EDITORS' NOTES
A recent study on spirituality in higher education by the Higher Education Research Institute, reporting on surveys of 3,680 junior year students and 120,000 entering freshmen at college and universities across the nation, revealed a high percentage of college students place value on integrating spirituality in their lives. Focusing on college students' search for meaning and purpose, the study also discovered a higher-than-expected level of engagement in spiritual and religious pursuits. Despite this clear evidence of student interest, most higher education institutions shy away from actively supporting students in their quest to discover themselves or their reason for being. The project's coprincipal investigators, Alexander and Helen Astin, summarized their assessment of the current state of affairs as a "realization that the relative amount of attention that colleges and universities devote to the 'exterior' and 'interior' aspects of students' development has gotten out of balance. . . . we have increasingly come to neglect the student's inner development-the sphere of values and beliefs, emotional maturity, spirituality, and self-understanding" (Astin and others, 2004, p. 2).
This volume, while not attempting to be a comprehensive guidebook, offers an examination of spirituality in the academy through a number of venues. It begins with a look at myriad definitions of spirituality and also considers legal issues surrounding the inclusion of spirituality in higher education settings. It then examines the importance of the search for truth, provides multiple contexts for spirituality inside and outside the classroom in both sectarian and secular institutions, discusses biological-physiological foundations, offers perspectives on the attributes and effects of spiritual leadership, and closes with cautionary notes.
In Chapter One, Bruce W. Speck recognizes the elusiveness of spirituality but purports that definitions of spirituality can be categorized according to two paradigmatic "worldviews."
John Wesley Lowery in Chapter Two centers a legal analysis of spirituality in higher education on implications of the Constitution' s protection of the free exercise of religion and the prohibition against the establishment of religion by the government as set forth by the First Amendment.
In Chapter Three Christina Murphy establishes a historical base for spirituality in higher education and describes the evolution of change through an increasing emphasis on research and business models.
Jennifer Capeheart-Meningall (Chapter Four) expands the discussion by examining how out-of-classroom initiatives can support the search for meaning and interconnectedness, and in Chapter Five, Thomas J. Buttery