Webcast Announces Beloit College Mindset List

The Beloit College Mindset List webcast is now available at http://www.beloit.edu/mindsetwebcast.

The Mindset List, conceived by Tom McBride, Keefer Professor of the Humanities and Ron Nief, director of public affairs at Beloit College, is a set of touchstones that shape the lives of Gen Y students entering college this fall. The material is gathered from parents, current students, faculty, anonymous contributors who call and email ideas, and through researching a wide range of media -- from Rolling Stone to the Wall Street Journal -- published around the time these students were born. McBride and Nief say the Mediasite webcast is the perfect avenue to explain how the list originated, and why it's become such a cultural phenomenon. In the webcast, the list authors provide deeper insight into key patterns that emerge, and ultimately will need to be addressed, as this generation moves into the workforce, such as transparency vs. privacy, sustainability and multiculturalism.

"We create this list each year as a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for each new generation entering college. The mindset of these students is quite different than the faculty who are about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow," said Nief. "As the list changes each year so does our means of distributing it. We're pleased that this year represents our first webcast using Mediasite."

"The list is terrific for a chuckle, terrific if you have a mildly masochistic need to feel old and it's terrific in giving you a snapshot of what's happened in the last 18 years," said McBride. "It's also a nice snapshot of the attitudes and events of entering college students."

Some highlights of the 11th Annual Beloit College Mindset List include:

Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddie Krueger have always been dead.

Harry Potter could be a classmate playing on their Quidditch team.

Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have always been annoying people at parties.

They've always been looking for Carmen Sandiego and GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.

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