1. Student spiritual development: A guide for the integration of living and learning
Introduction
Thank you for coming and for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on the connection between student development and our strategic planning process.
It is an honor to share some of the lessons students have taught me in developing my understanding of higher education and the role we play in student reflection, learning, and engagement.
My work these past few years has been to study and understand student development in the context of spiritual growth.
Deborah Cady Melzer, Ph.D.
Vice President for Student Development
Le Moyne College

2. Session Overview Reflective exercise Overview of spiritual development
Engaging big questions
Integrative learning
Cross collaboration opportunities
Discussion
Today, I’ll begin with a reflection exercise that highlights some of the student stories I’ve heard to inform my own understanding of student spirituality.
Then, I hope to give an overview of the theoretical foundations of student spiritual development particularly as it has focused on my research regarding student narratives
Then we’ll make some connections between student spiritual development and work around many of the initiatives we’ve all done on integrative learning practices.
Through this integrative work, I’ll share some practices that help systematize cross collaboration opportunities with our colleagues in academic affairs.
Finally, we’ll have some conversation and discussion about your interests and work but even though this may be at the end please stop me with your questions and comments.

3. Reflection James Maria Sarah
To begin, I’d like to share some student reflections that have been shared with me. I should say that their identities have been adapted to protect their privacy. I hope their stories begin our own reflections on student spiritual development.
Share stories

4. Spiritual Development involves…
an internal process of seeking personal authenticity, genuineness, and wholeness as an aspect of identity development.
the process of continually transcending one’s current locus of centricity.
developing a greater connectedness to self and others through relationships and union with community.
deriving meaning, purpose, and direction in one’s life.
increasing openness to exploring a relationship with an intangible and pervasive power or essence that exists beyond human existence and rational human knowing (Love & Talbot, 1999, p. 364).
Theoretical Background
But before we explore spirituality as a tool for development, I want to first give some background and clarify what I mean by spiritual development.
Deeply personal values and beliefs
I understand the hesitation to use spiritual development as a lens to view our implementation of the strategic plan as spirituality, faith and religion are often deeply personal and difficult thoughts to explain and discuss. The discussion of spiritual/religious matters often strikes at the core of what we believe and who we are and as such can be difficult to discuss.
Change over time
We are also challenged by spirituality often being seen as a moving target. Because if any of you are anything like me, my views of my spiritual life have changed and continue to change over time.
Connection to Kohlberg – not content but process over time
Despite these challenges, I want us to consider spiritual development as a lens into our collective work with student learning. To help face those challenges, it is important to keep in mind Kohlberg’s lessons in association with moral development. It is not the content by which we are looking at a student’s or even our own spiritual development but rather the process of our ways of making meaning of the world over time.

5. Spirituality is…
Meaning, reflection, wholeness, connection, culture, inward orientation, outward practice, sacrifice, search, higher meaning, obedience, personal growth, identity
When I asked students how they defined spirituality, their responses were not surprisingly diverse in their understanding. Students used words such as meaning, reflection, wholeness, connection, culture, inward orientation, outward practice, sacrifice, search, higher meaning, obedience, personal growth, identity.

6. Student views on spirituality
A sense of wholeness in one’s identity or a connection with the divine Both a personal and communal quest
As you can see, students describe spirituality as …
A sense of wholeness in one’s identity or a connection with the divine
Both a personal and communal quest

7. Fowler’s stages of faith development
Primal faith
Intuitive projective faith
Mythic-literal faith
Synthetic-conventional faith
Individuative-reflective faith
Conjunctive faith
Universalizing faith
As our understanding of spirituality in higher education matured, spiritual development theories were grounded in two theoretical perspectives: cognitive development theory and person-environment interactions.
Spiritual development as a cognitive development theory requires increased cognitive complexity in the ways in which one makes meaning in the world (Love, 2001). To move through each cognitive stage, students encounter challenges, dilemmas, and diverse viewpoints that provide the occasion for developing higher-level thinking skills.
The cognitive stages begin with a reliance on an authority for meaning, and, as this authority is questioned, students make cognitive progress by seeing multiple perspectives.
James Fowler (1976) constructed a theoretical model for student spiritual development through the lens of these cognitive student development theorists.

8. Park’s Mentoring Community
The peer group is the most influential vehicle for student growth and development (Astin, 1993; Dalton & Petrie, 1997; Parks, 2000; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). Students work through life shipwrecks within the context of a supportive and challenging environment (Parks, 2000).
The person-environment view of spiritual development focuses on the relational context
students make meaning through their peer relationships
Sharon Parks (2000) – development through examining community relationships.
The mutual shaping relationship between one’s identity and his or her community results in a developmental progression not unlike the cognitive theories where students progress from a closed, like-minded community to a more open, inclusive, and diverse community.
Parks (2000) defines the “mentoring community” as the primary conduit for college student spiritual development.
Mentoring community - peer groups support and challenge to make meaning.
Shipwreck – foreclosure as a result of too much
Example of shipwrecks - learning new knowledge in a class that challenges a childhood teaching, loosing a friend to differing lifestyle choices and values, finding out that a trusted authority such as a parent or beloved teacher was inaccurate about a source of knowledge or truth, a roommate conflict where students have to confront a peer for the first time, the death of a friend or family member
Mentoring community helps students through the shipwreck

9. Spirituality as a tool for…
Student Development
Engaging Meaningful Conversations
Cross unit collaborations
I found that students use spirituality as a tool for their
Own development
To engage in meaningful conversations
And to understand connections between classroom and out-of – classroom learning which affords us an opportunity for cross unit collaborations.

10. Student Development
Understanding Self Self-actualization Vocational Discernment Values clarification Wholeness Understanding Others Openness Conversation Strategies Conversation Outcomes
Understanding the World
Philosophy of Life
Privilege
Service to Others
Understanding Faith
Comfort with the unknown
Relationship with the divine
Connection between faith and life
The identity and cognitive development process of college students is a progression toward autonomy and inter-dependence with less reliance on authority as sources of validation, information and ‘truth.’ Spiritual conversations often present paradoxes in life and ultimately lead toward a comfort with the unknown—a stage described in cognitive development theories.
When we engage students in spiritual conversations, we can utilize spirituality as a discovery tool in understanding the self, other, world and faith during the cognitive development process.
Exploring meaning-of-life questions enables students to make the developmental leap as they come to terms with the tension of opposing ‘truths.’

11. Diverse Conversations
Relational Context
Encountering Otherness
Common Language of Understanding
Parks (2000) suggest that student encounters with “otherness” in the mentoring community provides a vehicle for an awareness and appreciation of identity differences.
In order to achieve an awareness and appreciation of our identity differences, two characteristics must exist in the mentoring community: friendship and diverse identities.
Within these mentoring communities, students use spiritual language to explore difference. It is the spiritual language rather than a religious or even cultural language that provides a commonality to safely engage in discussing potentially contentious issues.
In addition, everyone has questions about the meaning-of-life, the values of faith, hope and love, the future and our place within the world, and those common spiritual questions allow students to engage in deeper questions using common spiritual language without fear of diverse answers that could divide.

12. Conversation Strategies
Conversation Strategy in the Context of Mentoring Communities
Event spurred a meaning of life question
Self-reflective thought processing
Test out ideas or beliefs on like minded peers
Test out and/or debate ideas or beliefs with perceived otherness
In addition to common language, students learn a systematic conversation strategy often resembling the following:
An event such as the war, a campus event, or engaging classroom discussion provokes a meaning-of-life question.
The event encourages students to ask several valid questions and often inspires self-reflective thought about the potential consequences of their own values, beliefs, and attitudes concerning a particular issue.
Students then “test out” their ideas, beliefs, and questions with a group of trusted, which often means “like-minded,” peers.
As students feel more confident over their four years of college, they might further “test out” their “truth” by debating their ideas in conversation with peers of “otherness.”
Conversations of difference particularly require the final step of engagement for students to encounter others as a way of learning and growing.

13. Cross Unit Collaborations
High impact practices
Core Components
Jesuit pedagogy
Spiritual development offers some foundation for many of the cross unit collaborations we do particularly in Jesuit Higher Education.
I want to share with you some of the ways I’ve used my understanding of spiritual development to inform my practice particularly around the integrative learning.
I’ve been further informed by the high impact practices, developing core components of programs like Living and learning communities and certainly Jesuit pedagogy.

14. High impact practices First year seminars and experiences,
Common intellectual experiences,
Learning communities,
Writing-intensive courses,
Collaborative assignments and projects.
Undergraduate research,
Diversity and global learning,
Community-based learning,
Internships
Capstone courses and projects,
Academic advising integrated into curriculum
Association of American Colleges and Associations names 11 educational practices that they deem having high impact.
Most of us do some if not all of these practices.
To be distinctive as Jesuit institutions, these best practices need to be integrative – early practices lead into latter ones
And, it needs to accessible to all students and ultimately a common experience and not a unique one.
These practices students see as not simply an exploration of their intellectual growth but also their spiritual growth.
These often become the shipwrecks that instigate student conversations around meaning of life issues.

15. Core components
These are best practices because they provide opportunities for students to integrate their curricular and co-curricular lives.
Curricular
Designated Courses Exploring Vocational Questions
Integrated Seminars
Integration:
Area of Focus
DSJ – Passion Projects
Co-curricular
Community Life
Community Dinners
Mentoring
Programming

16. Jesuit pedagogy
These core components of integrative learning programs not surprisingly resemble Jesuit pedagogy
Experience a Convocation speaker (Greg Mortensen who wrote 3 Cups of Tea), reflect upon it during small groups during a First Year Experience Class where questions of justice, equity and citizenship are raised and then students take action by developing residence hall programs that connect with his organization Pennies for Peace.

17. Jesuit student affairs
Accompaniment
Exploring Questions of Meaning
Well-educated solidarity
What we are charged with…
We accompany students along their college journey as we sit, learn and struggle with them. This is our opportunity to model a way of being.
I know that I teach more about Jesuit tradition, values and mission by modeling my own spiritual life in the work that I do daily than any new initiative, policy or practice I create.
A Shift in my expectations toward deeper and more meaningful questions. I understand our need as educators to go where students are at. It is important to understand where students stand in their developmental process. However, to truly achieve the excellence Magis drives us towards – I also need to understand where students not only are but where they want to be.
It is no longer sufficient to educate the whole person. We face a current culture of individualism that requires us to develop strategies for a well educated solidarity.

18. Student Voice
If the world was void of uncertainty, then we wouldn’t need spirituality as a lens to understand the world. If we lived in a certain world, rationality would lead us to knowledge and to truth just fine. Somehow all that is happening in today’s world can not simply be explained or found to be true by rational methods alone. My Jesuit education not only allows but encourages me to seek truth and knowledge through my education, my faith, my experiences of the world, and my inner soul.

19. Conclusion The Deck Prism
I thought I would end the same way I began with a reflection. This time it is about a sailboat deck prism.
In my senior year at Saint Michael’s College, Fr. Michael Cronogue, Director of Campus Ministry handed me this sailboat deck prism. The deck prism is used on sailboats as a vehicle to shed sunlight from the outside world into the lower cabin of the ship. He suggested the deck prism as an image to remind me of the ways in which student life empowers students to enter a journey – a journey into the depths of their being so that they can grown into the potential of who they always wished to be. I have carried this image of the sailboat prism into my professional life and particularly into my study on student spiritual development. Similar to the prism, spirituality has empowered college students to explore their deepest yearnings, fears, hopes and dreams. In addition, spirituality has shed new light, new experiences and new learning on understanding the unique and diverse gifts we each bring to this world. I am thankful to Fr. Mike for sharing this image and giving me the tools to see the light in the depths of our hearts.

20. Discussion
How might the developmental perspective of today’s college student affect our role as student affairs educators in the Jesuit tradition?
What opportunities and challenges do we face in being called as the authentic mentors, student development and Jesuit tradition suggests we be, to our students?

21. Contact Information
Deb Cady Melzer VP for Student Development Le Moyne College