Johnson wants courses focused on life skills

By Molly Ashline, Staff Writer

Published in print Jan 14, 2015.

Last semester, Bill Johnson, the student success coordinator of UNC-Greensboro’s Office of Life Planning and Personal Development, gave a presentation to the UNCG board of trustees.

This presentation highlighted the strides Johnson’s office has been making, including increasing retention rates and indirectly decreasing student debt.

Johnson stated in an interview with The Carolinian that he had received accolades for his work before, including an invitation to be a guest speaker with the Gates Foundation.

He went on to say that UNCG had been slow in acknowledging his work.

“I have all these organizations outside of UNCG, saying, ‘You’re doing great work, let’s hear more about it,’ but no one inside UNCG was listening,” Johnson stated.

Johnson’s program is a yearlong seminar for freshmen designed to help them decide on their major the first semester.

The second semester focuses on an application for their goals.

Johnson admitted that many students do not continue in the second semester.

“Students, once they take the fall course, are really tuned in to what they want to do,” Johnson said about the drop of his class sizes in spring.

Johnson continued by saying that students are not interested in applying their goals once they have determined them in the first semester.

But he thinks application is an important part of the process.

“Do it in your freshmen year, so by then, you’re clear as to ‘this is where I want to go,’ so you can finish sooner,” he said about students working in their majors outside of classes.

Johnson hopes that if students figure out what they want to do earlier in college, it will have additional benefits, such as decreasing student debt.

Despite the benefits Johnson’s program has, he says there are still problems with the current education system.

He included the failure to see students as individuals and the prescribed pathways to colleges and careers as a couple of his grievances.

“When you go to college, the big thing most students want to do is make the right choice of major, because that’s what they think they’re going to do the rest of their life. Well, they’re not,” Johnson said about the pressures incoming college students face.

“My whole thing is, just make the right choice for now, because the right choice in five years will be different,” Johnson tells his students to alleviate some of that pressure.

Despite his work in the university system to help students, Johnson would still like to see greater changes within the entire education system.

He suggested that after high school, students have a year of taking classes with practical applications to life— a math class on doing taxes, for instance— that would also serve to fulfill general education requirements.

He calls this proposal, “Year Thirteen.”

“At least you’ll have a year of stuff under your belt to make better decisions,” Johnson said.

Johnson hopes that students also contribute to and lobby for changes in education.

“The students have more of a voice than they think…you guys [the students] can spearhead the movement and make it go faster,” Johnson asserted.