"Educators need not worry that religious involvement detracts from students' college experience"

This is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education forwarded to me by our univeristy chaplain. I thought you may find it interesting.

A glance at the winter issue of Liberal Education: How faith affects education Educators need not worry that religious involvement detracts from students' college experience, say George D. Kuh and Robert M. Gonyea, who are the director and associate director, respectively, of the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University at Bloomington.

Many faculty members, the authors write, believe that students who arrive at college with devout religious beliefs "are conditioned to resist the 'liberal learning' curriculum and may graduate without seriously re-examining their beliefs and values." But, based on data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, an annual study that the Indiana center conducts, Mr. Kuh and Mr. Gonyea conclude that there is no cause for alarm.

After examining nearly 150,000 responses from students at 461 colleges chosen to reflect the higher-education landscape, the authors found that "spirituality-enhancing activities do not seem to hinder, and may even have mildly salutary effects on, engagement in educationally purposeful activities and desired outcomes of college." Students who actively engage in "spirituality-enhancing practices" -- such as worship, meditation, and prayer -- also participate more in a wide range of collegiate and extracurricular activities, such as exercise and community service, the authors say. They also spend less time partying. Perhaps most important, however, is that such practices were not found to have a negative impact on other "desirable
activities, such as studying, deep learning, or extracurricular involvements."

Mr. Kuh and Mr. Gonyea note that although students at faith-based universities were found to be most engaged in spiritual practices, they were less inclined to participate in activities associated with liberal education -- such as conversing with students whose viewpoints differ from their own. Yet this seems to be more than anything the result of the relatively homogeneous makeup of most faith-based institutions, they say.

The article, "Spirituality, Liberal Learning, and College Student Engagement," is available at http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-wi06/lewi06_perspective1.cfm The latest report from the National Survey of Student Engagement is available at http://nsse.iub.edu/pdf/NSSE2005_annual_report.pdf

--Jason M. Breslow