A beautiful mindset

An annual list of youthful ‘touchstones' helps faculty bridge the age gap

By Jayne Spencer

So how do such experiencial realities bear upon the college experience ahead?

In James Hilton's classic, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, British headmaster Arthur "Mr. Chips" Chipping complains that his students have "mud in their brains." In fact, Mr. Chips is growing older with each passing school year; his students remain fresh in their seemingly perpetual youthfulness.

"The gap in age between teacher and student increases annually," explained Tom McBride, Keefer Professor of the humanities and director of Beloit's First Year Initiatives (FYI) program. He oversees the formation of the list. As faculty start to show signs of "hardening of the references," he said, " it is important that we think about the touchstones and benchmarks of a generation that has grown up with CNN, home computers, AIDS awareness, 'Just say no' and the Bush political dynasty."

The list was first compiled in 1998 by McBride, Ron Nief, director of public affairs at Beloit, and Richard Miller, Beloit's director of institutional research. It is now prepared and distributed on the fresh cusp of the autumn semester. (The Class of 2006 Mindset List will be released Wednesday, Aug. 28. IU Home Pages will upload the list at this Web site.)

"This is not serious in-depth research," Miller noted. "It is meant to be thought-provoking and fun, yet accurate."

McBride said that Beloit's Mindset List is "as relevant as possible, given the broad social and geographic diversity of our students, who are drawn from every state and 58 countries. It is always open to challenge, and this has an additional benefit in that it reminds us of students' varied backgrounds. Things like the Web, cable TV and varying family interests all have an impact on its veracity, but it is still a good reflection of the attitude and experience of the young people we must be aware of on the first day of their college experience."

The Mindset List has brought notoriety to the college, which has a total enrollment of 1,200. Each year, the list is requested by thousands of educational institutions, businesses, churches and media outlets, including English-language media abroad.