There is increasing interest among today's college students, faculty and administrators in the inner life of spiritual reflection and contemplation as well as efforts to center external goals and involvements around a central core of personal meaning. This trend in student values and behaviors is occurring at a time of greater discussion and interest in higher education and throughout society in examining the relationship of spiritual values to academics, careers, workplace, family life, and lifestyle. In this special focus section we present some of the major events, writings, and resources that pertain to the topic of spirituality especially as it involves college students and their learning and development in college. It is also our intention to use this space to explore this issue through publication of essays, opinion pieces, and other scholarly writing on the topic.
Readers are welcome to submit such material for possible inclusion on the site.
While providing a full definition of spirituality will eventually be done in a future essay, we do want to emphasize that it is our intention to err in the direction of inclusiveness. Therefore, the definition of spirituality goes beyond the notion of religion and religiousness. While we recognize that religion can be one avenue of spiritual development, it is not the only one.