Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives

"A groundbreaking study of the spiritual growth of collegestudents.... The spiritual dimension of higher education has beenexplored from a variety of angles for the past twenty years, butnot until now have we had a competent and comprehensive body ofdata organized around well-defined dimensions of this complexphenomenon. This is an essential book for anyone in academia whocares about the education of the whole person."
—Parker J. Palmer, author, The Heart of HigherEducation, A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your LifeSpeak, and The Courage to Teach

"An extremely important book for layperson and professionalalike. A stunning wake-up call for higher education—highlyrecommended!"
—Ken Wilber, author, The Integral Vision

"Cultivating the Spirit makes a unique and importantcontribution to one of the least examined yet most fundamentalquestions about undergraduate education: how students acquire thevalues and convictions that help to give meaning and purpose totheir lives.... The authors provide a wealth of valuable findingsabout this vital process and its effects on student achievement,well-being, and personal growth in college."
—Derek Bok, former president, Harvard University, andauthor, The Politics of Happiness

"The fruit of a decade of elegantly designed and compellingresearch, Cultivating the Spirit provides timely andsignificant data for reorienting the conversation about therelationships among intellectual inquiry, traditional academicvalues, and the formation of the inner life. Informative, clearlywritten, essential, and evocative reading for today's facultyacross all institutions—public and private, secular andreligious."
—Sharon Daloz Parks, author, Big Questions,Worthy Dreams and Leadership Can Be Taught