All in the Family:
Parental Support in
New Student
Academic and Career
Decisions
Program Staff
 Deb Vetter
Associate Dean for Student Success Programs
Asbury College
 Sally Foster
Director of Career Services
Asbury College
 Carolyn Ridley
Director of Alumni and Parent Programs
Asbury College
 Laurie Schreiner
Chair of Department of Doctoral Studies in Education
Director of Center for Strengths-Based Education
Azusa Pacific University
Session Overview
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Millennial Student and Parent Characteristics
Program Goals
StrengthsFinder® Assessment
Student-Parent Dialogue Program Overview
Fiscal Considerations
Program Assessment
Questions and Answers
Millennial Student
and Parent
Characteristics
Millennial Student
Characteristics
Instant gratification vs. long-term planning
Most watched and measured generation
Most technologically savvy generation
In constant contact with friends and family (the
eternal umbilicus)
 Want and seek parent involvement (as
opposed to being embarrassed by it)
 Most have rarely done anything on their own
 Asking for a form of ‘en loco parentis’ from their
colleges
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Seven Core Traits of
Millennials
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Special
Sheltered
Confident
Team-oriented
Conventional
Pressured
Achieving
As described by Howe and Strauss in Millennials
Go to College
Millennial Parent
Characteristics
 “Parents of millennials have been obsessive about
ensuring the safety of their children, Howe said. When
the first wave was born in the early 1980’s, ‘Baby on
Board’ signs began popping up on minivans. They
were buckled into child-safety seats, fitted with bike
helmets, carpooled to numerous after-school activities
and hovered over by what Howe describes as
‘helicopter parents.’”
--Don O’Briant, “Millennials: The Next Generation,” The
Atlanta Journal and Constitution, August 11, 2003
Millennial Parent
Characteristics
 They are older (boomers), have smaller families, and
are more educated
 Emotionally invested
 Reconciling “do as I say, not as I did” boomer
generation model of hypocrisy
 Believe their children are going to “save us all”; “be
somebody”
 Over-protect their children and push them hard to
achieve
 Believe in bottom-up social community, not top-down
institutional authority
Millennial Parent
Characteristics
 Choose the college their child will attend, lobby
administrators for particular roommate, pick classes,
buy books
 See institutions as a product and themselves as a
consumer who wants to get their money’s worth at any
cost.
 Flex their muscles around college administrators and
pester professors (Who’s in charge?)
 In 2004 parents formed the 7000 member College
Parents of America, of Arlington, VA, reflecting a
growing activism
 Return to campus for numerous reasons
Helicopter Parents
Hovering by being involved in the daily
decisions and actions of their students;
rushing to their rescue beyond what is
considered normal and appropriate.
Examples of
“Helicopters”
 Mother comes to campus to take care of sick child who had been
to health services (University of Wisconsin)
 Mother showed up on campus without son to register for his
classes and meet with his academic advisor (California
Polytechnic State University)
 Mother in Salt Lake City flies to Cambridge, MA to argue with a
Harvard University professor about her daughter’s biology grade
 Father leaves the parent seminar at Saint Louis University to wake
up his son, a college student, for a campus job interview
 A young woman at a college in the Northeast calls her dad in the
South because it’s snowing, and she wonders if classes will be
canceled. He calls the school to find out.
College/University
Response
 Entire new departments developed to
field parents’ calls and emails
 Separate orientations for parents to keep
them occupied and away from student
sessions
 “Parent Bouncers”–students trained to
divert parents trying to attend student
registration (University of Vermont)
Program Goals
The Student-Parent
Dialogue
 Multi-faceted program
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Student Dialogue
Parent Dialogue
Student-Parent Dialogue
 StrengthsQuest™ curriculum from The Gallup Organization
 Sponsors
 Student Success Programs
 Career Services
 Alumni and Parent Programs
 Began in the fall of 2004 through a grant from the Lilly Endowment
focused on the theological exploration of vocation
Purpose of the
Student-Parent Dialogue
 To help students and their parents
develop a common language and
perspective on vocational calling
 To provide a context in which to continue
meaningful conversations between
students and parents regarding
vocational calling
Goals for Students
 To have a better understanding of who they are
and their strengths
 To understand how their strengths can be
applied to succeed in academics, career
planning, and beyond
 To become actively involved in making their
own decisions regarding their future
Goals for Parents
 To understand their student as a distinct
individual from themselves
 To learn how to be appropriately supportive in
helping their students make their own
decisions
 To redefine their role as a parent of a young
adult
 To have confidence in their student’s ability to
make decisions and navigate life
StrengthsFinder®
Assessment
Strengths Philosophy
“Individuals gain more when they build
on their talents, than when they make
comparable efforts to improve their areas
of weakness.”
—Clifton and Harter, 2003
StrengthsFinder®
Assessment
 Authored by Donald Clifton and available from
The Gallup Organization
 180 item web-based assessment from the
positive psychology perspective
 Each item lists a pair of potential self-descriptors
 Descriptors serve as anchoring polar ends of a
continuum
 Participant chooses statement in each pair and
to what extent
 Results include the students’ top five talents
which are known as their “Signature Themes”
What are Talents?
“Naturally occurring patterns of thought, feeling,
or behavior that can be productively applied.”
—Clifton & Harter, 2003
Also known as gifts or abilities
Anything that enables you to do something well
Habits, behaviors, attitudes, motivations
Ways of interacting with people
Ways of processing information
Ways of working with things or dealing with
situations
 Ways of seeing the world
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What are Strengths?
Talent + Knowledge + Skills = Strength
—Clifton and Harter, 2003
Ways of seeing the world and interacting with it that
enable excellence
Transforming Talents
into Strengths
Talents are transformed into strengths
through
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Learning experiences
Acquiring skills
Critical thinking
Reflection
Acquiring knowledge
Excellence and
Vocational Calling
Talents must be transformed into strengths,
then
… strengths must be applied appropriately
in order to reach excellence, then
… we become the person we were created
to be in order to fulfill our vocation
calling.
The Highest Achievers
 Spend most of their time in their areas of
strength
 Use their strengths to overcome
obstacles
 Invent ways of capitalizing upon their
strengths in new situations
Outcomes of Operating
Out of Strengths
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Developing competence
Managing emotions
Developing autonomy
Establishing identity
Developing Competence
 Strength awareness and application
leads to a sense of competence
 Focusing on strengths as the foundation
for approaching tasks gives students
confidence to approach it and stick with it
because it tells them that they already
have the raw ingredients to succeed
Managing Emotions
 Identifying and affirming strengths
produces positive emotions, which
expands creativity and problem-solving
and enables students to see
opportunities they may have missed
otherwise
Developing Autonomy
 Seeing how each combination of
strengths leads to a unique constellation
within a person helps students see
themselves as their own person
Establishing Identity
 Recognizing their talents and strengths
provides a sense of worth and a
foundation for understanding more fully
who they are—and who they are not
The Focus Changes
 FROM
Problems
Attendance
Preparation
Putting into the
student
 Average
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Possibilities
Engagement
Motivation
Drawing out from the
student
 Excellence
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Capitalizing on
Strengths
 Results:
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Higher levels of motivation
Greater engagement in the task at hand
Personal satisfaction
Productivity
Higher levels of performance
Student-Parent
Dialogue Overview
Six Program
Components
 Student-Parent Dialogue Information
Session
 First Year Experience Seminar
 Career Services Groups
 Student Dialogue
 Parent Dialogue
 Student-Parent Dialogue
Student-Parent Dialogue
Information Session
 Invited new students and their parents
during the summer
 Held during Fall New Student and Parent
Orientation
 Reviewed details and provided more
specific information regarding the
program components
 Answered questions
First Year Experience
Seminar
 Students enrolled in the FYE Seminar may
participate in the Student-Parent Dialogue
 Students attend the elective, one credit hour
FYE Seminar two times a week
 StrengthsQuest™ is a component of the
course curriculum
 StrengthsFinder® assessment administered
and StrengthsQuest™ material introduced prior
to the Student-Parent Dialogue
 Students share and verify their Signature
Themes (results of assessment) with parent(s)
Career Services Group
 New students participating in the StudentParent Dialogue and NOT enrolled in the FYE
Seminar are involved in the Career Services
Group
 Students attend the group for a total of six
hours focused on the StrengthsQuest™
curriculum
 StrengthsFinder® assessment administered
and StrenthsQuest™ material introduced prior
to the Student-Parent Dialogue
 Students share and verify their Signature
Themes (results of assessment) with parent(s)
Student Dialogue
 All FYE Seminar and Career Services Group
students attend a two hour session
 Presentation and discussion
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Philosophy behind strengths vs. weaknesses
Capitalizing on strengths
Understanding others
Applying strengths to academics
 Student-Parent Dialogue Preparation
 If you could do or be anything—if there were no
limits—what would you do or be?
 What do you wish your parents “got” about you?
Parent Dialogue
 Parents attend two hour session
 Presentation and discussion on students’
“tasks” during the college years
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Students’ development of competence
Sources of self-efficacy
Managing emotions
Developing autonomy
Establishing identity
Developing mature relationships
Developing purpose
Parent Dialogue
 Presentation and discussion on the role of parents in
understanding the vocational calling of students
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Vocational calling defined
Impact of the Positive Psychology movement
Strengths-based philosophy defined
Role of parents in the student tasks explored
 Student-Parent Dialogue Preparation
 Write a story that illustrates the strengths you have seen in
your son or daughter since childhood
 Write a “blessing” to give to your son or daughter that enables
them to go forward with confidence (roots and wings)
Student-Parent Dialogue
 Students and parents participate in a two hour program over
brunch.
 Discussion of students’ Signature Themes from StrengthsFinder®
assessment
 Students share how their most descriptive Signature Themes work
together to produce success
 Parents share their story about the students’ strengths that they have
seen develop since childhood
 Students share how their strengths connect with what they would love
to do
 Students and parents brainstorm together what it would take for the
student to do what they would love to do
 Students share what they wish their parent(s) would “get” about them
 Students state what they need most from their parents at this point in
their life
 Parents share a lesson from their own life that they want their student
to benefit from
 Parents share their “blessings”
Timeline
 Early Summer
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Send Student-Parent Dialogue publicity to parents
Send Student-Parent Dialogue publicity to students
Send publicity within class registration packets to students
 Mid-Summer
 Send follow-up letter to parents
 Late-Summer
 Pre-registration deadline
 Fall New Student and Parent Orientations
 Student-Parent Dialogue information and late sign-up table at
Parent Orientation Registration
 Student-Parent Dialogue Information Session reminder cards in
student and parent packets
 Student-Parent Dialogue Information Session for participating
and interested students and parents
Fiscal
Considerations
Fiscal Components
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Training of instructional and career services staff
 The Gallup Organization
 Center for Strengths-Based Education
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Marketing materials
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FYE Seminar brochure
StrengthsQuest™ brochure/postcard
Student-Parent Dialogue brochure
Parent Program follow-up letter
Postage
Speaker honorarium and travel expenses
Program supplies and services
 Technical support
 Copying costs for course, groups, and program sessions materials
 StrengthsQuest™ textbooks for instructors, counselors, and students
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Refreshments
 Student-Parent Dialogue Information Session
 Student Dialogue
 Parent Dialogue
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Brunch
 Student-Parent Dialogue
Assessment
Results
Assessments
 First Year Experience Seminar
 Pre- and post-assessments of learning outcomes
 Career Services Groups
 Post-assessment
 Focus groups
 Student-Parent Dialogue
 Student post-assessment
 Parent post-assessment
 Staff and Faculty Leadership
 Focus Group
SPD Student
Post-Assessment Results
 Positive Outcomes
(five point Likert scale and open response questions)
 The Student-Parent Dialogue (SPD) gave me an
opportunity to talk to my parents about what I want
to do with my life.
4.05
 The SPD enabled me to help my parents
understand me better.
4.05
 As a result of this program, I see the connection
between my strengths and being successful in
college.
4.0
 As a result of this program, I see how my strengths
can help me understand my calling in life. 4.0
Student
Comments
What was the most helpful thing you learned from this program?
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“I can use my strengths in whatever I do.”
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“My strengths can be used in my academics and in my future career.”
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“Focusing on the strengths in my life is a lot better than focusing in on my
weaknesses.”
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“Things I considered as hobbies can have practical applications and are an integral
part of my success.”
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“This is a great program that all students should go through.”
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“The program helped me realize the correlation between my strengths and
success.”
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“I enjoyed telling my parents what I am going to do.”
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“It helped me reassure myself about what I am good at. It also helped me think
more positively about myself.”
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“I learned that I need to put forth effort into my strengths to achieve my goals.”
SPD Parent
Post-Assessment Results
 Positive Outcomes
(five point Likert scale and open response questions)
 The Parent Dialogue (PD) helped me understand some of
the developmental issues my student will face in college. 4.10
 The PD helped me understand what it means to take a
“strengths-based” approach to calling and vocation.
4.28
 The SPD gave me an opportunity to talk with my student
about her/his strengths.
4.65
 The SPD gave me an opportunity to talk with my student
about her/his dreams and sense of calling.
4.30
 As a result of this program, I am more confident about
supporting my son or daughter as they face challenges. 4.25
 As a result of this program, I see my child’s strengths
and talents more fully.
4.50
Parent Comments
What was the most helpful thing you learned from this program?
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“My son has some qualities I never knew he had and seeing how he views life and
world differently than me.”
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“Some “gifts” have appeared to be problems over the years, but actually, they are
major strengths that make her the special person she is.”
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“The most helpful thing was seeing how different in strengths my son was from me
and how understanding this will help me support him as he launches out on his own.”
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“During the Parent Dialogue I realized I wasn’t alone in my fears concerning my
freshman.”
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“Learning my daughter's strengths and her perspectives on life and her future.”
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“This helped us understand how we are alike and how we are different. It helped us
to see how we can resolve conflicts as they come up to face us.”
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“That my daughter has a dream of earning a Ph.D. from Oxford in England.”
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“My son is fine—better than fine!”
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“As a parent, I need to focus on strengths and the improvement of those in my
daughter as opposed to focusing on her weaknesses.“
Learning Points
 Program information needs to be sent under
separate covers to both students and parents
early in the summer. The more details
provided ahead of time, the better
 Information Session during New Student
Orientation clarified the extent of their
involvement and addressed student and parent
questions regarding the program
 Clarify to students and parents that the
program is a beginning phase in the career
development process.
 The physical arrangements and food and
beverage offerings are important to parents
Learning Points
 Integrate the StrengthsFinder® Assessment
results throughout the First Year Experience
Seminar curriculum.
 Student attendance in career groups is not
consistent over a four-week period. Offering the
StrengthsQuest® program during a day-long
seminar may be a better alternative
 Provide the StrengthsFinder® Assessment to
parents for individual use from the onset
 Parents like having detailed hand-outs
 Individual family groupings need some level of
privacy during the Student-Parent Dialogue
Questions and
Answers
Bibliography
 Abrahamson, “What are the Millennials Thinking – and what are
the implications for admissions marketers?” Lipman-Hearne
Resource Article.
 Chesney, “Helicopter Parents,” Articles for Parents from unh.edu.
 Clifton & Anderson, StrengthsQuest: Discover and Develop Your
Strengths in Academics, Career, and Beyond, The Gallup
Organization, 2004.
 Clifton & Harter, “Strengths Investment” in Cameron, Dutton, &
Quinn, Positive Organizational Scholarship, Berrett-Koehler, 2003.
 DeBard, “Motivating the New Millennial Students: Who’s in
Charge of Expectations?” ACPA Annual Conference 2005.
 Estroff Marano, “A Nation of Wimps,” Psychology Today (Nov/Dec
2004)
 Howe & Strauss, Millennials Rising, Random House Inc., 2000.
 Howe & Strauss, The Millennials Go to College, The American
Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
(AACRAO) and Life Course Resources, 2003.
Bibliography
 Magruder & Stutsman, “Helicopter parents: Mom and Dad’s
meddling could set up college kids for a crash landing,” Journal
and Courier (Nov 11, 2005).
 Shellenbarger, “Colleges Ward Off Overinvolved Parents,”
CareerJournal.com, The Wall Street Journal Executive Career Site
(July 29, 2005).
Contact Information
Deb Vetter
Asbury College
One Macklem Drive
Wilmore, KY 40390
859-858-3511, x2127
[email protected]
Sally Foster
Asbury College
One Macklem Drive
Wilmore, KY 40390
859-858-3511, x2351
[email protected]