While the schools within The Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities knew college life has changed in significant ways over the last 20 years, they didn’t have data to show what their particular students wanted and needed from their campus experience. Together, Springtide and The Lilly Network embarked on a research project to answer that question. Insights from over 10,000 students across 34 schools resulted in fresh and relevant data on the spiritual lives of students.  

As the 2024 host for The Lilly Network’s annual conference, California-based Westmont College decided that the project’s theme would be to examine students’ religious and spiritual identities, beliefs, and practices. Westmont secured Springtide to deliver a keynote address for their conference, and during the planning process, the Springtide team suggested executing a research project to increase the impact of their presentation. 

“We kind of had this process where we talked about the topics that were really important to us at first – what were the big ideas that we wanted to get at?” said Jenna VanSickle, Program Director of the Lilly Network.  “[The Springtide Team] gave us a draft, and then we had a meeting where we had some suggestions. One of the things that was important to us was [having the survey serve an] ecumenical audience. We had Catholic students, we had evangelical students. We needed the language to be good for everybody, and that’s tricky. So we had a lot of conversations about stuff like that, trying to make sure that this language was going to work for everybody. So we had a lot of that kind of refining process.” 

Jenna said Springtide was able to bring expertise in both religion and research to guide that refining process, which ensured The Lilly Network was able to answer a fundamental question that member schools wanted to understand: what are students looking for?”

“Are they looking for classes where they can talk about bigger questions of life, rather than just getting educated for their future career?” Jenna asked. “For the schools that do have required chapel [service], or even have non-required chapel [service]—what could those experiences be like that would be more meaningful for students? How could those experiences be more valuable to students for their spiritual formation? And what are students saying about those experiences in terms of spiritual formation and what they’re looking for?

From Survey to Insights

Once the survey was ready, working with member schools to distribute it proved to be a significant lift for Lilly Network staff, particularly Jenna.  

“[The Springtide team] said there were things they could do [to lighten the load],” Jenna said. “They made a separate survey link for every school, but they also worked with us so that the schools could have a lot of autonomy in terms of when the survey would be given. So we kept the survey open for an entire semester.” 

After collecting over 10,000 responses and conducting a few focus groups with students at member schools, the Springtide team created a research report and presented the findings of the survey at The Lilly Network’s annual conference. Jenna said the work was well received and sparked conversation among attendees. 

“Afterwards, people are excited about talking about students’ experiences and their faith, how their spiritual development is being impacted by the programs that we’re doing,” Jenna said. “Just having those conversations, and being engaged in those questions is really important, because it’s something that I think can be ignored or fall by the wayside. There’s maybe a few people on campus who are really thinking about [these questions of faith development], but the people] at our conference and the people that are engaged with us are not the typical people that would be talking about this or thinking about this. So I think that getting just more people engaged with these questions is really important.” 

Jenna enjoyed working with Springtide and expresses her appreciation for the team’s professionalism, expertise, and responsiveness.