Reflection on Magolda & Gross (2009)

It’s All About Jesus: Faith as an Oppositional Collegiate Subculture / Magolda & Gross (2009)

Magolda and Gross, non-evangelicals wrote this book through two years’ ethnographic study of a collegiate evangelical student organization on public university because there were few and old research to understand the experiences of evangelical students in public higher education.  Their methodological approach and personal reflections is based on thick description that offed details of dailies.  They tried to integrate three topics (religion, faith/spiritual life, and higher education) by examine “how students’ participation in a homogeneous evangelical student organization enhances their satisfaction with their collegiate experience and helps them develop important life lessons and skills” in their research study (p. 14).  Through their study, they emphasized student engagement and enhanced the role of religion in the (co)curriculum on higher education.

They used rituals (performative act, symbolic mechanisms, and symbolic performances) as their interpretive framework to categorize the values and behaviors of the Student Serving Christ (SSC).  They detailed and thoughtfully examined SSC and its members to assess the role of religious and secular organizations on campus in the moral development of students.  In chapter two and three, the outcome of this qualitative research exemplified a good ethnography method by the following procedures: 1) gaining access; 2) collecting data by observations, interviews, and physical artifacts, and 3) analyzing data with face validity, content validity, and catalytic validity including data triangulation (investigator triangulation, theory triangulation, and methodological triangulation).

They recounted their confessional tale and focused on SSC’s ritual recruitment, teaching and learning, outreach, and the construction of leadership.  Then, they focused their analysis on how the lesson learned from their field study and discuss some important points related to student success.  For example, they found that evangelical student involvement in the co-curriculum and peer education inside and outside classroom were powerful to foster their learning experiences as well as campus fellowships with their sense of safety.  They also found that “religion, spirituality, and the pursuit of meaning in life are topic of interest” for these SSC believer in their study (p. 67).

Firstly, the role of peers in the rituals of SSC was important to create a supportive community and increase student success.  As a SSC’S pedagogy and effective student involvements, they presented “four qualitatively different levels of involvement”; entry-level worship programs, second level of Bible study, third level of the Servant Leadership Team (SLT), and fourth level of the Evangelism Team and the Discipleship Team (p. 273).  Through these levels of involvements, students had opportunities for development of intrapersonal belief, morals and ethical behaviors, interpersonal skills, and leadership abilities. Consequentially, SSC’S cocurriculum encouraged students to mobilize to achieve a greater good. 

Secondly, they added an importance role of SCC for “building a sense of community among student–a sense of belonging at the institution” by observing that SSC leadership team recognized the importance of Christian students’ need for belonging to a community where they could openly express their Christian beliefs (p. 87).  For example, from the Matthew’s preaching during a Friday worship service, researchers found that “SSC’s cocurriculum interconnected students learning with the organization’s core values: faith, fellowship, and fun” that fostered build a supportive community in students’ educational settings (p. 277).  Thus they challenged educators to dedicate to bridging the gap between curricular and co-curricular aspects of students’ lives with their research analysis.

Lastly, Magolda and Gross as ethnographers found that SSC strived to transform the university culture and offer new ways of interpreting the world with the goal of producing Christian life.  As Astin (2004) observed that spiritual involvement helped college students develop their emotional maturity, moral development, and self-understanding, they also found that rituals (or spiritual activities) of SSC were “essential to students’ identity development and essential to living out American higher education standards” (300).  For example, as students explore aspects of “,” they wrestled with the their self-identity and “questions of significance and meaning” about “what matters to them and to what they are willing to devote their lives” (p. 241).  Therefore, religious aspect of campus climate should be considered as “creating new ways of interpreting the world though mixing religion with their college education” (p. 103)

Reflection on Rebekah Nathan

My Freshman Year: What A Professor Learned by Becoming A Student by Rebekah Nathan (2005).

This book is one professor’s report of the difficulties and frustrations in understanding the thoughts and behaviors of college students.  Rebekah Nathan, an anthropology professor in her fifties, decided to become a college student to better understand the college experience and culture of students.  The professor observed the various circumstances and experiences of students such as living in the dormitory, attending the classes, participating campus activities.  As a participant observer, the professor was able to have a more in-depth analysis through the direct, hands on experiences as a student.  The study broadened her understanding of students’ behaviors and also provided practical advice or solutions that addressed the specific needs of students.

First, her diverse research method skills used to conduct this study is impressive.  This book is based on her long-term personal relationship with college students as a freshman through her anthropological lens (in analysis of the undergraduate life-both her own and others’-over the course of that year).  She conducted forty formal interviews with American and international students, two focus groups (one with freshmen and one with seniors), and diverse informal conversations.  She kept “descriptive records of dorm meetings, events, and incidents, as well as daily field notes” about her personal experiences, observations, and discussions (p. 16).  Although the author used these various qualitative research skills, she gave addressed the weakness of the qualitative research.  For example, she said,

“As anthropologists learn in their overseas experience, one can never really “go native” or expect that one’s own experience is indicative of the experience of others born in the culture.  At the same time, it is the experience of living village life that offers the insight and vantage point needed to ask relevant questions and understand the context of the answers given.  It is this that I hoped to accomplish by becoming a freshman” (p.15).

Second, through the book, I learned her genuine passion and compassion with scholarly efforts to observe college experiences of students and improve their college life through the qualitative research.  Her integrity or authenticity to conduct the research was more powerful than excellences of her research methods and skills because humanity was alive for both the participant observer and subject students through the research.  The authenticity and genuineness of the author opened new opportunities to understand the experiences of college students.  Thus, through her efforts to research in a way never done before, she vividly conveys an account of realities faced by students that is missing in the general research and studies done before. This is why her book offers more than simple data, presenting a fresh and unique approach to learning about the issues students face.  

Third, the author gives people like me who are unfamiliar with the American college experience, an inside look through her observations of various student behaviors.  The author’s analysis of the college community has given me new insights to the student lifestyles and development during their collegiate years. One example in which I was interested was ‘community’ topic in this book because it had different meaning that I understood before.  As it were, the author discovered that while the campus (environment) encourages building a community and it is ultimately up to the individual to make relationships and get involved in the campus life.  Engagement with the communities provide opportunities for students to participate in the different groups and classes, but also leave it up to the student as “one can easily opts to move out of the dorm, drop the class, change majors, or quit the club, resulting in a social world that always seems to be in flux (p. 39).  Therefore, the author said the university ‘community’ becomes both elusive and unreliable.  However, she examined that more often than not, students do not take advantage of the resources or opportunities to connect.  Instead, they often stick to what they know and who they know, joining communities they are familiar and comfortable to be a part of.  This was prevalent when she asked students in interviews whether they felt they had a community, most said yes.  So she identified the community with the followings,

                                                                                                                                “what they meant by community were these personal networks of friends that some referred to as my ‘homeys.’  It was these small, ego-centered groups that were the backbone of most students’ social experience in the university.  …  The intense reciprocity of ego-based groups helped explain a problem about campus traffic that had long puzzled me” (p. 55).

In conclusion, I agree with the author’s perspective following her study that in order to reduce the ignorance, misperceptions, and intolerance between professors and students, empathy and understanding.  I wish that “more teachers could see students and student culture from the other side. … As for students, I wish they could more readily see that classroom bureaucracy arises from the recurrent behavior of the thousands of students who have gone before them” (p. 145).