Religion is Not a Monolith: Persistence and Retention
November 2, 2016
Throughout its history, campus ministry and chaplaincy work have focused on helping students to find a home away from home throughout their time in college. Through religious communities of practice, students have time and time again found places where they can process life’s big questions while going through the transformational experience that is college. In higher education, this has meant something bigger, retention of the student and better rates of persistence.
The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) study of spirituality and higher education seeking understanding of how spirituality affects the student experience on campus, found that students who are religiously practicing during college have better rates of both of these important issues than those who are not engaged on campus. (Astin, A.S. Astin, H.S. & Lindholm, J.A., 2011).Obviously religious practice is not the only factor that increases retention, but certainly, when paired alongside other forms of engagement, religious practice has a significant part to play in helping students to graduate through their programs. Why?
A few years ago, while doing a national research study looking at different forms of religious practice on campus, I started to ask students a variation of this question. What emerged were numerous conversations about how students felt as though they had a community that was there for them when times were tough. Staff who could help navigate difficult financial situations, peers who could support them when stress overtook their lives and encouragement from communities overall were just a few of the many statements made by these students. Students also remarked that the ability to “be themselves” and “practice their beliefs openly” were important to their overall experience and feeling as though the school was the right fit for them.
On our campuses, we have a chance to provide safe environments for our students to explore their lives and decide how they will offer themselves to the world. Making it from start to finish in college is, of course, one of the most important aspects of the overall experience.
Few if any professionals on a college campus have a greater long-term exposure to students than religious life professionals. This can prove to be the factor that helps these students make it through the challenging experience of college. And if we can encourage our students to keep fighting through the difficult times, we will have better prepared them for the world that awaits them.
Over the past couple of months, we’ve spend time looking at a number of areas of higher education that I believe religion and religious practice can intersect.These are but a few of the many ways that religious, secular, and spiritual identities are important to the college experience. As our work continues, I encourage us to consider what happens next on our campus regarding this work. We can put on blinders and ignore the realities that religion is a part of the world or we can find ways to effectively embrace this aspect of diversity, working toward creating campus climates that accommodate as needed and then build intersectional opportunities for engagement with students. In doing so, we might just find opportunities we’ve never conceived and solve issued we’ve never imagined. Religion is not a monolith; it is part of the mosaic that seeks to help students through the most transformative moments of their lives.
Sources: