In some ways, I have been very fortunate to work with incredibly bright and ambitious students at competitive universities. And yet, there are daily instances when I am jolted suddenly in the middle of a compelling discussion with a student who makes a comment that nearly compels me to blurt out loud, “oh, that’s right, you’re only 20 years old!” When given the space to express their passions to or explore ideas without judgment or pretense, most college students are engaging and thoughtful, and, in a culture that glorifies youthfulness, it is all too easy to mistake intelligence or charisma with maturity.
It reminds me of one of my favorite Spanish proverbs, “Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo,” which roughly translates to, “The devil knows more from being old than from being the devil.” I often recall this saying to remind myself of the journey that students are on and to remove unrealistic and unfair expectations we often place on them. In the same way that we would not expect a 19-year old student to be as well traveled or as knowledgeable about food as the average 40-year old, it would be unfair for me to expect the same degree of knowledge from the 19-year old that someone twice that age only acquires through life experience and gained wisdom.
Through my own reflection in courses related to development and the experiences of college students, I have grounded my approach primarily in three theoretical frameworks related to student development. The first is Jeffrey Arnett’s theory of emerging adulthood, which highlights the need to distinguish individuals in the 19-26 age group in developed countries – but I will focus on 18-24 year olds – from those classed as adolescents and adults. These emerging adults are physically mature, but they are still exploring and committing to their beliefs, values, habits, and identity. Additionally, they lack sufficient income, skills, and resources to support themselves or a family and, as a result, they are often dependent on their parents to fulfill and subsidize their basic needs. It is very important to consider this when setting expectations and metrics for college student behavior and success. Going one step further, because most college students are aware of their lack of autonomy and self-sufficiency, practitioners need to be reminded to challenge students to grow and to reach new milestones, in spite of the comfort provided by their parents or college student services.
This leads to the next theory that I find most compelling, William Perry’s model of epistemological and moral development. Like Arnett, Perry considered it necessary to acknowledge the special characteristics of college students and young adults who are developing and growing in significant ways during their time in college. In fact, Perry’s model accounts for the changes that students often undergo as undergraduates, often shifting their values and beliefs about the world as they gather more information and move through stages of reasoning. I often witnessed some form of this when I encountered new students in San Francisco who witnessed homelessness and drug addiction for the first time. They are suddenly challenged to think about poverty and serious societal ills as more than an academic exercise or an abstraction, and I had many students who were compelled to speak to their priests or professors after walking around the SoMa or Tenderloin neighborhoods in San francisco. Often these students are overcome with a sense of sadness and frustration because they view homelessness, in particular, as a problem with a finite and easily definable solution: to give houses to people who do not have them. This might describe a student at the “dualist” stage, while a student at the more advanced “relativist” stage might still be upset or sad about the problem, but this student is able to consider the full range of complex issues that contribute to homelessness while advocating for a particular set of solutions based on her or his values.
Lastly, the work of George Kuh related to student engagement and high-impact educational practices has been transformational for my work and professional interests. It has been helpful to consider my professional interests in the context of high-impact practices, and I have considered a number of ways that I can apply this research to future programs. My most recent program incorporated several high-impact practices for computer science majors (e.g., internships, collaborative projects, global learning, common intellectual experiences, and culminating projects), and, at nearly every computer science commencement ceremony I attended, I noticed that, in addition to being disproportionately represented among the senior award winners, the 35-40 seniors who had previously participated in our program were employed at higher rates and by more prestigious companies than the other 140 students who were graduating. This is merely anecdotal, of course, but it does substantiate some of the conclusions of the research around student engagement. Students who are more involved and more substantively engaged with their work as part of small cohorts are likely to perform better and to develop deeper connections to the content they are studying.
In hindsight, I see several ways that our curricula and programming could have been improved by incorporating research on student engagement and involvement. I could have integrated research and best practices to enhance the required applied ethics courses in which we analyzed numerous technological problems through the lens of various ethical theories. In the future, I will also use my knowledge of student development for better program assessment and integration. I often found myself frustrated as I navigated the traditional campus bureaucracy overseen by a powerful provost located half a continent away alongside the “move-fast-and-break-things” mentality of the Silicon Valley-based alumni and business leaders with whom I worked on a daily basis. The two sides could never really agree on which metrics we should use to assess our initiatives and to develop new programs, and I didn’t have as complete a picture of the research on student development to make as strong a case for centering high-impact practices. I will certainly use these frameworks to strengthen future programs and to increase both their effectiveness and value to students who engage with them.
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