Generation Z Students: Challenges, Opportunities and Best Practices
Duration: 1 hour
Facilitator: Dr. Aaron Hughey
Price: $50.00
Abstract:
As Generation Z students enter our colleges and universities in increasing numbers, having the capacity to quickly identify and respond to their unique needs is becoming more important. What we need is a new model that better serves Generation Z students - one that is more responsive to their needs and helps these students realize their full potential. In this interactive webinar, we will explore the characteristics of Generation Z students from a variety of different student populations, discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent to each subgroup as well as how to overcome them, and provide evidence-based best practices for retaining these students to graduation.
We will also explain the various roles that all members of the campus community can play in responding to the needs of Generation Z students as well as examine successful programs and initiatives from across the nation that are currently being used to effectively, efficiently and conscientiously meet those needs – and how these programs and initiatives can be adapted to a variety of higher education environments. Equal emphasis will be placed on helping both student affairs professionals as well as individual Generation Z students achieve their mutually-complementary objective: graduation and job placement.
Please join me as I provide a roadmap that employs evidence-based best practices for meeting the needs of Generation Z students.
Brief Outline:
Generation Z College Students: Their Unique Characteristics
- Leadership: The Key to Identifying and Serving Generation Z Students
- Conducting the Needs Analysis: A Critical First-Step
- Collaboration: The Importance of Partnering with Secondary Schools
- Demonstrated Success: What the Best Schools Are Doing
- Pulling It All Together: Case Studies form the Real World
Learning Outcomes:
- Review the general characteristics of Generation Z students, with an emphasis on their diversity.
- Investigate the role of leadership in identifying and responding to the needs of Generation Z students.
- Discuss how to conduct a needs analysis to determine how well their institution is doing at identifying and responding to the needs of Generation Z students.
- Discuss what can be done before Generation Z students arrive on campus, including how to partner with secondary schools to achieve the best possible outcomes.
- Explore how to anticipate the evolving advising needs of Generation Z students with respect to academic preparation, social integration, mental and emotional health considerations, and financial support.
- Explore evidence-based best practices in coordinating comprehensive retention initiatives related to Generation Z students.
Who Should Attend:
This webinar will be interesting and beneficial to anyone in student affairs who works with Generation Z students. This includes those who work in Admissions and Recruitment, Advising and Orientation, Student Activities and Organizations, the Greek System, Leadership Development Programs, Housing and Residence Life, Career Counseling, Student Conduct, Programming and Professional Development, and related areas. It would be especially valuable to anyone working to bridge the gap between Student Affairs and Academic Affairs.
Presenter:
Dr. Aaron W Hughey is a professor and program coordinator in the Department of Counseling and Student Affairs at Western Kentucky University. He supervises the master’s degree program in student affairs in higher education as well as graduate certificate programs in international student services and career services. He was head of the department for five years before returning to the faculty in 2008. Before joining the faculty in 1991, he was the associate director of university housing; he also served as interim director of WKU’s Knicely Institute for Economic Development where he coordinated outreach (training and development) services to business and industry. He has degrees from the University of Tennessee at Martin, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Western Kentucky University, and Northern Illinois University. He has authored (or co-authored) over 60 refereed publications on subjects including higher education administration, student affairs, counseling and testing, diversity, leadership, teams, and management. He consults extensively with regional companies and schools and provides training sessions and programs on a variety of topics. More importantly, he has been in the situations where he has had to supervise former peers several times during his career.