example, that “Learning to live with a roommate has long been one of the challenges of college. But now 80 to 90 percent of incoming freshmen have never shared a room before they get to campus . . . compared with about 50 percent a generation ago.” (Kate Shatzkin, “Uneasy Relations,” October 16, 2005, p. 7N) When differences arise between roommates, studies indicate, students tend not to talk them through, but rather to complain to staff or to their parents or simply to ignore the other person. In a recent book titled The Naked Roommate and 107 Other Issues You might Run into in College, author Harlan Cohen advises students “If there is a problem, speak up right away. If you don’t, it will only get worse” and “Respect each other’s differences, and make rules before you need them.” (Cited in Shatzkin, ibid.) In other words, students need to learn the skills of negotiation and mediation, rather than confrontation or avoidance, in dealing with others, and college life should afford them many opportunities to do that.

The challenge for all of us who work with our students is to help them achieve balance, to preserve the hallmarks of what we define as a truly liberal education, described by one recent author as "cultivating intellectual judgment, helping students comprehend and negotiate their relationships with the larger world, and preparing them for lives of civic responsibility and leadership." (Carol Geary Schneider, "Putting Liberal Education on the Radar Screen," Chronicle of Higher Education, September 23, 2005) If we can do that, perhaps we will have defined a new Age of Enlightenment for these Millenials.

I would like to address the challenges of preparing students for civic responsibility and leadership in a few moments, but first I would like to note what has increasingly been identified as an impediment to our reaching those goals. Just as the literature about higher education is replete with the kinds of names I have mentioned in reference to our students, there is a new set of names being given to their parents. These are the so-called "helicopter parents" -- those who tend to hover over students and to intervene in all manner of issues that typically students would have dealt with themselves in consultation with their advisers. In the article to which I earlier referred about navigating roommate relationships, incidents were cited in which parents, rather than students, called the prospective roommate to “work things out.” Other examples have appeared recently in publications like the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and local newspapers across the country. Here are some of those examples: From the Washington Times, (‘College Aims to Ground Helicopter Parents, September 29, 2005 ) “One parent recently demanded to know what Colgate planned to do about the sub-par plumbing her daughter encountered on a study-abroad trip to China.” From the Wall Street Journal: (Tucking the Kids in – in the Dorm, August 1, 2005) “At the University of Georgia, students who get frustrated or confused during registration have been known to interrupt their advisers to whip out a cellphone, speed-dial their parents and hand the phone to the adviser, saying ‘Here, talk to my mom. . . .The cellphone . . . has become the ‘world’s longest umbilical cord.” Just this year here at Frostburg, I had the experience of hearing from a grandparent who wanted to come to my office with his attorney to protest a field assignment that his granddaughter, a graduate student, had been given as part of her studies. Fortunately, the young woman’s mother intervened and he did not appear, but the incident simply illustrates the challenges that we are facing with some parents, and even grandparents. The situation has become so bad at the University of Vermont, where recently at an orientation session for students and their parents, parents attended in greater number than students. That institution now employs “parent bouncers” – upper class students who are “trained to divert moms and dads who try to attend registration and explain diplomatically that they are not invited.” (Wall Street Journal, ibid.) Even the federal government, given the FIRPA regulations that prohibit us from sharing information about grades with parents unless students over eighteen sign a release, underscores the notion that students should be ready to take responsibility for their lives and their academic careers.

I do not intend to be insensitive to the concerns of parents as their children leave the nest for the first time. Even now I remember vividly my own trauma when my two children, fourteen months apart in age, went off to college. My daughter attended school in Boston, and when my son and I set out for Maryland after having navigated the nightmarish traffic of that city, I began to cry and could not stop. By the time we reached the New Jersey Turnpike, we ran into a torrential, unceasing downpour, and my son, wise at the age of sixteen, said to me, “Mom, if you don’t get off at the next exit and let me drive, we will never make it home alive.” I did that, and we made it. The following year, I took my mother with me when my son went to college in North Carolina. That time, we both cried all the way home, but at least the weather did not complicate matters. I have read of other parents who have responded dramatically to empty nesting: the mother who went home and painted her kitchen grey; another who refused to get out of bed for a week after her child left, and so on. And so I sympathize. But I also know, as all of you know, that these are the years in which teenagers grow into adulthood, and they need to begin to take responsibility for their decisions. Parents who want to make every little decision for them need to realize that they are cultivating a Peter Pan syndrome in which their children will never really want to grow up. They should understand that, if they have provided strong roots, their children should be ready to try their wings. We have known about (or think we have known about) IQ's for a long time -- the intellectual quotient that measures intellectual maturity. More recently, psychologists have begun to measure EQ's, the emotional maturity of individuals, now considered a major factor in determining success in adult life, both personally and professionally. It would be regrettable if we were seeing a group of students who, because of over-protectiveness, will grow up to have EQ's that limit their true intellectual capabilities.

I would now like to return to the challenge we face not only in preparing our students for careers or further formal study, but also in providing opportunities for them to develop as responsible citizens and leaders -- to connect the dots, as it were, between campus and community. A recent publication of the American Association of Colleges is devoted to yet another recent addition to our lexicon for educators: "Integrative Learning." The term encompasses much of what has been included in the phrase "experiential learning," but it also includes interdisciplinary learning. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has stated that "Fostering students' abilities to integrate learning -- across courses, over time, and between campus and community life -- is one of the most important goals and challenges of higher education." (Peer Review, Summer/Fall 2005, p. 3)

I believe that we here at Frostburg can be proud of the initiatives that have been taken to achieve the goal of integrative learning articulated by the Carnegie Foundation. The recent revision of the undergraduate education curriculum has been designed to construct what several scholars at the Carnegie Foundation refer to as "institutional scaffolding" within and between general education and majors and across disciplinary boundaries. (Ibid, p.6) Our outreach programs in community service and volunteerism are providing opportunities for students to apply their learning to the practical issues and challenges of community life. The partnerships we have formed with businesses located temporarily in Tawes hall, as well as the numerous internships available to students in their major fields of interest, are allowing them to experience "real world" tasks in which they apply theory to practice. Our students who study abroad grow both intellectually and personally as they learn to study and live with individuals from other cultures. This is not to say that we have been able to date to engage all of our students in these integrative experiences, but it is a goal toward which we should constantly be striving.

In concluding my lexicon for educators, I would like us to reflect on two more “names” and on their relevance to our institution. As we all know, Frostburg State was known as a College until 1988, when it became a University. (Most of our alumni who graduated before that date still refer to us as “the College,” as do many local residents.) Technically, it met the conditions of that definition in that it was comprised of one or more undergraduate colleges or schools together with a program of graduate studies. But a true university is defined by more than just organizational structure. It is defined by what it does in the larger sense. Society looks to our universities for many functions. The primary function, of course, is to provide excellent academic programs. But universities also bear a responsibility to the larger world around them. That is why we read of urban universities embracing neighborhoods, providing services to improve the lives of residents in impoverished communities. And that is why we have made a deep commitment to serving the needs of this rural area in which we are located. Universities are also engaged in research – both primary and applied. And that is why we are providing opportunities for our faculty and students not only to engage in independent research but also to work directly with companies that are engaged in those activities and that, in turn, contribute to economic development in our region. In short, Frostburg State University has, since 1988, “grown into” its name. No longer a college, we are truly a university with an integrated mission of teaching excellence, community service, and economic development. And, I firmly believe, Frostburg has only begun to blossom into the institution that it will become in the years ahead. I look forward to tracking its progress long after my retirement.

CRG/mg
10/21/05