In an age of new ideas, and living in the liberal bubble of the Bay Area, I often hear talks surrounding women’s rights. Here at SCU we have a specific department on women in gender studies, focused on addressing and discussing gender inequalities which is prevalent in society. It’s great that my school is taking initiative on a sensitive but important topic and I am extremely proud to be a student in a school which represents that.

Gender stereotypes…think about it. (Source)

This is why I was surprised when I came across this article. A Center for Men’s Leadership? I never thought of such an organization. Women have always been the ones placed below men in society, and this system called for the need to empower women’s rights. But men were never the ones at a disadvantage. What is the need for this center?

Turns out, the program is part of St. John’s University, an all-male liberal arts college in Minnesota. Context, right? It makes a lot more sense that there is an institution just for men at a men only school! By embracing their gender identity this program aimed to create a safe space for men to come together and expand their conversations into actions to help out the community. According to the article, students involved saw higher academic achievement and developed leadership skills, and it led to community service projects too. Here’s the vision statement of the program, now called Men’s Development Institute.

To develop and foster an environment where men are encouraged and empowered to reach their full potential.To provide a community for men to recognize and celebrate a variety of masculine identities while also acknowledging the issues of male privilege in our gendered culture.

So two take-aways from this:

1) Context context context! Always understand the context surrounding something. Never run to judgement, it is not necessary anyway in my case of writing a research paper. Careful consideration of rhetoric can lead to deeper insights.

2) Safe spaces are important! By purposefully creating spaces where students can come together and share their identity without retaliation, universities can engage students with the community. Networking leads to more opportunities as well. This shows that programs based on student identities can be extremely effective!

As my assignment for class is gathering journal sources and reflecting on the academic conversation which is already being discussed. One important factor to consider when looking at sources is the rhetorical context. This is, to whom is the author attempting to talk to? What is the purpose of the article in the first place?

Wait…who’s talking to who?? (Source)

To understand this concept, we were assigned a reading by Margaret Kantz, a English Professor at Central Missouri State University. This article, which aims to be a guide for students to “use textual sources persuasively.” She explains that we can did this by drawing meaning from the text based on context, not just from the textual information. We need to understand why a argument is being made, not only what the argument is.

I tried to incorporate this strategy closely as I was compiling more and more sources and creating annotated bibliographies for each of them. When describing each of the sources, I not only listed the author’s main points, but also the audience of the articles. I often looked at the journals the articles were published in to see what the targets of the papers were. I also researched the authors themselves; a lot of times they were college professors in specific fields, revealing the purpose of their research.

Anyhow, through Kantz’ article we can see how it is necessary not only to understand the textual information of articles, but all other information surrounding it. This could be the authors, the journal it’s published in, when it was published, all of the other factors which can change how the claims were perceived. By understanding all of this we can finally make sense of these articles as a comprehensive information source.

When I think of sources I think of citations...

So I finished my survey essay…phew. Next up my assignment is to find sources which are related to what I want to research, and enter a conversation of academic writing which has already been established. After my survey report, I decided my topic question would be some think like this:

How can universities take effective approaches to get students more involved in themed centers/programs to maximize the undergraduate experience?

To see if there were some previous research related to my topic, I went to my university’s library website and accessed some databases which I thought would be applicable. (There are so many!) I first took a look at ones which we had sources from educational journals, since I am looking for research related to programming but especially in a higher education setting.

My early searches were struggles. Database searches are not as easy as Google, and I had to refine my searches countless times. I tried combining “higher education” with “centers or programming” and tried adding “effectiveness” or “perceptions” or “involvement,” many terms that I thought could be related. I just kept going and going until I found some research papers that had titles that seemed promising.

The first one was called The Role of Project Activities in the Study of Course “Social Advertising.” Why this one? It has three key words that stood out to me: Project activities (programming?), study (related to education!), and advertising (maybe about how to reach out to students?).

So how useful was this source? Well, I could say that it was somewhat helpful. The topic was about how to create an educational curriculum for students which is program-based and hands-on. This is not necessarily exactly on topic since I want to see how specific programs could effect people and education, but nonetheless there was still some useful insights.

1) The more active, engaging, creative, and self-starting the better! By not just telling students what to do or study but letting them experience it themselves, studying becomes much more meaningful. For my case, if the centers can advertise their programs as hands-on experiences, or brought such events into classrooms, maybe they can expand their outreach on campus.

Creativity is power! (Source)

2) There are a lot of talk about educational curriculum, but not about specific institutions! As I continued my search for related articles, there were many about educational curriculum. This is understandable; you have to change the system to make education more effective. But why aren’t there more research on more specific programs, ones that have themes? Wouldn’t that be a better way to spread a specific cause, or gain actual experience in a field??

This first source led to a hint but also a big question? I am excited to see what other sources will tell me on the same topic……

Hi and welcome back! Finally time to talk about the results and what I found!

To start out, I got about 30 responses, so I didn’t get too many but it was enough to make it fairly credible for the specific demographics which made up the answer pool. Most of those who responded were freshman, so my take-aways are largely based on this assumption.

My sample is perfect for me! (Source)

1) A lot of people know about these centers!
– A good percentage of the people who answered knew the three centers (just in case you forgot they are Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship). The Ignatian center got over 70% recognition, so students know the name of them.

2) The Markkula Center wasn’t as popular as it seems.
– I compared the percentages of students who said they know  each of the centers, and the percentage of students who chose each as their NUMBER 1 choice in terms of how important they are for the students. Markkula Center, which was more known then the Miller center in table 1 lost to the Miller center in table 2. Maybe this could be the difference between the amount of advertising (people know it but don’t actually participate) and good programming (more people care).

3) People aren’t doing things they are passionate about.
– When I compared the terms students choose as what mattered most to them, it often did not match up with the centers’ values. (Look at question 5 in my last post to see the exact question) By comparing these answered to the mission statements of each program, we can say people are not getting involved with the centers which they share the same values with. By changing this, the student experience could be dramatically improved!

4) People aren’t interested at all!!!
-My final finding was a sad one…students are just not getting involved. Overwhelming people showed disinterest in these three centers, although they all do amazing work here at SCU. So that leads to my project for my next essay!

How can we improve programming and advertising at SCU to maximize the undergraduate experience?

Until next time…

The interesting thing about archival research was that I had to make sense of what I found and draw my own conclusions. Instead of proving a theory using research as a tool, I had to make something out of the material I found randomly. So these are my conclusions on my research about the Center for the Studies of Contemporary Values.

1) What were the values the CSCV exposes as a program on campus, especially around religion?

Through closely examining the content and considering when it was written, I found a inner conflict for the school at the time: modernization and religion. SCU was already liberal and becoming modern. They enrolled non-Catholic schools and was accepting of different identities. At the same time, Santa Clara wanted to make sure the Jesuit Mission remained. That’s why by implementing the CSCV, they tried to bring up the role of religion back into the center of conversation on campus. It was their statement to bring back the school’s religious identity into the educational curriculum in a democratic way.

The Mission is still SCU’s symbol.

2) Why are there no information public about the CSCV?

When would you hide information? For me, it seemed like the university was hiding this program. Why wouldn’t you keep the legacy of a once prominent center out of the school’s history? Maybe there was a reason it closed, or maybe it just didn’t do well in terms of publicity or finance. Anyhow, there may have been a deliberate force preventing the spread of information about this program. I could be completely wrong about this, and it may be just the natural order of things coming and going. However, it is still weird that there is absolutely no information about this. My guess is that there is a reason that I will never be able to figure out.

Making sense of a dead end…

At the end, my findings led me to one point: be active and vocal on campus! If there was something I found, it was that how we participate in these programs matter. The school created the CSCV to affect students, and although I do not know how they responded, it surely had a role in the documents ending up in the archives. And maybe if students took different actions, its legacy would have been more known to everyone now, not just hid in the back of the archives. We are a part of history now, so we are the ones creating it!!!!