It is vital for schools to have qualified teachers educating our children. Institutions with teacher preparation programs supply a valuable service to their communities by providing classrooms with devoted professionals who thrive on helping children learn, and the Teachers College, where this study is set, is one such institution. The Teachers College offers two pathways to gain teacher certification: a traditional bachelor’s degree in teaching areas such as elementary, secondary, or special education, as well as master’s degrees in those same teaching areas which offer students with a bachelor’s degree in an area other than teaching, another pathway to teacher certification. Many people who receive their bachelor degrees and then return to college to earn advanced K-12 teacher education degrees are from the millennial generation. The decision to return to college to earn a master’s degree with teacher certification can be a stressful one. Millennial students seeking teacher certification often have fulltime jobs and families, and therefore need the process of returning to school to be quick and efficient. How well these prospective students communicate with the admissions staff at their school of choice will determine if they receive the information needed to complete their applications. The focus of this study is to investigate if a proactive advising text message innovation developed for this study called TextEd, used during the admission process for graduate level, teacher certification programs at the Teachers College, affected applicant communication levels and customer satisfaction through the application process. More specifically, surveys and interviews were conducted with applicants from three teacher certifications programs to determine if TextEd was an effective tool for communication with millennial applicants. Results indicated that applicants’ preferred method of communication was their cell phone, and an increased level of customer satisfaction occurred when using a proactive advising approach with text messaging during the admissions process.

Multicultural Greek letter organizations at Arizona State (ASU) are small and intimate organizations whose missions include academic success, professional advancement, and cultural awareness. From humble beginnings, Greek life has blossomed to a nationwide culture at universities, hosting nearly 1 million students across hundreds of campuses. In efforts to expose the root of Greek life and its negative media-related trajectory and explore possible causes of tension between organizations, the survey and focus group utilized in this project sampled select members of multicultural Greek letter organizations at ASU. Surveys yielded that aside from small individual squabbles between members of different organizations, members felt that the majority of negative tension in multicultural Greek life was transposed by the irresponsible actions of larger, traditional organizations in conjunction with unfair university policies which overlooked smaller community service and educationally oriented organizations. This thesis explores how with the highlighted media attention spotlighting the disaster of Greek life at Arizona State, MGLOs are feeling the backlash of university governance and the minority umbrella under which they are consistently cast.