January 6, 2011
New Research on College Community
The community engagement movement in NCAA Division II schools has done it again. DII schools have been leading community engagement efforts in America on several fronts for the last five years. Now we can add conducting meaningful research to the list. All kinds of “firsts” in this one.
· The NCAA DII Sunshine State Conference (to my knowledge) is the first conference in the NCAA to conduct a cooperative research project simultaneously on all of its campuses. With the approval of campus leadership, it was my pleasure to work with Commissioner Jay Jones along with SAAC students and university advisors to design the intent and content of the study. The students themselves collected the data.
· The study was called “Life After College” and had two primary purposes. First, it was a study to better understand how students think about the next step after graduation. Will they stay in-state or go out-of-state for their first jobs? This is a critical issue for states who are facing severe funding shortages and, at the same time, “brain drain” – investing in college educations for students who then leave and benefit other states.
The second purpose was to begin to understand how important college community is to students: as a selection criterion for attending, as part of the college experience, and as a potential factor for staying and living in their college community. Research on both purposes are firsts. They will form baselines for subsequent study in the Sunshine State Conference, but hopefully will also encourage other conferences to do similar research.
· To my knowledge, this is the first time an NCAA conference will produce research of any kind for the purpose of improving the quality of college life or better understand college life beyond the sports sphere.
· This is a first in how it shows the power of what SAAC students can do when they work together for something good – like the cause for community engagement. They clearly took the same teamwork principles they use in competition to produce something of value beyond the field.
· And they did it in record time. The final report will be out by the end of February. From the time the idea was first introduced within the conference to the time of completion will be less than six months.
I want to thank the SAAC students from the Sunshine State Conference for making this happen and for clearly demonstrating what SAAC can accomplish if given the opportunity to take the lead.
Stay tuned for the results from the inaugural “Life After College Survey” report in February.