Student Growth and Intended Outcomes

Based on their responses to the beginning-of-year surveys, students entering the PULSE program arc already engaged in the kind of social justice mindset PULSE intends to develop. An average of 78% of survey respondents each year state that one of the primary reasons for them seeking out the PULSE course is their desire to do community' service. Similarly, an average of 79% of respondents report they “Personally felt community service is important,” an average of 72% of respondents completed between one and five hours of community service each week during their high school years, and an average of 91% of respondents state they agree or strongly agree that “Community service is something very important to me.”

It is clear that incoming PULSE students have a strong preference for the service-learning aspect of PULSE, which further indicates the program does not have to do much to convince its student population of the reasons why doing community-oriented service is a necessary part of their Jesuit, Catholic education. Given the similarity and overwhelmingly positive selfreported information in these beginning-of-ycar surveys, then, it would seem as though the PULSE program has very little room for growth. PULSE could be seen, from this perspective, as a place where people already inclined to do the work of creating a just society are given a space to do so.

Yet incoming PULSE students, despite their desire to perform community service, do not universally share the same definitions of the relationship between community service and social justice as those that are embedded into the program design as described above. For example, a representative response from the incoming surveys demonstrates that PULSE students feel called at the beginning of PULSE to engage in community service but aren’t necessarily sure what the reason for this work is in a cosmic sense:

I have had a decent amount of community service experience and I wanted to do something that challenged the type of service I was participating in. I wanted to challenge my understanding of the world we live in. I have never taken a theology class, and I am so excited for the new perspectives (student survey response.)

Students recognize that there arc limits to their understanding of the key constructs PULSE aims to teach them. Though an average of 79% of respondents over time have agreed or strongly agreed that as an incoming PULSE student they “have an understanding of social justice,” only an average of 62% of students have agreed or strongly agreed that they are “knowledgeable about the complexities of urban problems in the U.S.” and only an average of 61% of students have agreed or strongly agreed that they “have an idea of how to work for social change.” Students place hope in PULSE as the avenue to combine their dedication to service with ways to make this work more socially relevant, and, in light of PULSE’s mission to integrate the intellectual, spiritual, and moral development of students, come to know themselves better in the process.

To a great extent, internal results from the end-of-year surveys indicate that PULSE contributes to student growth when looking at these metrics. By the end of the year, the averages reported above have increased: an average of 92% of students now agree or strongly agree that they “have an understanding of social justice” (up from 79%); an average of 79% of students agree or strongly agree that they are now “knowledgeable about the complexities of urban problems in the U.S.” (up from 62%); and an average of 85% of students now agree or strongly agree that they “have an idea of how to work for social change” (up from 61%). These data can be summarized with the following point: an average of 79% of student respondents either agree or strongly agree with the statement “I have been able to clarify' my beliefs and values” as a result of participating in PULSE. The PULSE service-learning experience may not be a place that draws in students who do not initially commit to community service, but it is a place where those who are committed to the idea of service intensify and refine what that term actually means and the ways that term is connected to community-based struggles for justice outside of Boston College’s campus.

We can also sec this refinement and intensification of students’ orientation toward a more rigorous definition of social justice as a result of PULSE in how students define what it means to be a “man and woman for others.” One free response question on both the beginning and the end-of-year survey asks students to record: “What do you perceive to be the mission of Jesuit Higher Education?” The most frequent themes brought up in these self-report answers in both beginning and end of year data sets relate to themes described above: care for the whole person, being men and women for others, getting a well-rounded education to do good in the world. However, there is a qualitative shift in how these terms are described in an individual way before the PULSE experience begins and in a community-based way after the PULSE experience concludes, as highlighted in these two representative examples:

The mission of BC and the Jesuit education is to form a whole person. Education is one aspect of life, but we are social creatures living in a complex world. The Jesuit education then is education that prepares us for the “real” world (beginning of year, focused individually.)

Men and women for others, so it is about serving other communities whether through concrete actions or just mental or emotional support. It is about not only' personal development but improving the world around you (end of year, focused communally.)

Though these responses come from different students, they illustrate the emerging shift in students’ thinking from belief that the purpose of their education is to improve themselves individually in order to work toward justice after graduation, to belief that the purpose of their education is to improve their communities by’ the work of justice they can begin doing now. PULSE contributes to students locating the nature of the work outside of themselves, emphasizing their own development more in the fall and emphasizing community development more in the spring. This trend exemplifies the intensification and growth that happens among students enrolled in PULSE. They' enter with commitments that are refined and redefined in light of the Jesuit, Catholic mission of the university'.

Overall, the student responses to these surveys provide us with convincing evidence that students make significant progress toward mastery of the desired student outcomes. These survey results are consistent with prior research conducted by former program assistant director Michelle Sterk Barrett (2015). Though Sterk Barrett’s dissertation used a different set of survey scales administered only during the 2012-2013 academic year, our findings from the 2009-2012 and 2013-present surveys confirm what she found in 2012-2013: students, through witnessing injustice and having their thinking challenged in class, experience an opening of their mindset and struggle collectively with their peers, resulting in their spiritual growth (Sterk Barrett, 2015). These results seem to collectively affirm that PULSE has been well designed and that students get out of PULSE what they have been intended to get out of this service-learning experience.