Recovering Through Service: Meaning Making and Resiliency to Trauma

Abstract

Trauma is a present issue on college campuses, yet there is a lack of research on how best to promote positive outcomes for college students who have experienced trauma. With college being an important time for developmental growth, it is vital to encourage more research that investigates the effect of trauma on students as well as ways that student affairs professionals may help students exposed to trauma be successful in college. The dominant paradigm in most existing research positions trauma survivors within a deficit framework. Deficit frameworks situate survivors in a position where scholars focus primarily on barriers to success as opposed to the competencies students arrived with and experiences on campus that can increase positive outcomes. This approach has a substantial impact on practice within higher education and student services. This research fills the gap in the literature by using frameworks that focus on student trauma survivors’ sense of worth, engagement with others, and development of life goals. In addition, this research adds to student affairs practice by shifting the focus from risks posed to student success toward a deeper understanding of resiliency and the support of trauma survivors through critical community engagement. Focusing on a case study of students’ experience within a community engagement summer program that sought to foster the development of critical consciousness, findings from this research illustrate that the meaning-making process inherent in critical community engagement aids college students’ resiliency to trauma by focusing on the meaning making of trauma and recovery through service that develops students’ critical consciousness. This evidence that critical community engagement can increase trauma survivors’ recovery and resiliency creates an imperative for student affairs professionals to better understand the role trauma may play in college students’ development.