Colleges with large numbers of Mormon students are welcoming an unusually large group of returning missionaries this fall — the result of a 2012 change in the minimum age requirements set by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The age for male missionaries was lowered from 19 to 18 and the age for female missionaries was lowered from 21 to 19, changing college enrollment patterns. We caught up with Leslie A. Buxton, who was hired in 2012 by Utah State University to guide students who defer enrollment or take a leave — a group that includes a few thousand missionaries at any given time. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.
Q. When the change was announced, I recall hearing that colleges were scrambling, since a bunch of students who would normally have gone to a campus that fall were instead going on a mission. What was that time like at Utah State?
A. Immediately when the change was made, our university created a missionary task force. A lot of administrators, our college deans, our provost, and student-services leaders got together and decided what they could do to make sure that it didn’t become a problem, taking our numbers down in a huge amount. We did see a difference, but it was not a huge.
Q. How are the age changes affecting the university now?
A. Students are flooding in, our numbers are bigger now than they ever have been.
Q. How do you keep tabs on students deferring or on leave?
A. I was hired to keep track of these students who are leaving for whatever reason, and then get them to come back, and also ease their transition when they come back. I provide extensive outreach to them, especially when they’re about to leave. They have to file for a leave of absence or deferment. Once we receive their request, I oversee the processing of it, and I work really closely with the admissions office, the registrar’s office, the financial-aid and scholarship offices.
Prior to my position being created, the pieces of leave of absence and deferment were in all of those offices. It’s a lot easier for parents and students alike to be able to just call me, so they don’t have to call five different people to get things figured out.
I have created some online checklists for students and separate checklists for parents. I think they call me and email me more than they use the checklists, but I’m happy to help them when they call. A large portion of my position involves talking with the parents because the student oftentimes is in an area without the use of a cellphone and computer, or just very limited access to those things.
And they’re not allowed to call home very often: They call home twice a year, once for Christmas, once for Mother’s Day. They do get to email with their parents one day a week for about 30 minutes to an hour, but that definitely depends on the mission, their access to the Internet.
One of the things that I run into with parents is the Ferpa law [the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act]. I can’t give out information to parents unless the students have expressly given them that permission. That’s one thing that I work on a lot on the front end, trying to inform students that they need to take care of that before they go.
Q. Could you give some examples of what you can do for parents if the student does give them access?
A. I put them in contact with the academic adviser for the student’s given major, I let them know whether or not the scholarships are in place, if they have financial aid on their account. I give them information about the math placement exam — if it’s been over a year since you’ve had math, you need to take an exam to test you into a certain math class, and that’s actually a really big holdback for a lot of students.
We let them know the dates of registration and the deadlines, and I ask them about housing. Some of these parents will ask me, Well, they’re returned missionaries, so we don’t want to be with 17-year-olds or 18-year-olds, they’re 21 — so referring them to the kind of places they’re looking for. I always suggest that they live on campus. They need a new integration into college life — they’ve lived a pretty sheltered life as a missionary.
Q. Does it change the feel of campus to have students who are a different mix of ages and have a different mix of experiences?
A. I notice the difference. The ones that are about to leave come in with their parents, and their parents do all the talking, and it’s this “why do I have to do this?” kind of a thing. But the ones that come home typically come and shake my hand, they’re really personable, they ask me what they can do — they’re really independent.
One thing we’ve noticed as well is that students who have been attending here for a year tend to stay with us. They stay much better than those who leave in the middle of the year, so they just attend for a semester, or don’t attend at all, and then defer.
Q. That seems like a really big challenge for universities, with more students deferring after the changes.
A. One thing that I’ve tried to do to combat that: We have the LDS institute here, where they teach a bunch of religion classes, and they have one that’s called Missionary Prep. I go into all of those classes and tell them about the leave-of-absence process. Students that aren’t yet attending the university, they’re encouraged to take these mission-prep classes, so I catch a lot of them that way.
They put all the students that are leaving and where they’re going up on their board on public display, and so we actually use that to keep track of some of the students who didn’t ever do a leave of absence and we don’t know where they are. We’ve found some of them over there — they’re on mission.
Beckie Supiano writes about college affordability, the job market for new graduates, and professional schools, among other things. Follow her on Twitter @becksup, or drop her a line at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
