Communicating Science (2012w201)

An African American college student

Among freshmen college students, some questions are inevitable: Will I fit in? Will I make friends? Will I be able to handle the stressful academic workload at college? These questions become especially worrisome among minority groups such as black students who are underrepresented, are stereotyped on campus, and are more vulnerable of alienation. According to a recent study, college makes people care less about racism, which affects minority groups even further. However, a study done by Greg Walton, an assistant professor of psychology from Stanford University, and Geoffrey Cohen, a psychology professor, indicate that a 60-minute social-belonging exercise can vastly improve the college experience among minority groups and reduce the racial achievement gap.

A stressed freshmen college student, image from Research Haven,

The purpose of  social-belonging study/exercise was to insert some reassurance among minority groups that anyone – regardless of ethnicity, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation – has a difficult first year at college. Indeed, after the exercise, the achievement gap shrank by 52 percent and the students from the exercise experienced happier and healthier senior years, leading to successful graduation.

In their experiment, Walton and Cohen divided 90 freshmen college students into “control” and “treatment” groups, both consisting of an equal number of white and black students. The treatment group was asked to read essays and surveys by upperclassmen about their own college experiences and struggles as freshmen students and how they changed since then. The control group read essays irrelevant to a sense of belonging. The treatment group was then asked to explain in an essay why they thought that the upperclassmen’s experiences changed throughout their college careers; the psychologists wanted the treatment group to be more personal, relating to their own experiences and struggles. The point the psychologists wanted to make was that regardless of ethnicity, the transition into college is difficult among all freshmen students and a sense of belonging is worrisome. After tracking black students from the treatment group into their sophomore and senior years, the psychologists found huge improvements in closing the racial achievement gap.

The results showed that black students who participated in the exercise had a third higher GPA than those who didn’t. Among them, 22 percent graduated in the top 25 percent of the class, in contrast to only 5 percent of black students who didn’t participate graduating in the top 25 percent of the class. Among other things, black students in the treatment group said that they were happier, felt a sense of belonging, and had a positive outlook.

I personally believe that racial achievement gap will always exist at colleges but I appreciate this particular study as it tries to tighten the gap. For decades, American schools and colleges have struggled to close the gap, but many factors are out of their control such as different fundings of schools in different cities, well-organized affluent parents vs. single parents in poorer neighborhoods, access to private tutors and educational resources to name a few. A university is a place to enhance one’s life to become a better citizen and it has a responsibility to tackle such issues. Whether in the form of a 60-minute social-belong dfing exercise or student services such as counseling or mentoring, minority groups need to feel a sense of belonging and be empowered to succeed in their college careers. I want to conclude the blog with the below clip, which is of Donna Ford, a professor of special education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development, who discusses other methods to close the gap.

Derek Song