http://freejosh.pbwiki.com/

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Study Religion More Not Less

Religion must be studied in its historical and emotional context.

“First, the word ‘faith’ in this and many other contexts, is a euphemism for ‘religion,’ ” he wrote. “A university should not try to hide what it is studying in warm-and-fuzzy code words.”

Faith is more than a mere euphemism.

The word comes with credibility in excess of self confidence that it does not deserve. Myth must be relegated to its proper position in higher education if the religious component is to be stripped from organized violence and other abuse.

Infidels by Dave Anderson must become required reading.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Harvard Moves Ahead on Curricular Reform

In October, a faculty panel at Harvard University issued a draft plan to change the undergraduate curricular requirements for the first time since 1979, proposing that certain broad subjects be required, while giving choice within those areas for a range of courses. On Wednesday, the panel released the final version of its proposals, which now go to the faculty for consideration and expected approval (with tweaks always possible). The final version keeps the basic framework from October, but adds one broad topic in the humanities and formally removes the initial designation of religion as its own required topic.

While there have been plenty of quibbles over the version released in October, it has generally received praise — both in Cambridge and elsewhere, where Harvard’s general education choices are always eyed as a potential model.

The approach outlined by the panel would replace very broad categories like foreign cultures and science with considerably more specific areas for study. All undergraduates would have to take a course that focused on the United States and the world, for example. At the same time, the faculty panel avoided an overly rigid formula full of required courses (likely to have been unpopular with the students and viewed as impractical by professors) and also avoided a return to distribution requirements, which while providing breadth also allow students to ignore many areas they don’t want to study.

Both Derek Bok, Harvard’s president, and Jeremy R. Knowles, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, issued statements praising the report. Bok said that the recommendations would create “a thoughtful and coherent structure to further the aims of a strong undergraduate education.” While Harvard is expected to name a new president shortly, and the curricular review started under the former president, Lawrence H. Summers, the turnover is not expected to delay or derail the process.

When the panel presented its draft plan in October, it would have required students to take seven courses in the following categories:

*      Cultural traditions and cultural change.
*      The ethical life.
*      The United States and the world (one each in the U.S. and the world).
*      Reason and faith.
*      Science and technology (one in a life science and one in a physical science).

While making some changes in nomenclature, the committee made two larger changes in the final version. It added a new humanities category and — as it did in an intermediary draft — broadened the “reason and faith” requirement (which was seen by some as too focused on religion) to the category of “culture and belief.”

Now the plan calls for students to take one course in each of the following eight categories:

*      Aesthetic and interpretive understanding.
*      Culture and belief.
*      Empirical reasoning.
*      Ethical reasoning.
*      Science of living systems.
*      Science of the physical universe.
*      Societies of the world.
*      The United States and the world.

The first category is seen as a boosting of the humanities portion of the new curriculum. “Reading a poem, looking at a painting, and listening to a piece of music are complex capacities that build an informed sensitivity, an interaction between the intellect and the senses,” the report says, in explaining the significance of this requirement. “Students need to know how to interpret cultural works — to know, for example, how to distinguish the literal and the symbolic, something that is crucial to evaluating and making sense of everything from religious texts and lyric poems to pop songs and motion pictures.”

Courses in this category, the report says, should “develop students’ skills in criticism,” “introduce students to primary texts and/or works of art in one or more media,” and when possible include out-of-classroom visits to exhibits, performances, readings, etc.

One of the proposals in the October draft that received considerable attention was the requirement for study of reason and faith, which would have required in some way study of religion. That was amended — first in December and finalized Wednesday — to a requirement on culture and belief. The proposal to focus on religion drew criticism from some prominent Harvard professors, such as Steven Pinker, who wrote in The Harvard Crimson that the proposal was flawed in logically and rhetorically.

“First, the word ‘faith’ in this and many other contexts, is a euphemism for ‘religion,’ ” he wrote. “A university should not try to hide what it is studying in warm-and-fuzzy code words.”

Pinker, a professor of psychology, added: “Second, the juxtaposition of the two words makes it sound like ‘faith’ and ‘reason’ are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing, and we have to help students navigate between them. But universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith — believing something without good reasons to do so — has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these. Imagine if we had a requirement for ‘Astronomy and Astrology’ or ‘Psychology and Parapsychology.’ It may be true that more people are knowledgeable about astrology than about astronomy, and it may be true that astrology deserves study as a significant historical and sociological phenomenon. But it would be a terrible mistake to juxtapose it with astronomy, if only for the false appearance of symmetry.

While the final report of the Harvard panel did change the name and broaden the category, the report still includes a strong argument for the study of religion. “Religion has been, and continues to be, a force shaping identity and behavior throughout the world. Harvard is a secular institution, but religion is an important part of our students’ lives,” the report says. “When they get to college, students often struggle to sort out the relationship between their own beliefs and practices and those of fellow students, and the relationship of religious belief to the resolutely secular world of the academy.”

— Scott Jaschik

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Focus on Code of Conduct

The source of the money is a tangent. All research must have the purpose and any potential bias disclosed in the credits. The use of the institution name must be used only after peer review of the report.

Ban tobacco or any other money lends credence to the taint of all research.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Tobacco on Trial in California

During a meeting last month to discuss banning University of California researchers from taking support from tobacco companies, several members of the university’s Board of Regents argued that such a ban would violate academic freedom and that it was unnecessary because the university already has a faculty code of conduct to guard against the sort of corporate manipulation of science that proponents of the tobacco ban fear.

Jefferson Coombs, the alumni regent, said that passing the ban “would establish a dangerous precedent that threatens academic freedom,” and would “convey a signal that we do not trust the judgment of our world-class academics, faculty and administrators at the University of California. There’s a reason why these codes of conduct are in place.”

Regent Sherry Lansing raised similar concerns, stating that because of the university system’s existing code of conduct, which each campus carries out in its own way, “I believe that [professors] are able to do research without being corrupted.” Regent Judith Hopkinson voiced agreement with Lansing’s views.

But critics cite two pieces of evidence that they say belie assertions that the faculty code of conduct has guarded the university from the influence of the tobacco companies’ agenda. Last August, in a ruling that ended a multi-year federal racketeering and fraud lawsuit against nine tobacco companies, Judge Gladys Kessler criticized the companies for manipulating science to fit claims that tobacco is harmless.

In her final opinion, which ran over 1,700 pages, Kessler wrote that tobacco companies and law firms “identified ‘friendly’ scientific witnesses, subsidized them with grants from the Center for Tobacco Research and the Center for Indoor Air Research, paid them enormous fees, and often hid the relationship between those witnesses and the industry.” She specifically cited four projects managed by the tobacco companies to alter research questions on the health effects of second-hand smoke.

One researcher she singled out is James Enstrom, a cancer researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles, whose work was financed by the tobacco industry for a study he published in the British Medical Journal. Enstrom’s study analyzed a data subset that he asked for and received from the American Cancer Society.

Kessler’s finding of fact cites a June 1996 memo between Philip Morris executives discussing Enstrom’s work for Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. Kessler writes that the executives noted that Enstrom’s work was “clearly litigation oriented” and should be “pursued, if at all, in the context of attorney work product.”Enstrom said that he does not understand how he ended up in the judge’s ruling. “It’s completely bogus to have inserted me into that trial,” he said. “Publishing politically incorrect findings is not fraud.”

The regents may not have read Kessler’s ruling, but in early September, four months before the regents’ meeting, the American Cancer Society sent the California regents a letter charging Enstrom with misrepresenting scientific evidence to deny the harmful effects of smoking and second hand smoke.

Michael Thun, vice president for epidemiology at the American Cancer Society, said Enstrom is “an example of someone who is at one of the UC institutions and who was used by the tobacco industry through its funding.” Thun said that the society had collaborated with Enstrom on the study that he published in the British Medical Journal and had provided him with a data set.

But the society later withdrew support and cautioned Enstrom numerous times that the data would not provide useful information on second hand smoke. Enstrom ignored these warnings, Thun said, and never alerted the society that his funding came from Philip Morris.

“That paper was widely publicized by the tobacco companies to stop smoke-free laws,” said Thun. “I don’t know that he was corrupted, but he was used.” Thun said that the University of California’s office of the president contacted cancer society officials for more information about the charges they raised, but only after the regents’ meeting.

Enstrom dismissed the accusations. “I did nothing wrong with the American Cancer Society and until they provide some information, then their charges are libelous,” he said in a telephone interview.

Richard Blum, chairman of the university’s Board of Regents, said he does not think that the regents had received the letter in advance of last month’s meeting. “They should have had it,” he said, adding that he is concerned that the University of California’s name is attached to research that Enstrom did for the tobacco companies.

“I can assure you that we will get to the bottom of it,” he said, adding that the regents will discuss the issue further in May. “Philip Morris used our name and Enstrom’s name to promote their products.”

Contacted about his comments at the regents’ meeting, Coombs said that he does not remember receiving the letter from the American Cancer Society. “My understanding is that the policies and code of conduct need to be followed,” he said. When asked about the finding of fact by Kessler, he said, “If there is proof, then I would want to have more information. Not that I am calling into question the conclusions of a federal judge.”

Jennifer Ward, a spokeswoman for the University of California’s Office of the President, said that the provost sent a letter to the American Cancer Society after the regents’ meeting asking for more information. The letter is signed by Wyatt R. Hume, UC provost and and executive vice president for academic affairs. The letter asks if the cancer society is accusing Enstrom of scientific misconduct and, if so, to provide specific information supporting such a charge.

Ward also provided a letter from Robert C. Dynes, president of the UC system, in which he alerted the regents about the letter from the cancer society. The letter is dated January 31, the day Inside Higher Ed contacted the president’s office to ask if the regents, in considering the ban on tobacco funding, were aware of the cancer society’s letter.

— Paul D. Thacker

Two comments to the below article:

Beyond Her Control

Only an organized religious institution could be this insensitive to the need for love and affection at a time of stress.

Without an expression of a belief in God, this problem is one of God’s choosing and beyong Julie’s control.

My hope is that there is a hell and the people responsible for infliction of pain upon Julie go there.

This should never have become a legal issue. But now that it is, it should be resolved on a motion for summary judgment.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

No Religious Exception

This case should begin with a challenge to the existence of a religious exception. Law requires proof, not belief. Facts, not myth. See Dave Anderson, The Infidels. This is must reading.

FM, on behalf of the legal profession, I apologize for the poor education on religion and the application of the First Amendment to religious issues provided by law schools in this country.

Reforms must begin with law students if we are to have a republic. We have lost it for now to big business and political donations.

No reforms occur without the support of a free press. Bill Moyers and the 3,500 followers who went to Memphis and their supporters are the champions — Into the Buzzsaw edited by Kristina Borjesson is the source book for the cause.

Best wishes Julie — Those who love you are all that count. The rest of them can wallow in their stone age self righteousness.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Gender Change Costs Dean a Job

Religious institutions have long had leeway to hire and fire based on creed. But what happens when a man who professes the faith also starts to appear on campus as a woman?
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At Spring Arbor University, a Michigan institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, the pending termination of a transgender faculty member (and ordained Baptist minister) has raised just that question. John — who now goes by Julie – Nemecek, the former associate dean for The School of Adult Studies, said she was demoted after sharing her diagnosis of gender identity disorder with supervisors. She has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint, alleging that the university discriminated against her based on sex and perceived disability.

Meanwhile, Spring Arbor asserts its right to counter behavior in “direct conflict” with its religious ideals. In a written statement, Spring Arbor’s leadership affirms that its expectation for faculty to “model Christian character” is “clearly communicated to students, faculty, and administrators alike, and is protected by the U.S. Civil Rights Act and supported by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.”

Nemecek, a 16-year employee who is on hormone treatments and typically dresses “en femme” (her phrasing) when in public, said she first informed the president of Spring Arbor of her gender identity disorder diagnosis — and her plans to treat it in part with behavioral modifications, including wearing makeup and fingernail polish and dressing in feminine clothes — in December 2005. Nemecek said the university subsequently demoted her from the associate deanship position to a non-tenure track associate professor of adult studies position, with an accompanying 20 percent pay cut, and this winter informed her that she would be terminated as of June.

The termination decision comes after more than a year of isolation and restriction, Nemecek said. Under the terms of her current contract, Nemecek, who has her doctoral degree in education, is to teach only online courses and to work from home. The conditions of the contract, as provided by Nemecek, also call for her to “refrain from discussing his transgender situation with Spring Arbor University personnel or students,” requires that she not wear makeup, feminine clothing, or otherwise represent herself as female or transgender while on campus, requires her to seek counseling from a Christian professional who could provide “alternative perspectives,” and states that the “university will request permission to receive updates on the state of his condition.”

Subsequently, Nemecek said she received correspondence in October citing her for, among other things, wearing makeup and earrings to a campus learning fair and wearing university apparel to the grocery store (“Unless the university wishes to provide me with $300 or so to replace my SAU paraphernalia, I have no intention of changing my clothing to go to the grocery store,” the EEOC complaint reads).

Mediation on the EEOC complaint, in which Nemecek seeks unspecified damages and a reinstatement to her former position or a fiscally comparable faculty appointment, is scheduled for March, she said. If the mediation fails, she plans to file a federal lawsuit.

“What they have from the state is a statement that they can hire Christians. My beliefs are about as orthodox as they come and, if anything, this has strengthened my faith, not weakened it,” said Nemecek, who identifies as a conservative evangelical and does not plan to undergo sexual reassignment surgery in part due to her respect for her marriage.

“The university has a very clear statement of faith. I’m in full agreement with everything in it. They have a code of conduct; I’m in full agreement with what they say there too. They really have nothing in either of their statements or the denomination they’re affiliated with that would justify the way they’re responding to me,” Nemecek said.

A university spokesman referred all comment on the matter to a Grand Rapids-based public relations firm, which confirmed Spring Arbor’s decision not to renew Nemecek’s contract after the spring semester.

“We first learned of John’s situation a year ago and have worked closely with him ever since. At the same time, as an evangelical Christian university, Spring Arbor requires its faculty and administrators to be Christians and to follow biblical principles in all aspects of their lives as part of their positions as leaders of the university and our students. Our curriculum integrates faith in all aspects of our liberal arts education, and we expect our faculty to model Christian character as an example for our students,” the statement released by the public relations firm reads in part.

“Spring Arbor University has faced situations in the past where the actions of faculty members have been in direct conflict with the ideals we uphold. We approach all situations like this with grace and in all cases work with the individual to give them the opportunity for restoration. However, if they choose to persist with activities that are inconsistent with the Christian faith, we have a responsibility to take further action,” it concludes.

“It’s a really messy area of law,” said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington University in Washington. “The questions involve the right of religious organizations to hire people based on religion, but at times the categories of religion creep over into other protected categories.”

The university will likely be on strong ground when it comes to the removal of Nemecek from her associate deanship, Tuttle said, since religious institutions are granted broad latitude by the courts to pick and choose their leaders. The termination of a faculty member, on the other hand, is usually subject to more stringent legal analysis, he said. But dozens of similar cases are out there in litigation, Tuttle said, and courts often draw fine lines about when religious institutions are and aren’t protected. “It’ll be interesting to watch.”

— Elizabeth Redden

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This disguised psychology ends in war

The approval of the right to accredit Bible Colleges came up before the US Department of Education National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity during its December 4, 2006 meeting.

Jefound and I filed a written objection, request for the opportunity to present an oral presentation, and made a presentation to the Committee. Our work and the hearing transcript are published at our website at http://jefound.org. (The department of education would not allow us to video the proceedings – this must change during the rule making procedures now in progress).

In short, study of any religion other than for its historical value has no business as a higher (or lower) education subject and certainly is a violation of the First Amendment when it is condoned as a religion by an agency of the Federal government.

The Bible at Deuteronomy 13:6-9 advocates death to infidels. This is the root source of all religious violence against non-believers (The Infidels — Dave Anderson — 2005; The Legacy of Jihad — Dr. Andrew Bostom 2005).

The Association for Biblical Higher Education advocates strict adherence to Biblical teachings as the word of God on its website. http://abhe.gospelcom.net/

Spiritual is history, myth, or psychology and should be studied as such.

Educators have let the American people down by allowing this material to be taught as the word of God.

There is no mass criticism of the failure of the United States government to demand the separation of Islam from the Afghanistan and Iraq Constitutions because political leaders and journalists do not want to admit the connection between Islam Theocracy and American Theocracy. For a discussion of American Theocracy see Kevin Phillips -American Theocracy — 2006.

Einstein said the first lines of defense to Fascism are the educators. Educators failed the Germans at the time of the invasion of Poland and have failed the Americans at the time of invasion of the Middle East.

We either improve higher education or perish. The first step is to recognize that the First Amendment protects the individual right to believe in God, not organized religions’ right to teach exclusiveness and hate.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Spiritual Accountability

Susie, like her older brother and sister, enrolled at a Christian university in her home state. While at the university, she became increasingly involved in issues of social justice, helping out regularly at a soup kitchen and organizing a food drive. She attended chapel weekly, as required, but reported that she frequently daydreamed or took it as ‘down time’ from her busy schedule. Has Susie grown spiritually in college? To what degree? (Please round to the nearest whole number).
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It’s a task few assessment experts would envy — a mandate to measure a student’s spiritual growth in a world far more complex than that simplistically sketched above. How to make the seemingly subjective experience of faith objective, to measure a college student’s spiritual growth as you would a child’s height, with penciled marks noting an inch here, an inch there, on a four-foot paper ruler taped to the president’s door?

For many religiously affiliated institutions, that’s not a hypothetical question. As the accountability pressures on higher education grow, and words like “measurable outcomes” become common parlance in academe, religious colleges are increasingly embracing a need to measure the spiritual and moral outcomes they promise in their mission statements to deliver. They’re seeking ways not only to measure their own students’ spiritual commitments — and how those commitments might change from freshman to senior year — but also how they as institutions stack up, spiritually speaking, relative to peer colleges.

“We have developed a very strong emphasis on assessment as part of our accreditation process,” says Randall Bell, associate director for the Association for Biblical Higher Education. “What we tell schools is that you are supposed to articulate your intentions and then examine the results of your activities to see if they’re commensurate with your intentions. Most of our schools intend to help our students grow spiritually, so if that’s one of their intentions, they’re looking for ways to assess if that’s in fact happening or not,” he says.

“We wanted to be in some position where we could begin to help make the case with something more than just anecdotal evidence that what we say is integral to the educational experience on one of our campuses is actually taking place,” adds Ronald Mahurin, vice president for professional development and research at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. “If we say we have a unique mission and identity, are there reasonable ways in which we can help explain this to a broader public — not only what we do, but how effective we are in doing this?”

The leaders of public and private institutions alike are thinking about spirituality these days, as the data suggest that’s what their students are thinking about, too. Researchers at the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles released data in 2005 suggesting that freshmen care about spiritual matters far more than was widely believed — and that they find guidance from colleges sorely lacking in this domain. The researchers are surveying those same students as juniors this spring to pinpoint any changes in their spiritual lives and the experiences that may have brought these changes about.

“We feel very strongly that ignoring the aspect of spiritual development is ignoring the whole student, especially when we learn from our data that our students are very interested in that,” says Helen Astin, one of the principal researchers for the Spirituality in Higher Education survey. Researchers hope to survey 50,000 students this spring at 150 institutions across the various sectors of higher education, says Astin, who stresses that tapping into students’ spiritual lives is an avenue for enhancing student engagement more generally.

But a key difference is that while Astin says she hopes all types of institutions use the UCLA data to inform their attention to students’ spiritual lives, the publics and non-religious privates generally have the luxury of taking the data or leaving it. More and more, religious institutions — pressured to provide outcomes data on their accreditation reports relative to “mission” — don’t see themselves as having that luxury (or, in many cases, even wanting it).

As such, the past five years have been a time of tremendous growth in “spiritual assessment” efforts tailored for students at religious colleges. Some of the efforts are primarily research-oriented, while others are explicitly intended to be used for accountability purposes, as well as to inform decision-making and identify best practices.

“The idea is that we’re really not trying to measure doctrinal beliefs; there are other measures to do that,” says Todd Hall, an associate professor of psychology at Biola University, a Christian institution in California, and founder of Concentus Assessment Solutions, a company that offers a Web-based, 170-item “Spiritual Transformation Inventory” designed to quantitatively measure spiritual vitality. “It’s a little easier to measure that, just to ask students what they believe. What’s been difficult, and what we’re trying to measure, is spiritual and character development.”

“We’re trying,” Hall adds, “to tap into the gut-level measures of someone’s experience with God.”

The Measures

But what size tap do you use? Where do you drill? How deep? It’s not so simple as solely asking if a student prays — but also how often, what type of prayer and, the big question, the meaning derived by the student through prayer, as Hall explains.

Many of the current efforts to assess spiritual growth in college students evolved, to various degrees, out of the Faithful Change Project, an early effort to patiently measure the steps in a student’s spiritual growth from year to year.

The ongoing Faithful Change research initiative tracked a cohort of students at six Christian colleges from freshman year through their graduation in 2002, relying both on quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews that are still being coded, well, quantitatively. Researchers attempted to measure the students’ spiritual growth across the stages of faith development identified by James Fowler, a theologian and developmental psychologist who recently retired from his position leading Emory University’s Center for Ethics.

“It’s not so much the belief statements that are made, not so much the content, or what might be considered doctrine, as it is the cognitive structure,” says Arthur Nonneman, the chair of the psychology department at Kentucky’s Asbury College. Nonneman is currently completing the coding of the interviews along with Gay Holcomb, an assistant professor of psychology and director of institutional research and assessment at Asbury, a Christian institution. In the interviews, Nonneman and Holcomb looked for evidence of critical thinking: Is a student’s faith “borrowed” from parents or peers, or has a student’s faith been analyzed, questioned, fought with, owned?

Their main finding after completing coding of interviews for the students’ first three years (progress on the initiative slowed after a grant from the John Templeton Foundation was largely exhausted) is that crises foster spiritual growth — not just emotional crises, but also significant intellectual challenges in which students are exposed to diverse ways of thinking through classroom work or multicultural experiences.

“When you’re around people who think differently, you wind up getting challenged. You have to defend yourself and in the process of doing that, you start examining your own beliefs,” says Holcomb.

Out of this research-oriented Faithful Change initiative, Todd Hall, formerly involved with the project, spun off to create a more time-efficient, purely quantitative spiritual assessment.

Hall’s Spiritual Transformation Inventory attempts to assess the strength of a student’s relationship with God. Asked to indicate their level of agreement with various statements (from strongly disagree to strongly agree), students select their reactions to prompts like, “I come to know God more fully through my own suffering,” “There is a least one person who is a spiritual mentor in my life,” or “I have friendships in which we regularly challenge each other on our spiritual growth.” About 20 student-specific questions ask about the role that institution-sponsored activities, such as chapel service and ministry sessions, play in fostering the divine relationship: “What impact have mentoring relationships with faculty at your school had on your overall spiritual development?” “What impact have praise and worship sessions sponsored by your school had on your spiritual development?”

Hall’s questions, tailored for Christian schools, are rooted in emotion, as opposed to the more cognitive structure embraced by the Faithful Change Project. To what degree does a student have an awareness of God’s presence? To what degree, Hall asks, does the student participate in a spiritual community, and feel a sense of belonging to it? How securely does a student experience that relationship with God?

About 25 institutions affiliated with the Council for Christian College & Universities participated in the Spiritual Transformation Inventory in the 2005-6 school year, with 15 to 20 participating this past semester, Hall says. A smaller-scale collaboration with the Association for Biblical Higher Education began this fall, and Hall is also launching a wide-scale marketing effort to reach Christian high schools. Not only do students get individual score reports deciphering their results, institutions also get group reports that show how their students’ scores stand relative to those reported at other Christian and biblical institutions. “Essentially, what we’re doing is developing national norms, so the schools have a benchmark to compare themselves against,” says Hall. “It’s designed to provide some fodder for reflection,” to encourage institutions to notice their “gaps” and potentially take steps to address areas where they fall below average, he explains.

Meanwhile, many Roman Catholic colleges are engaged in obtaining similar data to assess institutional performance. For instance, Ellen Boylan, director of institutional research and assessment at Marywood University, in Pennsylvania, has designed a set of 20 questions that 36 Catholic institutions are appending to this spring’s administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement.

Students are asked to agree or disagree, on a five-point scale, with prompts like, “The mission of this institution is widely understood by students,” “The heritage of the founding religious community of the institution is evident here,” and “The faculty at this institution discuss the ethical implications of what is being studied.” Other prompts tap into social values: “The faculty, staff and students here are respectful of people of different religions,” “The environment here encourages students to develop an appreciation of diversity,” and “This institution offers opportunities for volunteering and community service.”

On an institutional level, Boylan will be able to measure the changing attitudes of Marywood seniors, who first answered her survey questions as freshmen. More broadly, Boylan, who recently received a Teagle Foundation grant for the research, also hopes to find some non-Catholic colleges to participate – the survey is not faith-specific – to provide some comparison data across sectors.

Other researchers at Catholic institutions have adapted the survey on spirituality created by UCLA researchers, says Jim Trainer, director of planning and assessment at Villanova University and a member of the Catholic Higher Education Research Cooperative, a group of institutional researchers. There’s been a conscious effort among Catholic colleges, Trainer says, to conserve resources and “piggyback on the efforts that are already in place.”

Meanwhile, a survey of alumni from a broad spectrum of institutions conducted by a Minnesota-based higher education management consultant firm, Hardwick~Day, for the National Catholic College Admission Association, attempts to answer the question of how the institutions impact spiritual growth through the perspective of graduates. Among the prompts: Whether the college experience helped in integrating faith with other aspects of life and how effective the college was in fostering the development of a sense of purpose in life.

James Day, Hardwick~Day’s principal and founder, says the firm has conducted similar studies commissioned by groups such as the Lutheran Educational Conference of North America and The Annapolis Group, an organization of independent liberal arts colleges. Day says that one benefit of the alumni survey (which focuses on a variety of domains, not just spirituality) is that it allows institutions to gain broader context regarding their successes and weaknesses across the various sectors of higher education.

For example, in the 2004 survey commissioned by the Lutheran association, 58 percent of Lutheran college graduates indicated that they learned more about faith in college, compared to 18 percent of alumni of public flagship universities. In the Catholic colleges survey, conducted this fall and scheduled to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, 80 percent of Catholic college alumni respondents indicated the effectiveness of their college in developing moral principles that can guide actions, compared to 79 percent of respondents from other religious institutions, 56 percent of alumni from non-sectarian private colleges and 35 percent of alumni from flagship publics.

“We’d be disingenuous to say that the market didn’t impact it at all,” Trainer of Villanova says about the emphasis on “spiritual accountability.” Especially in Catholic higher education, where broader debates are happening about how institutions will remain vital as the number of individuals in religious life declines, this type of assessment may be needed not only for accreditation, but also to satisfy a different hunger for accountability — to help make the case to the broader public that religious institutions offer something distinctive, says Trainer. “How is it,” he asks, “that we carry on the catechism of the congregation of X, Y or Z, as the membership of that congregation decreases?”

— Elizabeth Redden