In administrative parlance, the current generation of college students and parents are known as “millennial” — students who aim higher and parents who are much more involved in their children’s education. While much has been done to cater to the millennial student, Virginia Tech has a new administrative position and parent-specific liaison in Kimberly Lowe, assistant director of student life for parent relations.
Due to the lack of a full-time position, the duties of the new administrator were previously handled by Tom Brown, director of student life.
“We were only doing the bare minimum … Orientation, Parents’ Day and a newsletter every semester were really all we’ve done,” Brown said.
Increasing parent involvement, in Lowe’s mind, initially requires amping up some familiar programs.
“I know with Parents’ Day I would like to work more specifically with other programs on campus to show parents what students are doing … My last job was actually working with student organizations and Greek life, to connect parents to what their students are doing,” Lowe said.
Long-range plans, however, focus on a new arena for parent-university relations at this campus.
“I’d like to do some online programs for parents. An education about VT traditions, or learning about VT, I think would be a kind of neat area. Parents aren’t all from Virginia,” Lowe said.
Brown envisions an Internet portal through which information parents need can be made readily available: if not immediately on the website, then the site could link salient parts of the university quickly and easily.
“We need to get a really good website up and running. What we have now is really, really basic. We could do monthly e-news, online conferencing for parents, but all of that is off the website,” Brown said.
Lowe’s hiring comes at a time when the university has felt a steady growth in the need for students’ parents to be a greater part of university life.
“Over the last several years we’ve … basically had an increase in the need to communicate more often with parents who … want to know what is going on here,” Brown said.
A Blacksburg native who graduated with a master’s degree in student affairs from the university in 1993, Lowe says her greatest challenges will be re-acquainting herself with a university that was without even landmark Torgersen Bridge in her time here.
“I’m still re-learning people, what the services are, how this office would work with parents and just trying to navigate with a different kind of mindset. I might not always have the answers at first, and it’s going to be tough to get with other departments in the university so that they know what services we can provide,” Lowe said.
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