Motivating Today's College Students

With an early December wind chill topping out at eleven degrees and the setting sun quickly fading behind the carillon of our campus chapel, it may seem like a strange time to contemplate student motivation on our small Midwestern campus of Elmhurst College. Yet, as we observe the initiative, dedication, and persistence of the eight undergraduate students who have spent the past three hours lining our campus walkways with one thousand luminaries, we wonder why these students are so dedicated and others are not. At a time in the academic year when most students' motivation for learning and involvement has shifted from inquisitive exploration to exhausted survival, the members of the Walk for Hope steering committee are inspired by and dedicated to their task of placing the paper bag luminaries, each sponsored by a community member to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Are these students motivated to raise money for a good cause or to surpass the amount last year's steering committee raised? Perhaps it's the opportunity to do something with their immediate group of friends or do something to invoke the pride of their family? Little separates these students from today's average undergraduate. Yet, at this moment they exhibit what seems an increasingly scarce resource desperately sought by faculty and student affairs administrators nationwide, a trait that fuels academic success, engagement, and learning: student motivation. Conversations with faculty and staff colleagues at small private and large public institutions over the last several years have echoed themes of frustration concerning the need to compete for students' time and attention. Students appear to spend hours surfing Web sites, hanging out in groups, and updating their Facebook sites. They compete for multiple leadership positions from which they often fail to gain all they could because few focus fully on their responsibilities. They forfeit deeper engagement in academic research to earn minimum wage at a retail store in a nearby mall. Identifying Student Needs Whether you believe the characteristics commonly attributed to the Millennial Generation or not, it is clear that the manner in which students are motivated to engage in higher education has been changing and will continue to change rapidly. The priority students affix to their education is too often usurped by increasingly demanding and time-intensive life priorities such as work, family, or emotional/psychological needs. Many members of this generation of students continue to live in an age of convenience and consumption. A college education has become commodified, understood as yet another acquisition to be made rather than a process in which you engage. Yet, as the Association of American Colleges and Universities describes in Greater Expectations (AAC&U 2002), students need to become intentional architects of their own learning, actively setting goals, exploring, reflecting, and integrating acquired knowledge and experiences into existing worldviews. In today's environment of convenience and consumption, how can students be persuaded to move beyond commodity thinking and fully engage both in and out of the classroom in activities that enhance their learning? How can they be inspired to become immersed in learning? Elmhurst College is a small liberal arts college, but its student body defies easy classification. Each fall, the college attracts a first-year class of approximately five hundred, approximately three hundred transfer students, and a number of adult students. Over 50 percent of students live off campus and many work at least one job. Because very different reasons underlie students' decision to enroll at Elmhurst, inspiring student success and learning requires understanding motivation from a variety of perspectives. In fact, when we discuss student motivation, what we are really talking about is whether or not students have made educational activities a true priority: whether they have chosen to fully invest their time and energy in their college experience. …