MACUHO
FALL 2017
A to Z: Accommodating Tomorrow’s Students
Oversaturated Outlook
By: Jenna Konyak, MACUHO Housing and Facilities Operations Chair and Assistant Director of Residence Life at Seton Hill University *Jenna Konyak also serves as the MACUHO Magazine Copy Editor and a columnist.
Every article, book, and blog post that I read about
we skip reading emails because we assume they are not
Generation Z tells me that the generation grew up on
important. We can't assume anything less for our students.
technology. Generation Z can complete the tasks of more than 5 individual gadgets with a singular device the
So how do we overcome what I would like to call
size of a deck of cards. Technology has shaped the way
“Oversaturated Outlook” and continue to connect with
Generation Z not only views the world, but how they impact
students through technology? Perhaps we start using
it as well. With 1 hand always on technology, why do we
text messages with quick references to dates and times.
find it so difficult to use is to connect with our students?
Or perhaps we focus our energy on depleting the use of technology and getting away from its use altogether.
Higher education professionals have strived to “meet
Perhaps this is the push we need to get our students’
students where they are” and connect with them through
faces out of the screen and back into the real world.
technology. Your institution may be different than mine, but here at Seton Hill University we use email to
Generation
communicate to students about everything – academic
to
registration, communication with faculty, marketing for
world
change with
Z
is the your
supposed world. face
to You
be can’t
between
the
generation
change your
the
hands.◆
programs, informing them of Housing Selection dates. You name it, I am sure they have an email about it. During a lunch conversation with colleagues, I came to the conclusion that we send out all of these emails because we assume that our students are going to read them because they are always on their phones or computers. That’s what we’re taught, right? These students are connected to technology, so let’s connect to them through there. But how many of us have ever been angry with a student because you had to say, “the date was in my last email”, or “why didn’t you read the email”? Are we oversaturating their inboxes with information to the point where emails are no longer a successful form of communication? We know how overwhelming our inboxes can get and how often 14
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