by Rob Engblom
The morning of September 11, 2001, started out for me just like so many others had before.
I awoke in the staff apartment I had been assigned as a residence hall director at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. It was going to be a regular day, probably with some planning and following up on the regular incidents that occur over the course of a year. Of course, it turned out not to be a normal day. I shared in the same shock, confusion, horror, and overwhelming sadness everyone on our campus was experiencing as the enormity of what had transpired in New York City, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania began sinking in. The most vivid memory from that day, however, was when one of my resident assistants approached me in our hall lobby, devastated, and asked, “Why would God let something like this happen?”
I knew from previous conversations with this student that she was new to her proclaimed faith, yet I still had no idea how to respond. I was well trained in crisis response protocols, but there was nothing in the hall director manual on how to assist a student experiencing existential spiritual turmoil in the midst of a national disaster. This was a defining moment in the history of our country and in the life of that generation of college students. Naturally, residents were forced to ponder the meaning-of-life implications of the terrorist attack. Also, naturally, many of these students were trying to rectify the event through their own spiritual development lens.
Though there are varying definitions, spiritual development typically involves how one acquires a life purpose, as well as concepts like authenticity, identity development, thinking of others instead of just oneself, and the interconnectedness between oneself and others. For some, like my resident assistant, it can also include an exploration or belief in a power that transcends human existence, often in the context of religion.
I will never forget how ineffectual I felt in that moment in the hall lobby with a student desperate to process the intersection of catastrophe and her spirituality. Through later conversations I learned that I was not alone in my quandary. Virtually nobody on campus knew what to do. Later that evening, a group of interdenominational and interfaith student ministry staff – not employees of the university but professionals who tended to the spiritual development of students in various churches and student organizations – gathered the campus together in a candlelight vigil to mourn the events and tend to the university’s spiritual wounds. I was relieved to be able to join students, faculty, and staff in shared grief, but the embarrassment of that moment remained. Why did we, as student affairs professionals, not know how to support the spiritual needs of our students?
Spiritual development has been present, in some iteration, since the start of higher education in the United States. It took the form of Protestant, Christian religion in the first colonial colleges. In fact, the purpose of these early universities was largely to train young men for ministry in service to the church. The 19th century saw a diversification in institution types, including denominationally distinct private schools with broader educational tracts than just those for future clergy.
The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 and the rapid growth of industries in the latter half of the century produced an even greater variety in colleges and universities. Some faith-based schools continued forward successfully, but state-sponsored schools rose in prominence while being less religiously focused. This coincided with the Germanic influence on American education, which focused much more on the rational development of students, at the expense of their social, psychological, and spiritual growth.
The onset of the 20th century gave rise to the student affairs profession. By 1937, the American Council on Education published its first guiding principles for student development, The Student Personnel Point of View, which explicitly charged higher education institutions to care for the whole student, including their moral and religious development. They updated the document in 1949 – the same year the first meeting of what would become ACUHO-I occurred – and included even more spiritual developmental themes like understanding of self, personal ethics, and religious values. Before long, the 1960s would present the boom of residence hall construction, a focus on existentialism and pragmatism in the classroom, and the blossoming of student development theories. This in turn moved the focus of college student development toward social involvement and personal responsibility.
It was the release of Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life in 1998 that set the stage for a renewed interest in spiritual development at the start of the 21st century. Palmer contended that an educator’s own spiritual development was vital in order to teach others. He further claimed that both a student’s and a teacher’s spiritual identities were essential in the learning process. This resonated in the world of higher education and spurred a plethora of new literature, research, and spiritual development theory to emerge.
The culmination of this renewed spirituality movement on college and university campuses was the publication in 2011 of Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students’ Inner Lives by Alexander Astin, Helen Astin, and Jennifer Lindholm. They spearheaded the UCLA Spirituality in Higher Education study, quantitative and longitudinal research that tracked the spiritual development experiences of thousands of students across the country. Their findings were enlightening and demonstrated the importance of developing college students spiritually.
Astin, Astin, and Lindholm discovered that 80% of students surveyed were interested in spirituality, 80% discussed spirituality with friends, 76% were searching for a meaning to life, 74% discussed the meaning of life with friends, 79% believed in God, 64% identified spirituality as a source of joy, 47% were actively seeking opportunities for spiritual growth, and 58% were exploring and/or conflicted about their own spiritual beliefs. Clearly, college students were interested in spiritual engagement. Their research, along with the work of others, uncovered many positive outcomes related to students who experience spiritual growth in college. These included better academic performance, retention, emotional health, appreciation for diversity, increased social connections, and less risky social behaviors. Not only were college students interested in being developed spiritually, but the positive effects of spiritually developed students also aligned with the altruistic mission of colleges and universities.
The UCLA study pinpointed 10 experiences that produced spiritual growth among college students: classes with service-learning components, studying abroad, significant time studying, interdisciplinary courses, part-time employment on campus, volunteer work, charitable giving, self-reflection/meditation, interracial interactions, and leadership training. Astin and his colleagues were sensitive to the resistance that spiritual development sometimes encounters on campus, especially as it overlaps with religion, but noted that the 10 activities above can be easily implemented without ever calling it spiritual development.
So, if spiritual development is desired by students, produces positive outcomes, and can be enhanced through specific experiences, do housing and residence life professionals think it’s important to engage in that work with their residents? That was one of the questions I asked residence hall directors during research I conducted in conjunction with my dissertation. My ACUHO-I-endorsed survey brought in 133 responses from residence hall directors across North America. Among the respondents, just over half of them (69) thought it was important or very important to develop students spiritually. Only 25 thought spiritual development was not important or not at all important.
Such results show that there is clearly an opportunity for the student affairs profession to better understand spiritual development and how it benefits students. In fact, further questions showed that residence hall directors were already engaging in spiritual development even if they weren’t labeling it as such.
My dissertation survey also asked residence hall directors if they were encouraging or facilitating the 10 experiences that the UCLA Spirituality Study claimed developed students spiritually. While none of the activities specifically cites spirituality, a considerable majority of the responding residence hall directors agreed or strongly agreed they were engaging in eight of them.
The only two activities with a median score of neutral were housing staff encouraging students to select academic courses with service-learning components and encouraging charitable giving. Most residence hall director job descriptions do not include academic advising, so it seems natural for the service-learning course selection experience to rank lower. The charitable giving activity might be an opportunity that the residence hall director can promote for residents, though it would need to be pursued with the appropriate sensitivity to students’ socioeconomic dynamics. Otherwise, it should be encouraging to the housing profession to know that activities that produce spiritual development seem to be occurring in the residence halls.
There are other ways housing and residence life departments can promote spiritual growth. I work at Baylor University, a faith-based institution that does not require its students to prescribe to a specific religious belief system but does operate from a Christian/Baptist framework. In addition to seminary students in each of our buildings who act as resident chaplains, most of the residence halls on our campus have dedicated physical spaces in the building that are called reflection rooms. While those were historically designed and used for programming related to the religious roots of the institution, recent designs and intended uses of those spaces have expanded to include broader interfaith and nonreligious spiritual practices for those residents with different spiritual identities.
The University of California, Berkeley, is a public institution that offers its residents an opportunity to request accommodations related to their spiritual backgrounds and activities. They offer floors and suites for spiritual and cultural traditions, spaces in their building for spiritual practices, housing locations in close proximity to places of worship, and semi-private bathrooms for other cultural considerations based on spirituality. They provide an application for these features so students can make requests that best meet their spiritual development needs.
Brown University, a private school in Providence, Rhode Island, will mark the beginning of the 2023 academic year by opening its first theme community related to religious and spiritual identities. Terrance Sanders, the director of Theme and Program Houses at Brown, said they are trying to increase students’ sense of belonging and connectedness on campus. Their internal assessments discovered that residents are seeking ways to join together as they explore their spiritual identities. Brown’s residential life department is partnering with the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life to explore the broad religious and spiritual diversity at the institution. Some of the intended outcomes for this new community are students engaging in different spiritual and religious practices and traditions, fostering mutual respect among members of the community, and participating in a capstone project that will demonstrate how their themed hall intersects with other themed housing.
Spiritual development is rooted in the history of American higher education and the earliest iterations of the student affairs profession. Students are seeking the opportunity while in college to experience spiritual growth, and there is every indication from previous research that spiritual development leads to positive student success outcomes. Residence halls are a prime location for that spiritual development to occur. While my research demonstrated that residence hall directors might not be unified in thinking that spiritual development is important, it also revealed that hall staff are already engaged in student activities such as leadership development, philanthropic work, and self-reflection that lead to spiritual growth. Imagine the possibilities that could emerge if the housing profession was even more intentional and educated about the benefits of spiritual development. Also, think of how prepared staff can be the next time there is a crisis on campus that will require meeting students at the intersection of tragedy and spirituality. Residents will certainly appreciate professional staff ready to assist in their time of spiritual need.
Rob Engblom is the associate director for residential learning at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. His dissertation, An Investigation of Student Spiritual Development by Residence Hall Directors in College Housing Departments, was recognized by ACUHO-I as the 2023 Dissertation of the Year.