Student involvement in school activities decreases annually
Low senior attendance in campus programs has prompted university officials to find ways to increase campus involvement for all classifications.
By Joi Harris
Staff Reporter

University officials are searching for ways to increase student involvement in university programs and organizations because of a drastic difference in freshman and senior program attendance.

Carrie Zimmerman, director of the first year for Student Development Services, said that the university does a good job of getting students involved early, but it needs to have a stronger commitment to keeping involved throughout their college careers. By trying to increase program awareness and heightening marketing efforts, staff members say they hope to increase student involvement in available programs and make the college experience more seamless.

This fall, Don Mills, vice chancellor for student affairs, gave six “strategic action” committees the task of researching and improving several aspects of student development including student transition and involvement.

Marcy Paul, director of the Women’s Resource Center and member of the student involvement committee, said the committees are still in early development with the research process of finding solutions underway. The committee has just completed a student survey, which questioned students on a variety of topics ranging from on- and off-campus involvement to marital status, she said.

The survey was intended to help the committee determine whether students are getting too many or too few programs offered in different areas of student life and to find ways to structure services around their needs, she said.

“By getting a holistic view of student life, we can then determine ways to shape programs that will pull in a larger number of students,” Paul said.

An additional committee in charge of high school transition is researching programs offered by other college campuses to see if similar ones can be implemented here, said Eisenman.

Kate Carrico, a senior sociology major, said students do not get involved because they do not see the implications of learning about life after college.

Involvement has to be a personal decision in which students say, “Yes, I want to make myself as marketable as possible,” she said.

New student orientation, Frog Camp and the Connections program are the three main resources the university offers to all new students, Zimmerman said.

Of the three programs, only attendance at orientation is mandatory, she said. However, she said 814 students, or about 56 percent of the incoming class, attended Frog Camp last summer. In contrast, only 8 percent of last year’s 1,921-member senior class attended Senior Conference, the principal senior program offered by University Career Services, said Marjory Eisenman, assistant director of University Career Services.

Zimmerman said student extracurricular involvement tends to decrease during the second year in college.

“We tend to lose a lot of people during their sophomore year because the newness has already worn off and they can’t yet see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Zimmerman said.

John Harvey, an economics professor, said that with the economy being as unstable as it is, anything a student can do to differentiate themselves is important.

There are potentially hundreds of people vying for one job, he said, it is important to make resumes as impressive as possible.

“Employers are looking for a reason to throw out a resume,” Harvey said.