If we could make a college education work perfectly, our students would do more than learn. In addition, they would be able to point to those actual moments during their college career when an interaction, an experience, or a discovery altered their trajectory regarding their plans for life after college. Although this might sound a little dreamy aspirational, it turns out that students who can talk about their learning experiences in this way tend to have a sort of educational momentum that seems to set them apart from their peers. These are the students who do the little things to put themselves in the early running for advantageous opportunities that ultimately lead to a deeper sense of purpose and direction as well as stronger job applications and stronger graduate school applications. These students make folks like me wish I had had some of what those students have when I was their age.
That’s why it makes a lot of sense to find out what proportion of our freshmen have this kind of perspective after their first year at Augustana. Ideally, we’d like to be able to cultivate that deeper level of awareness in more of our students by figuring out if there are ways that we could make this happen in more of them. So at the end of the year we ask our freshmen to agree or disagree with the following statement: “Reflecting on the past year, I can think of specific experiences or conversations that helped me clarify my life/career goals (e.g. conversations with faculty/staff, organized activities with other students, community involvement, specific classes, etc.).”
Here’s how last years’ freshmen responded (remember that not all freshmen completed this survey):
- Strongly disagree – 9 (4%)
- Disagree – 15 (6%)
- Neutral – 64 (28%)
- Agree – 100 (43%)
- Strongly agree – 44 (19%)
My reaction to this bit of data is a little mixed. On the one hand, most of the students either agreed or strongly agreed with this statement. On the other hand, 87 of our respondents can’t seem to put themselves in an affirmative category.
To be fair, it would be a little naive to think that we could hand out inspirational moments like some kind of kitschy swag. At the same time, it would be awfully useful to know whether there are things we could do to increase the likelihood that a given freshman would say that they could point to a specific experience in their first year that helped them clarify their life or career goals.
After testing a host of possibilities, we found five items that significantly increased the likelihood of this perspective among our freshmen. Interestingly, in addition to a set of experiences that come from all facets of a residential college life these items indicate a certain type of experience that provides some guidance for our work. Here are those five items:
- How frequently did your faculty ask you to try to understand someone else’s views by imagining how an issue looks from his or her perspective?
- My instructors recommended specific out-of-class experiences that would enhance my learning and growth.
- My adviser asked me about my career goals and post-graduate aspirations.
- My out-of-class experiences helped involve me in community service off-campus.
- About how often have you had serious conversations with students who are very different from you?
Again, as we’ve found in other analyses of our student data, the ideal college experience depends upon the work that each of us do, no matter if it is inside or outside of a classroom. But today I want to highlight the role of faculty reflected in these items. Instructors who often ask students to practice perspective-taking in order to better understand someone else’s views, instructors who take the time to recommend specific out-of-class learning experiences, and advisers (in other words, faculty who are first-year advisers) who ask students about their career goals and post-graduate aspirations all appear to significantly contribute to the quality of our students’ educational experience. Students who experience these kinds of faculty interactions seem to be more likely to be able to point to specific moments in their first year experience that helped them hone in on their post-graduate goals.
The other thing I like about this list of faculty interactions is that, no matter the course or the discipline, at least one of these items seems possible. If your course doesn’t lend itself to perspective-taking exercises, you could point students toward particularly valuable educational experiences on campus or in the community. If your class is composed of students who are already highly involved, you could engage them in perspective-taking skill development. And when students engage you outside of class, you could take a moment to ask them about their life goals beyond college. I hope you will consider finding a way to plug one of these items into your regular interactions with students. Good luck with your spring term!
Make it a good day,
Mark