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JOURNALISTS WHO LEAVE the newsroom for the classroom sometimes discover it's not their own college classroom - or even their mother's.
"In my day ..." and "When I was your age ..." don't cut it with today's millennial generation. Getting plugged in to today's students means, literally, plugging in - to Facebook, Twitter and texts. Old-school pros who think they can escape technology by fleeing to the classroom need to rethink.
"When I was 18, people did X. Well, of course, it's changed," said Frances Hensley, who taught college students for 1 3 years before spending the past 1 5 in the provost's office. Hensley is senior associate vice president of academic affairs and dean of undergraduate students at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. She teaches faculty development seminars on understanding and working with millennials.
Hensley said new instructors and professors should recognize that working with millennials is only part of the equation. Adapting to the structure of academia is another environmental shift that industry professionals make when entering the classroom.
"Only part of that is interacting...