Understanding Bereavement in a Christian University: A Qualitative Exploration.

This phenomenological study, based on ecological systems theory, examined the college student bereavement experience in a Christian university. Undergraduate students (N = 127) from a small Christian university provided answers to open-ended questions about their experiences regarding college following a death loss. Results indicate that students are generally successful in adapting to bereavement and prefer an environment open to discussing death and asking difficult religious questions. Implications for counselors are provided. ********** Life on a college campus characterizes both general and distinct experiences. For some students, campus engagement represents a stage in their life span of increased social emphasis, movement away from family to peers as the core group of relatedness, and increased community focus. Within these common characteristics, the culture of the university, as embedded in its central mission, values, and goals statements, interacts with the campus climate to create a potentially unique experience for its students. University campuses that adhere to a specific religious value system, namely Christian, are even more likely to develop highly specific cultural environments. Although research measuring culture and environment on religiously affiliated college campuses is scarce, empirical findings suggest that Christian universities have a qualitatively unique environment (Bryant, 2009; Walker, Hathcoat, & Noppe, 2011-2012), and this may have important implications for grieving students. The challenges associated with dealing with bereavement on a college campus in general are not new to literature. Taub and Servaty-Seib (2008) discussed bereaved students' experiences from an environmental perspective. Grieving students' peers may desire and attempt to be supportive (Walker et ah, 2011-2012), but they may not be comfortable discussing losses (Balk, 1997); these findings are of concern in an environment in which peer relationships are central. Researchers have measured risk factors of close losses (Cupit, Servaty-Seib, Walker, Parikh, & Martin, 2014; Servaty-Seib & Pistole, 2006-2007; Walker et al., 2011-2012) and potential problems meeting immediate educational goals (Servaty-Seib & Hamilton, 2006) and have called for university engagement in bereaved college students' experiences (Balk, 2008; Taub & Servaty-Seib, 2008). To better understand how universities may be more engaged, we believe that it is necessary to examine the interactive relationship of student with environment and propose that using an ecological systems framework is instrumental in this process. Ecological systems theory, originally developed by Bronfenbrenner (2005a, 2005b), conceptualizes factors in human development and behavior by considering overlapping systems of influence ranging from those most central to an individual's experience to those most peripheral. The ecological perspective has been used to explain a number of adolescent issues, including sexual activity (Corcoran, 2000; Meade, Kershaw, & Ickovics, 2008; Van Horne, Wiemann, Berenson, Horwitz, & Volk, 2009), parental relationships (Gallagher, 2002; Jordan, 2005), and educational outcomes (Feldman & Matjasko, 2005; Nichols, Kotchick, Barry, & Haskins, 2010). Noppe (2009) used ecological systems theory to interpret the college student bereavement experience. In Noppe's (2009) interpretation, the microsystem consists of students' dyadic relationships with professors and roommates, and the mesosystem consists of an interaction of several dyadic relationships, such as students' relationships with parent, roommate, and professor. The exosystem places these interactions within the broader context of the institution, which is nested in the broader macrosystem of culture and even broader historical context, or chronosystem (Noppe, 2009). This interpretation led to the first college student bereavement research that we know of focusing mainly on environmental factors (Cupit et al. …