Members of the millennial generation, or Generation Y, were born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. Therefore, most of them are offspring of the baby boomers. They are also known as the most technologically savvy generation. Even though Generation X’ers were known to heavily consume electronic media because they were born when the Internet was in its infancy, the millennials were born into a media-saturated and consumer-driven culture. Moreover, unlike the members of the previous generations, they were surrounded by digital media technologies since they were infants. In a way, they live in a digital media ecology and in fact are known as “digital natives” (see John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Anders Parment, Faruk Tanyel et al.). Acland argues that Generation Y is described as “massive in numbers, entrepreneurial in spirit, and heavily invested in media-defined branding” (43).
Since they live in digitalized platforms, millennials are often disconnected from the members of the previous generations. For the most part, rather than being community oriented, they are self-centered and self-absorbed. Perhaps, this why they are known as the “Generation Me” (See Petridis 126; Fromm and Garton 120).
The members of the millennial generation are now moving into teaching and academic positions in higher education. Hence, while they are facing challenges themselves, senior faculty members and administrators are also grappling with complex issues that perhaps they have not faced before. For example, one criticism suggests new faculty are needier. Similarly, the lack of mentoring junior faculty, especially when it comes to research is increasingly becoming an issue. Perhaps all these are also influenced by the changing cultural landscapes of academia as well as the cultural practices of the Millennial generation.
Our goal for this publication is to engage in a scholarly dialogue about millennials and how their academic and non-academic interests and everyday performances within and outside of higher education influence our communication with them. Because of their age range, some of the members of this generation are working in higher education as professors, lecturers or graduate students.
Mentoring is an integral component of higher education. As faculty, we mentor students who represent diverse backgrounds, such as first-generation, LGBTQ, and international students. Perhaps, as scholars and educators, we have not spent a lot of time thinking about how to be a mentor, or we did not receive mentorship training during graduate study. Due to a lack of formal mentorship training, many of us instinctively model those who helped us as students and junior faculty members (both members of the millennial generation). Often, we simply mentor by trial and error, which, in some instances can result in spending hours trying to help students resolve their problems. Similarly, junior faculty also need guidance in their teaching and research. However, in some instances, mentoring becomes a secondary concern when, as scholars, we are busy mentoring students, teaching classes, and conducting research. Thus, we may neglect our responsibilities to mentor junior faculty who often struggle with developing a research agenda, becoming an effective educator, or balancing their work and personal lives. Therefore, mentoring is one of the most crucial aspects of our academic lives.
This call invites abstracts for an edited book that takes qualitative, interpretive, and critical and cultural perspectives in examining the millennial culture in higher education from communication perspectives. This book has several interrelated goals:
1- Examine different aspects of the millennial generation and their culture in higher education from a communication perspective.
2- Focus on communication pedagogies that aims to understand the millennial culture whose members are culturally diverse and complicated.
3- Discuss how to mentor the members of the Millennial generation, who are diverse, who might have different learning needs and abilities, and might be socially, culturally and politically differently located and functioning. Offer different ways of mentorship to improve the communication and generational gap between the members of different generations.
4- Examine the role and issues of new media and technology in the classroom. This is a crucial area of inquiry considering we are educating a generation that was born into and grew up with technologies.
5- Offer new perspectives on changing facets of the classroom experience, particularly due the impact of the millennial culture.
Topics may include but not limited to:
1- Millennial generation and the role and issues of new media and technology in the classroom
2- Different ways of understanding the millennial culture whose members are culturally diverse and complicated
3- Teaching diversity to, for and with millennials
4- Mentoring millennial students
5- Mentoring millennial faculty members
6- Discussions on curricular changes to absorb the millennial cultural practices
7- Culturally diverse millennial experiences
8- Developing new communication pedagogies
Abstracts are due by February 1, 2017, with a word length of no more than 500 words, along with pertinent references, contact information, and a short biographic blurb of 300 words. Full-length manuscripts are due on July 1, 2017, with a word length of no more than 5,000-7,000 words and in APA style, including references, endnotes, and so forth. The project is currently under contract with Lexington Books. Please mail your abstracts as Word documents to Ahmet Atay (aatay@wooster.edu) for an initial review.
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