Examining the Ways Institutions Create Student Engagement: The Role of Mission

Adrianna J Kezar, Jillian (Jillian L.) Kinzie
2006 Journal of College Student Development  
This article reviews the results from an in-depth multi-site case study of 20 institutions examining approaches to student engagement exploring differences by mission. The research questions pursued were: Is mission related to distinctive approaches for creating an engaging environment for students? If so, in what ways? The results demonstrate a set of relationships between institutional mission and the five benchmarks of effective educational practice identified by the National Survey of
more » ... t Engagement (NSSE). Implications for institutional policy are reviewed. Within American higher education there has long been concern about whether campuses effectively create engaging learning environments, especially as they have grown in size. For example, in the earlier part of the last century students and outside commentators noted the increased reliance on the lecture method, increasing separation of faculty and students, and decline of interaction among faculty and students as problematic (Altbach, 1997) . These concerns re-emerged each decade and by the 1960s students were protesting the impersonal environments that had developed. In the 1980s, several national reports were released again raising the same criticisms of a largely impersonal and passive learning environment that was less than ideal for fostering learning. However, these national reports had more credibility as they were based on research that illustrated that the large,
doi:10.1353/csd.2006.0018 fatcat:rbvxwonug5bihn2gj2kwk6qu2i