Remembering the Forgotten Year
In their first year of college, students get abundant attention geared toward assimilating them to the campus environment. As juniors, they often study abroad or settle into their major course of study. Seniors explore and set in motion employment or graduate school plans.
Sophomores, however, often experience a period of uncertainty, even panic, when asked to decide their major, which many equate to the rest of their professional life. According to Mark Orten, director of religious life, they may feel forgotten by college programs that could support them when they believe their choices mean the most.
This year Orten and Pamela Allen, director of career services, coordinated the launch of Quest, a program for sophomores who teeter between pleasing their parents, pleasing the college, and pleasing themselves–all in a world complicated by rapid and intense social, cultural, and economic change. “Quest puts people together to come to a conclusion about who they are and who they are becoming,” Orten says.
Funded by a campus-wide grant from the Lilly Foundation, Quest sent 36 sophomores with upperclass student leaders, college staff, and faculty on a fourday excursion in late August to Punderson Manor, an Ohio State Park resort and conference center. The agenda included an alumni panel that talked about where their decisions took them, often in directions not imagined. Popular folksinger/songwriter Carrie Newcomer shared her musical talent as a medium to help students think through career choices. “Carrie is a great example of someone who followed her passion,” Orten says.
“Quest is about making educational choices,” says Laurel Kennedy, dean of first year students, who helped develop the program. “It gives them an opportunity to stop and think about their passions, what’s important to them. So many students determine their major on poor grounds or they panic about figuring it out.”
“Quest was designed to address this critical junction of a college career,” Orten says. “It’s a comprehensive look at the landscape of where they are and where they want to go.”
Fab ’50s told another story
In the 1950s, sophomores approached their futures in a different fashion. Women students were crowned May Queens, Orchid Queens, Cresent Queens, Prom Queens. The Big Red Indian yahooed at sports events. Sweetheart serenades erupted on moonlit nights. Students pledged fraternities and sororities by the droves. Sophomores abided by 10 p.m. curfews, attended convocation every Monday morning, and followed expected career paths.
Those paths took social directions as well. Culturally conservative ’50s America had clearly different expectations for men and women, says Mary Jane McDonald ‘59, who returned to Denison for a 25-year career. She retired in 2000 as vice president for university resources and public affairs.
“Careers were very important for men then,” says McDonald, a first generation college student. “Women saw themselves as supporting men in their successes and so chose paths that would permit them to raise families. We felt pressure to do well at college, of course, but also to find a companion.” She remembers sitting in convocation and being told to look left, then right, as Denison was their best opportunity to find a spouse.
Most women became teachers like McDonald and her friend, Janet Halliday ‘59. “I thought a long time about going into law, but that evaporated somewhere along the way,” McDonald says. Halliday remembers always wanting to teach. “I had made up my mind and can’t remember a light bulb go off showing me anything else.”
Pete Halliday ‘59, Janet’s husband, sailed through his sophomore year feeling little pressure about choosing his path in life. It wasn’t at all unusual for young men to join parents in business or benefit from a family connection. “I had an outside influence, a local businessman in my community who urged me toward the investment business with promise of a job,” Halliday says. Although the job didn’t work out, Halliday’s academic direction was set and he never looked back, retiring after 45 years in the brokerage business.
For the Hallidays and McDonald, Denison in the 1950s was like an oasis. McDonald says wistfully, “People were good, the environment was wholesome and supportive, and there was a strong sense of community.” It would seem, then, that some things never change.