Class of 2019 members always lived in a world in which—

– roving probes from Earth have searched the surface of Mars

– WIFI has connected computers and mobile devices to the Internet

– wiki sites have allowed visitors to change, contribute to or correct those websites

– the terms girl power, laser pen, e-learning, webinar and Emoji have been a part of our lexicon.

Class of 2019 members have probably never—

– used a physical road map (much less had to fold one up after reading it!)

– traveled without a phone in the car

– needed de-icer to unlock their car in the winter

– surfed the web using Netscape Navigator

– used a film camera, much less had to wait till the film had been developed before seeing their photos

Popular toys—These millennials may have collected a set of SpongeBob SquarePants toys or characters from Monsters Inc.—included in fast-food children’s meals. At Christmastime, many of them received Bratz fashion dolls or a Robosapien toy robot.

Our campus 18 years ago—The year most Class of 2019 members were born (1997), the campus at Villanova looked different.

Although the CEER: Center for Engineering Education and Research was being constructed that year, the following buildings had not yet been built:

Farley Hall (residence hall, 2000),
Gallen Hall (residence hall, 2000),
Jackson Hall (residence hall, 2000),
St. Clare Hall (residence hall, 2000),
Health Services Building and its Parking Garage (2002),
Structural Engineering Teaching and Research Laboratory (2005),
Davis Center (2007),
Driscoll Hall (2008), and
School Of Law and its Parking Garage (2009).

Also, the University had yet to acquire the Villanova Conference Center (1998).

What’s missing from this list?—Certainly you could add examples not included on this list. Please share your own ideas/observations about the Class of 2019 in our Comment section.