|
Thank you, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. It is a great honor and a distinct pleasure to have been invited
to give these opening remarks to you here today. I wrote in the introduction to Understanding Student Affairs at Catholic Colleges and Universities that the authors did not see the book as the LAST word on student affairs at Catholic colleges, but as the FIRST word. I wrote that we hoped that our book would initiate conversation around the ideas and examples we had presented in the text. So in that sense, this symposium is a "dream come true" for us. Before I begin then I would like to express the sincere thanks of all of us involved in this book project to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and particularly to Dr. Hellwig and Dr. James, for organizing this symposium, and to the John Paul II Center, and especially Dan Callahan, for hosting us.
Those who know me know that I love baseball and that I often use baseball imagery when I describe something.
So those folks won't be surprised when I say that I see my job today as that of the "set up man" or, I guess, "set up person." "The set up man" is the pitcher who comes in the game in the seventh or eighth inning when the team is in the lead to relieve the starting pitcher who has done his job and to get the game, hopefully with the lead intact, to the closer who will finish it.
I use this image for two reasons. The first is obvious.
It is my job with these remarks to "set up" the panel discussion. To provide some context and some preparation for their conversation. The second reason I use this image I think is the more important one. By this image I want to highlight the fact that there has been significant ongoing work and discussion on individual college campuses and nationally around issues related to student affairs and Catholic identity. We are NOT in the first inning. This is NOT the first conversation on this topic. It would be untrue to state that no one has been thinking about this or doing anything.
So let me "set up" our symposium this afternoon by doing three things.
First, I will discuss briefly some of the history of the conversation about student affairs and Catholic identity. Second, I will touch on the topic of who are the students on our campuses, and finally, I will offer a few thoughts on how we might engage them.
To begin to talk about the history we acknowledge the fact that the Jesuit Association of Student Personnel
Administrators has been in existence since 1954.
Each year student affairs professionals working at Jesuit colleges and universities, plus their affiliate members, gather for a meeting before the opening of the national conference of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators to discuss issues common to them. On Sunday morning they celebrate Mass together at the conference hotel, which is open to everyone. Many Catholic student affairs professionals attending the conference are able to celebrate Mass because of their hospitality.
In 1989 Father Andy Thon of Marquette University published an essay on the connection between student development
and Ignatian spirituality that was widely circulated on Jesuit campuses and continues to inform the work of JASPA.
In short, among the 28 institutions of Jesuit higher education the question of the relation of student affairs work and student development to the mission of the institution has been "on the table" for almost forty years!
The Jesuits are no longer alone in this effort. The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities has been
actively facilitating a national discussion of student life for the past 15 years.
At its June 1988 meeting the ACCU board of directors discussed the social and cultural context within which Catholic colleges and universities in the United States attempt to carry out their missions as Catholic institutions. The board concluded that one area in which the impact of American culture was clearly felt was student life. The board established a student life task force and commissioned a survey of ACCU member presidents on issues related to student life. The results of that survey were the topic of the 1989 annual meeting. Presidents were invited to bring along their student life vice presidents to that meeting. The survey of presidents and the discussion at the annual meeting were used by the task force to develop a questionnaire on student life that was then sent to presidents, chief academic officers, chief student affairs officers, and selected traditional-age undergraduate students at ACCU member institutions. The results of the survey were published in the winter 1990 edition of Current Issues in Catholic Higher Education.
Based on these findings and discussions, the task force made four recommendations to the presidents: First,
for the presidents to take a leadership role on campus in articulating Catholic values; Second, for the presidents to better know the diverse and changing populations of students on campus. We'll
return to that theme later.
Third, to involve the entire college community in student development efforts, and, fourth, and I quote, to "to encourage and actively support the formation of a national association which will provide a forum where student life issues will continue to be identified and through which programs, services, and models to address those issues can be shared."
Many individual efforts were made but many of us will recognize 1990 as the year that Ex corde Ecclesiae was published. The issue of Catholic identity became the focus of discussion throughout all of Catholic higher education. Student life wasn't forgotten, but it became a small piece of a larger conversation for a few years. What Ex
corde Ecclesiae did, however, was to provide a broader context for discussions of student life and Catholic identity.
The idea contained in the fourth recommendation of the task force, the creation of a national organization, returned to
the foreground in 1995. Another survey of chief student affairs officers was conducted under the auspices of ACCU and the results were presented at the August 1995 national symposium, Catholic Higher
Education: Practice and Promise that was held at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The results of that survey again indicated an interest in a national organization. This time the idea took root.
With the sponsorship of ACCU and a grant from the Lilly Endowment, the Institute for Student Affairs at Catholic Colleges
was created in 1995. ISACC was a five-day summer experience that provided student affairs professionals working at Catholic colleges and universities with an opportunity to learn more about the
Catholic intellectual tradition and to network with colleagues in Catholic higher education.
ISACC was held on the campus of John Carroll University from 1996 through 1999. 73 teams of three or four student affairs professionals, including the chief student affairs officer, from 59 Catholic colleges and universities throughout the United States, Canada, and even Lebanon, attended ISACC during its four years.
ISACC was an experience you attended once.
By 1999, over 220 student affairs professionals had attended ISACC and they were asking, "What's next?" "Where can we go to continue this discussion?" In 1999, instead of continuing ISACC in its current format, those involved in the leadership created the Association for Student Affairs at Catholic Colleges and Universities (ASACCU). ASACCU meets annually for a three day conference on the campus of a member institution. We have met at Catholic University, St. Mary's University in San Antonio, and Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Next summer we will meet in Saint Paul, co-hosted by the University of St. Thomas and the College of St. Catherine, and the following year we will be at the University of San Diego. Currently 94 institutions are members of ASACCU and that number grows significantly each year.
Our book, Understanding Student Affairs at Catholic Colleges and Universities, also arose from the ISACC
experience. The first half of the book is a group of essays by ISACC faculty relating student affairs and the Catholic intellectual tradition. These include such topics as relating student
development and Ex corde Ecclesiae and relating student affairs to conscience formation. In the second half of the book, six schools that attended ISACC present case studies of how they have been working on their campuses. Topics include connecting leadership development and Catholic social teaching, dealing with controversial issues, and how our religious tradition helps us to deal with crises, something we all learned on September 11.
Let me move on to the second part of my presentation…what do we know about our students?
And for that matter, about our staffs? For this part I have relied upon two sources…the 2000 and 2001 CIRP data and a study conducted by four members of the faculty of Catholic University published in 2001 as Young
Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice. Together these studies paint a picture of the students at our institutions and about our younger staff members.
In order to effectively engage them we need to know something about who they are and where they're coming from.
Let me start with the CIRP data.
CIRP stands for the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, which is sponsored by UCLA and the American Council on Education. Each fall for the past 30 some years, entering freshmen across the country---some quarter million strong each year---participate in this survey. The results are published annually in January. Since the 2002 results won't be published until January 2003, the 2001 and 2000 reports represent the most recent data. So what do we know about these students, who now would be sophomores and juniors at our institutions?
First, we know that not all of our students are Catholic. Even Catholic colleges and universities have diverse
campuses in terms of religion.
65.6% of students entering Catholic colleges and universities in 2001 identified themselves as Catholic, up from 64.3% in 2000. This is even true for institutions identified as "highly selective." The average percentage of Catholic students for these "high select" Catholic colleges was 68.9% in 2001 and 67.5% in 2000. This number is higher than at institutions identified as "low select" but not as much as one might think. The percentage of Catholic students at "low select" Catholic colleges was 60.4% in 2001 and 57.5% in 2000.
Remember that this is an average. So for every school that has a high percentage of Catholic students, there are
others that have a lower percentage. Also remember that these are traditional age students. When we add non-traditional students we are even more diverse.
Second, a minority of our incoming students chose our institutions because of our Catholic identity.
Only 15.3% in 2001 and 15.1% in 2000 said that the "religious affiliation of the college" was "very important" to their decision to attend. Size, location, academic reputation, cost, and financial aid were of much greater importance. This, too, is true of both high select (17.8% in 2001 and 17.7% in 2000) and low select (11.2% in 2001 and 10.4% in 2000) institutions.
Third, that doesn't mean that spirituality is not important to many of them.
37.3% in 2001 and 42.6% in 2000 rated themselves as "above average" compared to their high school peers in terms of their spirituality. In addition, 43.3% in 2001 and 45.1% in 2000 indicate that "integrating spirituality into their life" was essential or very important.
Fourth, in terms of attitudes about social issues they are like their peers at all institutions. Their
attitudes don't always correspond with Church teaching. In 2001, 47.3% of new freshman students at Catholic institutions believe abortion should be legal. 62.8% support the death
penalty. 40.2% think it's okay for two people who like each other to have sex even if they have not known each other very long. 63.4% support gay marriage.
81.3% believe racism is still a problem in America. These percentages are similar in 2000 and at both high and low select institutions.
This is what we start with. Students coming to our colleges are typical American students who reflect American
culture and American values.
Only a minority---around 15%---can be considered "core Catholics." Any effort by student affairs, or anyone else, to effectively engage the question of the Catholic identity of our work must recognize this fact.
This summer I attended the Institute for Administrators in Catholic Higher Education at Boston College and Frank Butler of
FADICA recommended the book, Young Adult Catholics. I ordered it when I returned and found that the data fits in well with the portrait painted by the CIRP data. These studies do not
have the same methodology nor the same sample populations so I will simply say that there are affinities and common themes in the findings that resonate with my own experience.
The study was done on two levels. First, the researchers interviewed a sample of young adult Catholics---which they
define as from 20 to 39---using a short survey. They followed up that survey with in-depth interviews with selected individuals.
Then they conducted focus groups. While the CIRP data tells us about underclassmen on our campuses, this study focuses on Catholics who are upperclassmen, non-traditional students, graduate students, and younger staff. The pictures are similar. Let me summarize some of what I consider to be the most salient points.
In general, young Catholics like being Catholic.
They are not alienated from the Church nor angry with it. Even if they disagree with some things, they can't see themselves as anything but Catholic. Yet, their knowledge of Church tenets is limited. They will be the first to acknowledge that their
religious formation was inadequate. They take Church teaching seriously but do not automatically obey it. That is because they believe that they have the right and responsibility to "construct their own moral
selves." In that sense the American culture of choice has permeated how they view the world. The culture of choice provides a framework and context for their Catholicism, not vice versa.
They consider themselves spiritual, but not necessarily religious.
The Mass is their most important connection to the experience of their faith, although they do not always attend. They connect most with the Church's social justice teachings and least with specific moral teachings, especially
about sexuality.
Let me offer a few quotes from this study to illustrate these points.
"…the cumulative effects of broad social and cultural changes in American society in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s produced a
convergence in Catholic attitudes and practices with the American population as a whole. Analysis of attitude trends over the last quarter century shows both a marked decline in distinctive
Catholic attitudes and behaviors and striking similarities between Catholics and the population at large." (p. 11)
"…the majority of young adult Catholics believe they as individuals need to rely on their own education and experience in
determining what is true and good in their religious tradition. Most do not automatically accept Church teachings as authoritative. The majority viewpoint seems to be that what the Church
teaches needs to be heard and studied, but in the end the individual needs to make his or her own important religious and moral judgments." (p. 60)
"The feeling of entitlement to personal choice has entered Catholic life, as it were, by osmosis from the modern American
culture, and young Americans today feel entitlement to follow their personal choices in life's big decisions." (p. 199)
"Core Catholics (an estimated 10 percent of our sample) are much less individualistic in their spirituality and in their
relation to the institutional Church." (p. 172)
"The highest ranked elements were the sacraments and special attention to helping the poor….What ranked low?
The five lowest ranked elements had to do with specific moral teachings…and specific institutional rules." (p. 200)
So, what is to be done? Our panel and all of our participants here today will have an opportunity to share their
thoughts on this question, but let me get our dialogue started by offering a few suggestions and examples of my own.
First, we need to recognize that the issues we wrestle with are the perennial issues of student development.
They won't go away because they are part of growing up. Like our efforts with alcohol, these are not problems to be addressed and fixed once and for all, but ones to be engaged over and over and over again with each incoming class of new students.
We know from student development theorists like Chickering and others that young adults are struggling with issues of
autonomy and intimacy. They struggle with their new freedoms and their new responsibilities.
They wrestle with sorting out intimacy and sexuality; sex and love. We know from Perry, Fowler, and Parks that they are reconstituting the framework of meaning that will sustain their adult lives. We know from Parks that mentoring communities can be effective ways of engaging students in that process of meaning making.
This means that engaging students about values and behavior is both important and timely. Chickering defines
integrity as consistency between values and behavior. Helping students develop integrity is rightfully a task of college and university educators, including student affairs professionals.
As educators in Catholic institutions we have the responsibility to present Church teachings in a way that is compelling. The data about students tells us that we cannot presume they will obey Church teaching because it is Church teaching. But the data also tells us they will listen. They will give Church teaching a chance. It is our responsibility to demonstrate that what the Church teaches makes sense for their lives, and more importantly, why it does.
Let me illustrate this with a story from an institution at which I worked as the vice president for student
services, Ursuline College in Cleveland.
Ursuline developed an integrated core curriculum that had both learning outcome goals and developmental goals. Because it is primarily a commuter college, the developmental goals would be met primarily through the curriculum. The curriculum began with a year long seminar for first year students. This class served as the learning community. During the second semester there was a component of the course devoted to values. We wrestled with how to engage students in a discussion of values, especially how to engage sensitive questions around sexuality. We knew it would be hard to get students to talk about such things in a structured place like a classroom, so we decided that we would be the ones to talk about it ourselves. We would open the discussion of values by talking about our values and our experiences.
So we created a panel.
I would talk not as the vice president but as a single person. My colleague would talk about being married, and one of the sisters on the faculty would talk about her life. Each one of us would talk about the "pros" and "cons" of our lifestyle and the challenges it presented. We agreed we would answer questions. Students were then asked to reflect upon our discussion in their journals in light of the common reading they were doing. It sounds simple but over the several years I did this it proved to be a profound experience.
One time a student asked my colleague who was married if she was a virgin when she got married.
It was a respectful and sincere question. We were told later by the student that it was a choice she was wrestling with at the time. My colleague said later that she thought for a moment about whether she would even answer the question or if it had crossed the line. She decided to answer. She spoke spontaneously and eloquently about the choice she had made to wait for her husband and why she never has regretted that choice. Her answer opened up the finest discussion of values I have experienced.
That experience has stayed with me. I thought about it again when I read Sharon Parks' Big Questions, Worthy
Dreams and heard her speak at the ASACCU conference this past summer. I think what we did at Ursuline worked because it emerged out of a mentoring environment we had created. We had created a context for such a conversation. Many of us have some form of learning communities on our campuses. I think they have great potential for creating a forum to engage students on the questions of values.
And not just sexual values. In the age of Enron and WorldCom and Adelphia we need to do our best to make sure our
students have values when it comes to the temptations of wealth.
The Catholic Church has much to teach on this topic. Its social justice tradition is a powerful one. Its teachings on war have much to offer as our country struggles with that question.
Second, and it is implied in what I already have been saying, our approach should be dialogical and pastoral and not
primarily juridical.
Let me tell another story, this time from my previous institution Alvernia College. Several of my former colleagues are here who participated in this effort with me. The Alvernia Board of Trustees approved a new vision statement that said that Alvernia would demonstrate "moral leadership in all of its programs." The residence life area was challenged to create an environment that would foster student growth and learning and be characterized by moral leadership. Frankly, as a staff we wrestled with what that might mean. We weren't sure ourselves. We invited campus ministry and theology faculty to join us in thinking about this. We ultimately decided that the most value would come from our wrestling with the question WITH the students rather than planning a program FOR them. What would it mean for residence life to be characterized by moral leadership? What behaviors fostered moral leadership? What behaviors got in the way?
We decided to use the RAs as a focus group around this theme. After all, they would be partners with us in creating
this environment in the halls. They needed to buy in. We devoted one evening of RA spring training last January to this topic.
We took them off campus to one of our houses and made dinner first. Then we engaged in a group process with individual reflection, small group sharing, and sharing with the whole group. We believed that we needed to create a climate of hospitality if we were going to have honest discussion. It worked.
The students told us that they did not connect with the words "moral leadership." If it meant anything at all it
meant something negative. If we were going to insist on those words we would have a difficult time getting buy-in. But yet when we asked them to define moral leadership in their own words
four clear themes emerged: respect, responsibility, leadership, and kindness. Does that sound like the least common denominator? Perhaps. But it's taking the students where they
are and moving them beyond. It also opens the door to deeper possibilities down the road. This approach is consistent with the research on cognitive development.
They also told us that we always focused on what they did wrong.
We never praised and encouraged them for what they did right. Ouch!
We took their ideas and connected it with a program one of us had experienced elsewhere to create the "Four Pillars"
project. The "four pillars" are respect, responsibility, leadership, and kindness.
Individuals could be nominated by others for having demonstrated any of the four pillars. It didn't have to be big things, in fact, that's not what we wanted. We wanted the small things, the every day things. Those nominated would receive a small ceremonial brick with the words "Four Pillars." In this way we thought we could build a moral community over time in our residence halls. The project was created last year, but initiated this year after I had left Alvernia for a full time graduate faculty position. It's a new program but I think it offers a model for how to think about engaging students in the diverse culture of choice. My former colleagues can tell you how it's going.
Frankly, most of us this room can tell stories like these.
There is no magic bullet. No one way or one thing that will work. It would be easier if there was, but there isn't. I was flying home recently and I was flipping through the Sky Mall shopping catalogue on the flight. I got to the "Successories" section. You know, the one with all the posters with the motivational sayings on them. The one entitled, "Believe and Succeed" caught my eye. The quote read as follows: "Courage does not always roar. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'" Take courage, my friends!
Now let me turn the podium back over to Michael James and to our panel discussion. Thank you.
|
