Implications for Future Research

Overall, the current empirical research on PULSE demonstrates convincingly that students report that they have developed the dispositions and initial habits that PULSE hopes them to develop. While there are current efforts to collect more evidence to triangulate these student reports, what is currently available allows us to find alignment between service-learning program design and student development toward desired service-learning objectives. This is consistent with the social justice service-learning literature reviewed above: well-designed service-learning experiences can and do induce the development or enhancement of dispositions in students.

However, as mentioned, there is not yet enough evidence to assert that these developments arc lasting. More research with a broader methodological scope would be necessary to find out whether and how students take what they learn from PULSE and apply it to their lives. In addition, further surveys of students in years beyond the participation year would be necessary to track whether or not the developments from the PULSE year remain a part of their intellectual, moral, and spiritual development. Additionally, PULSE should consider alumni longitudinal surveys that address PULSE alumni participation on service activities and community engagement.

The history of Jesuit political involvement certainly stems back to the order’s origins (Bireley, 2003; Hopfl, 2004), and their involvement in university politics in Latin America and the United States is well-known (Espinosa, 2014; Kolvenbach, 2008). As Kolvenbach (2008) notes, Jesuits like Father Pedro Arrupc insisted that Jesuits acknowledge the poverty and social repression in Latin American countries and offer service to alleviate these acute conditions. The politics of service to the poor in Latin America has endangered many, many Jesuits, at times resulting in political assassinations. In 1989, six Jesuits (Ignacio Ellacuria, Armando Lopez, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, Ignacio Martfn-Baro, Segundo Montes, and Juan Ramon Moreno) were murdered at the Jesuit University of Central America for their engagement with poor communities in San Salvador. Others like El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero had also been murdered by rightwing political entities for speaking out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations, and torture almost a decade earlier (Whitfield, 1994). Consequently, it is surprising that there is so little political engagement by PULSE students, especially given the broader political engagement by recent generations of college students (Rouse & Ross, 2018). Perhaps enhancements in PULSE’s ability to improve students’ critical thinking to connect the ethics of service to the praxis of politics could be the way forward.

At this time, we can say that PULSE is associated with and contributes to the kind of social justice service-learning that a Jesuit, Catholic university like Boston College wants for its students. But we do not yet know whether or not the program design is best suited for only those who come in predisposed to the work of social justice or whether the effects of the program arc long-lasting. These questions would have to be a part of future programs of research related to PULSE, social justice, and service-learning.