Research Blog #10: Final Abstract, Bibliography, and Link to the Paper

Abstract

Commuter students face a multitude of time commitments such as a job, family and transportation to and from school that prevent them from focusing on getting involved in the university community. While this may not cause a huge disruption in their academics and social life, research shows that students that live on-campus in a residence hall achieve higher GPAs and retention rates. These on-campus students succeed because they are able to get more involved in their university, such as having more time to interact with peers, professors and extracurriculars. Students who get involved feel more invested in their community and strive to succeed as a result. Meanwhile, there are some students who do not feel the same. Social isolates who reside in the residence halls do not receive the same benefits of on-campus living that other students experience; because they lack the social groups to get involved and to feel connected to the college community. Resident Assistants in the residence halls play an integral role in helping facilitate relationships for these social isolates, although they have failed to do so, so far.


Bibliography

Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton.  Paying for the Party: How College Maintains

Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2013. Print.

Astin, Alexander W. “Student Involvement: A developmental theory for higher education.”

Journal of College Student Development 40.5 (1999): 518-529. ERIC. 6 Oct. 2016

Balfour, Denise S. (2013). The Relationship Between Living Arrangement, Academic

Performance, and Engagement Among First-Year College Students, 1-89. Print.

Blimling, Gregory S. “A Meta-Analysis of the Influence of College Residence Halls on

Academic Performance.” Journal of College Student Development 30.4 (1989): 298-308.

ERIC. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Blumenthal, Andrew M. Analyzing the Role of the Resident Assistant in Academic Support. Diss.

Northern Michigan University, 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.

Chickering, Arthur W. Commuting Versus Resident Students: [overcoming the Educational

Inequities of Living Off Campus]. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1974. Print.

Jacoby, Barbara, and John Garland. “Strategies for Enhancing Commuter Student Success.”

Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory and Practice 6.1 (2004): 61-79.

ERIC. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Moffatt, Michael. Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture. New

 Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Print. 15 Nov. 2016.

Newbold, John J. "Lifestyle Challenges For Commuter Students." New Directions For Student

Services 2015.150 (2015): 79-86. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Turley, RNL, and G Wodtke. "College Residence And Academic Performance: Who Benefits

From Living On Campus?." Urban Education 45.4 (2010): 506-532. Social Sciences

Citation Index. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Yongyi, Wang, et al. "The Influence Of Residence Hall Community On Academic Success Of

Male And Female Undergraduate Students." Journal Of College & University Student

Housing 33.1 (2004): 16-22. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Link to the Paper

https://docs.google.com/a/scarletmail.rutgers.edu/document/d/1vZwwyA0s046IvhVr_F5frttXKr3CW__CFpsrgJeMunI/edit?usp=sharing

Literature Review #5

1. 
   2. Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton.  Paying for the Party: How College Maintains
   Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2013. Print.
2. 3. In this book, Paying for the Party, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton conduct a study in a residence hall where they discover that some students thrive and others fail, labeled as "social isolates." They contribute a lot of this to the different pathways in college, the mobility pathway, the professional pathway, and the party pathway and how each can help with upwards mobility. Some of the social isolates were unsuccessful in socialization in the community because of a lack of trying but others attributed it to social class. 
   
3. 
   
4. 4. Both Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth Armstrong, who conducted the study and wrote the book, are professors of sociology. Hamilton, who has a P.H.D in Sociology and teaches at the University of California, focuses most of her research and studies on social class, gender and education. Armstrong, who has a P.H.D from University of California-Berkeley and teaches at the University of Michigan, focuses her research on gender, social patterns and groups, and education.
   
5. 
   
6. 5. Social Isolate: Individuals in a residence hall who are unable to make social connections with others and get involved in the overall community (this results in low retention rates and low GPAs)
7. Social Dynamics: The interaction between individuals within a group and/or interactions between groups as a whole 

1. 6. "In fact, an astonishing twenty-five women - nearly half of the floor - could be described as social isolates. We defined social isolates as those who, by the end of the year, could claim only one person on the floor (outside of a roommate) as a ‘friend’” (96).
2. "Theoretically, more extensive Residence Life programming might have also helped the women to get to know each other better" (99).
3. "Initially we assumed that floor isolates would find each other and create their own friendship groups. However, the interactional strategies of socially ambitious women made it difficult. For example, those who moved into the dorm who were genuinely open to meeting people, quickly acquired the impression that everyone else on the floor had a million friends" (104).

1. 7. This book has given me the key term for my paper, social isolate, and the case of Alana as well. With the example of the different types of students on the floor, I found the social isolates as the most interesting group and was able to develop an argument around it. This book also gave me an interesting perspective on Residence Life, because it left me wondering whether the lack of an RA presence in the hall attributed to the amount of social isolates living in the community (25). 
   

Research Blog #8: Case

My main example that I will be exploring in order to illustrate my argument that social isolates do not receive benefits of on-campus living based on the Student Involvement Theory, is through Alana in Paying for the Party. Alana was known on the floor as one of the social isolates, who came into college excited about her education, but left sorely disappointed. In the book, she focuses on the fact that it was hard to meet friends in the hall and that eventually led to her grades slipping and thoughts of transferring to a school closer to home. Alana tells the researchers, "'Maybe the lack of social environment that I was looking for kind of interfered with my schoolwork'" (Armstrong and Hamilton 96). Although Alana did try to make connections in her hall in the beginning, unlike other social isolates, Alana never fully tried to get connected in college. The book never mentioned that Alana actually joined any clubs, or tried really hard in her classes (in the end she ended up failing most of them). Being a social isolate, Alana could not make any real connections or friend groups in her hall, and this ultimately caused all the on-campus benefits of living in a residence hall to be negated. As an interesting point that I would like to mention in my paper, there was no RA in Alana's residence hall who actively sought out social isolates either, or tried to create a welcoming environment for everyone in the hall, which also could have led to the demise of Alana's college experience. While bringing up solutions, I would like to mention how Alana's experience could have been different if there was a resident assistant present in her community that cared.

Research Blog #9: Argument and Counter-Argument

In the beginning of my paper, I explain why living on campus is beneficial to students as opposed to commuting. This is done through the Student Involvement Theory and through research explaining how commuters have a lot more activities to juggle in their daily lives. However this is only half of the central argument to my paper. I seek to prove that social isolates living in residence halls on campus negate the benefits of on-campus living because of their lack of involvement in the community. I also make a point that living in a residence hall leads to involvement in the university, and this also helps to boost a students GPA and retention rates for colleges. However, one of my sources, College Residence and Academic Performance states "Consistent with this explanation, some evidence indicates that living on campus has no effect on study habits and is associated instead with more frequent participation in academically hazardous social activities, such as alcohol use (Pascarella et al., 1994; Valliant & Scanlan, 1996)" (Turley and Wodtke). This statement in some ways counteracts the benefits of living on-campus that I have previously found in my research. If students are involved in hazardous activities and instead lessen the quality of study habits, then not only do social isolates but regular students lose the benefits from living on-campus. This argument frames the issue in different terms because it points out that too much involvement and socialization in the residence hall leads to negative effects as well as if there was no involvement or interaction. Connecting this to other texts, in Paying for the Party, this act of partying instead of studying harder and getting involved with classes was called the party pathway. Though there is a relationship between the counter-argument and the party pathway, I feel like it is unnecessary to bring up the connection in my paper because the pathways are a different route than where I want to go with my overall argument.

Research Blog #7: Frame

One theory that is particularly prevalent in my research pertaining to social isolates is the Student Involvement Theory created by Alexander Astin, along with the academic concept of socialization amongst students on and off-campus. In my paper, I need to first understand why on-campus students have higher retention rates and grade-point averages than commuter students, and this is made sense by the Student Involvement Theory. It explains that because students in residence halls eat, sleep and study with their peers in an academic setting, they are more likely to feel connected to the overall university community. 
As another study by Ruth Turley and Geoffrey Wodtke stated, this is because "Research has documented that students living on campus are more likely than those living off campus to interact with faculty, participate in extracurricular activities, and use institutional resources (Astin, 1984; Chickering, 1971, 1974; Pascarella, 1984; Pascarella et al., 1994; Welty, 1976)" (Turley and Wodtke 508). The Student Involvement Theory has helped me in my preliminary research to answer the why questions such as, why do on-campus students outperform commuter students. It has also become relevant to my later questions such as, why do social isolates not benefit from living on-campus like other students do, because now I understand that social isolates do not get involved in their communities (as they should based on the Student Involvement Theory), therefore they do not feel connected to the university and are unwilling/unaware of how to succeed. 

Socialization ties into this because it is an academic concept that explains what needs to occur in order to help these social isolates succeed. In Paying for the Party, a lot of the 18 social isolates on the floor did not interact with the cliques and social circles in their community, and therefore they lacked socialization. This can also be seen in Dr. Michael Moffatt's book, Coming of Age in New Jersey, where the students who were considered floaters on the floor socialized but did it outside of their residence hall, and therefore were not considered social isolates (since they hung out with groups in the building) but rather not invested in their residence hall community to the degree that others were. 

Literature Review #4

• 1. 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     2. Moffatt, Michael. Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Print. 15 Nov. 2016.
     
     
     3. This book gave informative incite into the college residence hall environment at Rutgers University. There was a study performed in one of the halls on College Avenue that mapped out the students living there and their relationships with one another in the hall. The book also discussed the overall community of the hall and how it impacted each of the students living there.
     
     
     4. Dr. Michael Moffatt was a Rutgers University anthropology professor who conducted a study within one of the halls for this book. He first started out studying the "Untouchables" in India, but later became a lecturer and professor at Rutgers University. After writing this book, Coming of Age In New Jersey, Dr. Moffatt started another book The Rutgers Picture Book: An Illustrated History of Student Life in the Changing College And University. 
     
     
     5.  One key term or concept used in the piece is floaters, which are individuals in the hall whom did not connect with one social group exclusively, but instead talked with multiple or all of the groups in the residence hall. These floaters did not connect deeply with any one member of the hall but ventured elsewhere to make those deep connections. The second is the concept/term of RAs or as stated in the book, preceptors. They are described by Dr. Moffat as students who, along with administrators, try to force a sense of community in the residence halls.
     
     
     6.  " If you are a good, normal American human being in the 1980s, you should be ready, under certain unsteady circumstances, to extend friendship to any other human being regardless of the artificial distinctions that divide people in the real world" (43).
          " The residents of Hasbrouck Fourth breathed a collective sigh of relief when 

     Pete finally resigned. By now the floor was used to taking care of itself in any 

     case; in the opinion of most of its residents, it did not really need a preceptor" 

     (117). 

         " Social class even reared its head. Jay might have felt superior to other residents of Hasbrouck Fourth, somewhat beneath himself at Rutgers. And Pete had apparently had his lower middle-class buttons pushed during the fall by his experience in an affluent, upper-middle-class high school" (123).
     
     

     
     

     
     

     
     

     
     
     7. Dr. Moffatt's personal experiences and documentations of life in a residence hall helped me get a better understanding/outside view (coming from a resident assistant) of residents living together and trying to feel inclusion. The maps that Dr. Moffatt made in the book also helped me solidify the fact that my own notes of social patterns and groups within the halls help to distinguish social isolates from social butterflies. I think it is also really cool that this study was performed within my university by a Rutgers professor.
  2. 
     
  4. 
     
• 
  

Research Blog #6: Visual

Even though this infographic is for a specific state in the US, these statistics show the benefits of living on campus rather than commuting. In the visual, it states commuters spend an average of $86 monthly on their mode of transportation, along with a 46 min commute. This helps to visualize the difficulties of commuting everyday and strengthens my initial thesis that there are a lot of benefits to living on campus. In the middle of the infographic, students mention that they have more interaction with faculty, have a more supportive campus environment, have a more enriching educational experience and have more personal and social competence.

Research Blog #4: Research Proposal

Emily Aversa

Professor Goeller

Research in the Disciplines

October 25, 2016

Research Proposal

Working Title: Through the Lens of the Social Isolate: How some students do not fit into the on-campus resident mold

Topic

As a Resident Assistant of three years, I have always been interested on the impact that the residence hall and I have had on students on campus and if it is different from commuter students. What my paper will explore is the benefits of living on campus based on interaction and engagement in the community. I also want to look into how a community is established in a Residence Hall through either Residence Life (where community is forced) or through the residents living in the hall. As in the book, Paying for the Party, Armstrong and Hamilton mention social isolates in the Residence Hall that were unable to engage with the others in the community and I would like to explore ways to ease them out of this social lack of interaction. Through this paper, I eventually want to lead the reader to the conclusion that some students that live in a Residence Hall (social isolates) may not be meant for living on campus and therefore the benefits laid out in the beginning about living on campus are diminished.

Research Question

What are the benefits of living in a residence hall at a university? How are the communities in a residence hall established and how does this play a part in the interactions of the residents? Do the social isolates in these communities try to engage in the community or are they just not meant for the residence hall? How does this offset the benefits of on campus living compared to commuters?

Theoretical Frame

In Chickering’s book, Commuting Versus Resident Students: Overcoming Educational Inequalities of Living Off  Campus, Alan Chickering talks about how students that lived on campus in residence halls were much more likely to graduate college with a degree because of their ability to access resources on campus. This theory also stated that living on or off campus has a direct effect on a student’s academic performance, social skills, identity, and emotional wellbeing. This study, which talked a lot about the benefits of living on campus compared to commuting, helped me to understand why it is beneficial to live on campus. But how does this fit into the perspective of a social isolate? How, if they even do, benefit from the creation of communities in the residence hall by residence life staff? Does the effect of their lack of engagement in the community offset the benefits of living on campus versus off campus? This is outlined in Paying for the Party and Coming of Age in New Jersey, where communities that are built within the hall cause controversy among the socially isolated students. This idea of the importance of interaction within the residence hall is outlined in the Social Interaction Theory by Alexander Astin, where he describes social interaction as a necessity in college in order to stay involved and therefore, steer clear of being a social isolate.

Research and Plan

In the paper, “Student Involvement: A developmental theory for higher education” by Alexander Astin, the author talks a lot about the definition of interaction and how it plays a crucial role in the development and engagement of a student living on campus. I want to dig deeper into this notion of on campus living being the most beneficial for students compared to commuting and explore how some students may not think that way. As I see in my own community, some more isolated, shy students have a harder time reaching out and engaging with others, and that affects their overall involvement with the community in a negative way. In order to compare these effects with the benefits of on campus housing, I want to look at the benefits outlined in my research and try to understand the information. Dr. Astin mentions different factors that contribute to interaction and I want to use that as a framework for how social isolates do not interact in the community.

As a Residence Life staff member, I have come across many students who would be deemed social isolates in the community. With my real life experience, I will be able to apply my own examples into my paper in order to provide exact examples of students who would not interact with the community. I also want to use examples of social isolates from Paying for the Party in order to create multiple examples of social isolates interacting with an already established community. These examples can be further explored by showing how the negative points of them being social isolates can outweigh the benefits of living in a residence hall.

I plan to research my topic using the many scholarly articles I have found on on-campus living and then slowly delve into off campus living and how it differs. I believe that through my preliminary research, that there is more on the subject of on-campus students because it is an easier resource to access. Hopefully, I will be able to draw conclusions related to the questions I have asked in order to completely, or at least partly, answer the many questions that I have started to delve into.

Working Bibliography

Astin, A. W. (1984). Student Involvement: A developmental theory for higher education. Journal

of College Student Personnel, 25(4), 518-529.

Balfour, Denise S. (2013). The Relationship Between Living Arrangement, Academic

Performance, and Engagement Among First-Year College Students, 1-89. Print.

Blimling, G. S. (1989). A meta-analysis of the influence of college residence halls on academic

performance. Journal of College Student Development, 30(4), 298-308.

Chickering, Arthur W. Commuting Versus Resident Students: [overcoming the Educational

Inequities of Living Off Campus]. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1974. Print.

Gianoutsos, D., and Vicki Rosser. “Is There Still A Considerable Difference? Comparing

Residential And Commuter Student Profile Characteristics.” College Student Journal

48.4 (2014): 613-628. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Newbold, John J. "Lifestyle Challenges For Commuter Students." New Directions For Student

Services 2015.150 (2015): 79-86. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Schudde, LT. "The Causal Effect Of Campus Residency On College Student Retention." Review

Of Higher Education 34.4 (n.d.): 581-610. Social Sciences Citation Index. Web. 4 Oct.

2016.

Turley, RNL, and G Wodtke. "College Residence And Academic Performance: Who Benefits

From Living On Campus?." Urban Education 45.4 (n.d.): 506-532. Social Sciences

Citation Index. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Yongyi, Wang, et al. "The Influence Of Residence Hall Community On Academic Success Of

Male And Female Undergraduate Students." Journal Of College & University Student

Housing 33.1 (2004): 16-22. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Literature Review #3

1.

2. Astin, A. W. (1984). Student Involvement: A developmental theory for higher education. Journal

of College Student Personnel, 25(4), 518-529.

3. This paper talks a lot about Student Involvement Theory, how different factors affect student involvement in a university, mainly their chance of getting involved. A lot of factors are discussed including administrative input factors, student effort factors, and environmental factors such as student living. This paper equated involvement to retention, and goes through the steps as to why it makes this distinction.

4. Dr. Alexander Astin is a distinguished figure in higher education, as the founder of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program. Dr. Astin has also won the Allan M. Cartter Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Organizational Change at UCLA.

5. Student Involvement: the amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the academic experience

6. "It is obvious that students who live in residence halls have more time and opportunity to get involved in all aspects of campus life. Indeed, simply by eating, sleeping, and spending their waking hours one the college campus, residential students have a better chance than do commuter students of developing a strong identification and attachment to undergraduate life" (523).

"Although it may seem that working while attending college takes time and energy away from academic pursuits, part-time employment in an on-campus job actually facilitates retention" (523).

"Residents are more likely than commuters to achieve in such extracurricular areas as leadership and athletics and to express satisfaction with their undergraduate experience, particularly in the areas of student friendships, faculty-student relations, institutional reputation, and social life" (525).

7. This paper talks a lot about the Theory of Student Involvement, which will help me relate my empirical findings and other studies to a more theoretical argument. Student involvement plays a large part in the experience of students on and off campus, and although there is a link to an increase in experience and interaction for on campus students compared to off campus, there is no link in difference between retention rate or academic performance.

Research Blog #5: Bibliography

Working Bibliography

Astin, A. W. (1984). Student Involvement: A developmental theory for higher education. Journal

of College Student Personnel, 25(4), 297-308.

Balfour, Denise S. (2013). The Relationship Between Living Arrangement, Academic

Performance, and Engagement Among First-Year College Students, 1-89. Print.

Blimling, G. S. (1989). A meta-analysis of the influence of college residence halls on academic

performance. Journal of College Student Development, 30(4), 551-561.

Chickering, Arthur W. Commuting Versus Resident Students: [overcoming the Educational

Inequities of Living Off Campus]. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1974. Print.

Gianoutsos, D., and Vicki Rosser. “Is There Still A Considerable Difference? Comparing

Residential And Commuter Student Profile Characteristics.” College Student Journal

48.4 (2014): 613-628. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Newbold, John J. "Lifestyle Challenges For Commuter Students." New Directions For Student

Services 2015.150 (2015): 79-86. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Schudde, LT. "The Causal Effect Of Campus Residency On College Student Retention." Review

Of Higher Education 34.4 (n.d.): 581-610. Social Sciences Citation Index. Web. 4 Oct.

2016.

Turley, RNL, and G Wodtke. "College Residence And Academic Performance: Who Benefits

From Living On Campus?." Urban Education 45.4 (n.d.): 506-532. Social Sciences

Citation Index. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Yongyi, Wang, et al. "The Influence Of Residence Hall Community On Academic Success Of

Male And Female Undergraduate Students." Journal Of College & University Student

Housing 33.1 (2004): 16-22. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Literature Review #2

1)

2) Blimling, G. S. (1989). A meta-analysis of the influence of college residence halls on academic

performance. Journal of College Student Development, 30(4), 551-561.

3) This journal article discusses how residence halls have affected student performance, compared to students who live at home, in the 1970s through empirical research performed by a studies analyzed by Dr. Blimling. Dr. Blimling looked at 21 different university studies and compared their results and findings with one another to see the gaps in their research and also, what the implicit results were of each category. Overall, Dr. Blimling found no criminalizing evidence to support the claim that on campus residence halls directly affect positive academic performance compared to students that live at home.

4) Dr. Gregory Blimling is a Professor at Rutgers University New Brunswick for the Graduate School of Education. He has been a student affairs administrator for 36 years and a university vice president for 22 years. Dr. Blimling was Vice President for Student Affairs here at Rutgers for eight years, and during that time, he co-developed the student affairs program for graduate students in the GSE. 

5) Residential experience: the influence of life in a college residence hall on the academic performance of undergraduate college students in the United States (551).

6) "The weighted Z for the combined probabliliy levels was not significant, demonstrating that when initial difference are controlled, the academic performance of residence hall students and students living at home do not differ significantly" (557).

"A closer examination of the studies, however, suggests that the later assertion is inaccurate. When only studies that controlled for differences in past academic performance were used, the reviewed research does not show that living in a conventional residence hall significantly influences academic performance over living at home" (559).

"But, for residence halls generally, the best assessment may be that they do not exert a major influence on students' academic performance compared with living at home. Other factors, such as past academic performance, motivation, and curriculum, may be the dominant and controlling factors" (560).

7) This study helped me to continue my assumptions that there actually is not a huge effect on academic performance when students live off or on campus. I have slowly discovered that other factors play a role in the empirical evidence of the effect of living at a university and this meta-analysis performed by Dr. Blimling on these 21 studies have found the same results, that there is not a huge difference.