Martin - Off to College: A Guide for Parents

Off to College is the indirect result of sabbatical leave I took in the fall of 2004. Over the eighteen years I had been a college president, initially at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and then at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, I had become intensely interested in what happens during the first year of college. Indeed, I had come to the conclusion that going off to college is one of those potentially life-transforming events that if done well can have far-reaching consequences.

So instead of flying off England to write yet another monograph in my field of nineteenth-century British history, I enrolled for six months as a first-year undergraduate at St. Johns College, the Great Books school, in Annapolis, Maryland. I survived orientation there along with 135 eighteen-year-olds who were starting their college careers at this venerable but unusual seventeenth-century college. I took the first-year course of study, reading and discussing Greek writers like Homer, Plato, and Herodotus and reexperienced the joys of the college classroom. I hung out at the college coffee shop trying (with varying degrees of success) to connect with my teenage classmates, hearing firsthand about their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Once they had more or less accepted the fact that I was a first-year student like themselves they even invited me to some of their parties, which I cheerfully attended with my wife, Susan. And, of all things, I relived my glory days as a college athlete by joining crew and rowing in an eight-person shell with a bunch of high-testosterone first-year men. I ended up writing an often-humorous book about this experience titled Racing Odysseus: A College President Becomes a Freshman Again (University of California Press).

In 2006, I retired as a college president and moved back to my childhood home in Mamaroneck, New York, where today I volunteer with the Mamaroneck High School (MHS) Counseling Department helping rising juniors and seniors navigate the college admissions process. One August morning, not long after I arrived in Mamaroneck, a woman I did not know entered the Starbucks where I do most of my writing, introduced herself as the mother of an MHS senior, and then after some small talk exclaimed rather plaintively, Dr. Martin, I dont want to be a helicopter parent. But I really need to know what my daughter will be going through after she leaves home for college next week. She had heard from her daughter about the former college president working with the counseling office and wanted to get an insiders perspective on the first year. Above all she wanted to be appropriately responsive to her daughter and not end up becoming one of those parents we hear about all too often who cannot let their child go. Soon moms were queuing up each morning at my table seeking advice. I was no longer getting any writing done!

And then a light went on. After spending my entire professional career in higher education and, perhaps more important, after recently reliving the first year myself at St. Johns College, I was in a pretty good position to give some helpful advice and encouragement to parents concerned about whether their children could survive the first year of college without them. And so I decided to write a sequel to Racing Odysseus in the form of a proper college guide for parents and families.

A few comments before I begin.

Some readers might wonder why I chose the five colleges and universities I did to illustrate what happens first year. My response is that I wanted to write about a diverse group of institutionspublic and private, large and small, elite and nonelite, located in different parts of the countrythat represent four-year residential colleges and universities generally. But I needed to find campuses that would allow me to interview the faculty and staff most familiar with the first year. Few colleges or universities would permit an anonymous person to wander on campus and, without invitation, randomly interview faculty, staff, and students for a book like this. So I chose institutions whose presidents trusted me and who would give me unfettered access to their campuses. I also wanted to include colleges that do the first year well. I ended up choosing five colleges and universities that met my criteria: Queens College of the City University of New York, a large public university; Tufts University, a smaller, elite private university located near Boston; Vassar College, a national liberal arts college located in suburban Poughkeepsie, New York; Washington College, a small liberal arts college located in rural Chestertown, Maryland; and Morningside College, a regional church-related comprehensive college located in Sioux City, Iowa, the heartland of the Midwest. All the faculty and staff I interviewed were proven, seasoned professionals in their respective fields.