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UW freshman
It is nearing the end of Nathan's first quarter at the UW. He lives in the dorms and gets along OK with his roommate but he is shy and has yet to find an extended group of friends. He sees the world in very logical terms and thinks he would like to be an engineer of some kind, either in software or in building architecture. He likes to feel totally self-directed and does not like the idea of anyone making up his mind for him. Beneath this sense of independence is a certain fear of authority, stemming from his strict upbringing. He wants to meet with an adviser and extract as much information from them as possible but he doesn't like to make appointments. He feels anonymous in his new environment, and that his treatment at the UW so far has been mostly impersonal. This is not entirely a bad thing in his mind.
He is always in a hurry to take care of his academic obligations so that he can pursue what he sees as his "own" interests. He runs a website that connects members of his onling gaming community. He can often be seen between classes playing World of Warcraft on his PC laptop. Nathan is fiercely intelligent but lacks practical skills, especially in the area of communication. He is very open to new technologies.
UW freshman
Julie is in her third quarter at the UW and is feeling challenged and happy. She is athletic and takes part in several university sports, including volleyball. In public school, she got used to doing well academically without making much effort and it has been a struggle for her to adjust to the demands of college. She has kept her grades high, however, and she is proud of this accomplishment. She is a high achiever and although outwardly social, has few close friends.
She knows it is time to choose a major. She would like a place to confirm the timeline she has in her head and compare the different programs. She is used to direction and structure and does not feel intimidated by obligations. She has almost decided to pursue a medical degree but she dislikes the financial investment this will require. Ideally she would like to find a field that combines her athleticism with her academic strengths. She is used to success, and assumes continued success (she does not imagine failure). Julie is used to taking the initiative and tends to assume there is a solution for every problem. She is also interested in exploring opportunties for making more of her time in college, such as research and student exchange programs. Her computing platform of choice is a small white Macbook which she carries with her everywhere.
Student at North Seattle Community College, looking to transfer to UW
George is a business major and is looking to convert his first two years at a Community College into a business degree from the UW. He is color-blind and enjoys accessing the web through a text-only browser. He finds Transfer Thursdays to be inconvenient and would like to find an online way to plan his degree and check his requirements.
He is currently employed part-time as a manager at a local upscale grocery store. He wants to finish his degree as soon as possible and looks forward to the opportunties afforded by white collar employment. He enjoys the social parts of the university experience, but dislikes "red tape", bureaucracy, and standing in lines. He wants to accomplish as much online as possible, and enjoys the UW's online registration tools. His learning style is search-directed, in that he is only interested in the information he needs. He is career-driven, future-oriented, and impatient, extremely good with money, and a devoted newlywed. He does not carry a laptop but has networked several older computers at his house, which he uses primarily to manage his finances and download music and movies.
UW sophomore
Carissa is bright and possesses a keen social intelligence. She is in her second year at the university but she has still not chosen a major. For her, the networking opportunties that college provides are justification enough for her existence there. Her parents are funding her education and live on the East Coast. They are busy and successful and Carissa does not go visit them very much. She lives in a sorority house and is widely respected by her peers. She takes an interest in mentoring younger students in her circle.
Carissa enjoys educational television, and always wants to find "interesting" classes. She is very indecisive about what classes to take and dreads the registration process. She is used to being a leader and does not feel comfortable asking quetions, yet she has a persistent vague anxiety about her academic path so far and would like to check in with someone and make sure she's doing OK. She also has a tendency to procrastinate and to miss hard deadlines. She is familiar with technology for the way it facilitates her social life but she has so far not made use of this familiarity for studying or research purposes. She owns an older PC laptop and integrates her use of it with her cell phone, ipod, and digital camera.
Parent of UW freshman
Anne has three sons, the oldest of which is now a freshman at the University of Washington. She lives in Bellingham with her husband and youngest two sons. She has high-speed internet access through her cable provider and accesses the internet via a Mac mini set up in the family room of her house. She very much enjoys the ease of use of OSX. She attended a two-year vocational college in Oregon and works part-time as a consultant in the field of social work.
She wants to know a lot about the school her son his attending and what she can do to help him succeed. She is trying to come up to speed with much of the jargon she encounters at the UW. Her learning style is interactive, in that she seeks guidance and understanding from contextual information. Sometimes she feels frustrated at her ability to find and access information. She is what some might call overly-concerned about her son and worries that he isn't taking school seriously. She would like to have more control over what he does. She is acutely aware of the financial stress that college is putting on her family.
UW freshman
Lucas, who grew up in Nevada, applied to several universities at the end of his senior high school year and was accepted by all of them. He chose the UW, despite the burden of out-of-state tuition rates, because he enjoys programming and would like to work one day for Microsoft. He has just finished with the admissions process and now he faces his first quarter at University. He has no real idea how to schedule classes, or which ones he should take.