As part of the senior project application, Prescott College requires three essays which "provide an opportunity for students to convince the faculty of their competence in a given area, to articulate how their senior project is a culmination of competence, and to defend their overall plan of study as an empodiment of a liberal arts education." (2007-2008 Student Handbook)
Competence Description Narrative
The Psychology of Society and Culture is the study of how people interact one-on-one and in groups, and how people choose the groups they interact with. It combines elements of psychology, sociology and anthropology to investigate individuals, relationships, societies and cultures. Within this wide range of three traditional disciplines looking at how people work, my focus has been on how social and cultural pressures shape the decisions of individuals.
Through the lens of psychology, I have studied the inner stimuli that influence individuals. Psychology is the study of behavior, including thoughts and emotions, perception, motivation, and more. From a more personal point of view, psychology is everything I use to understand my own actions and the actions of those around me. I studied hands-on counseling psychology in Counseling Skills, gaining practice in class in being a helpful listener, an ability which has been useful in both personal and professional relationships. In Introduction to a New Psychology, I was able to get an overview of the more research-oriented sides of psychology. The things I've learned about research in development, learning styles, personality and motivation are directly applicable every time I interact with another person. I believe the individual is the primary component of any group, and understanding the individual is the key to understanding and influencing the group.
The "society" in my competence title refers to a group of people interacting within a mutually agreed-upon system of rules and codes. I see this area as the meeting point of all my studies. As I study psychology I ask how each individual is influenced by the people around them; when I look at culture and anthropology I am fascinated by the interaction between cultural history and the system each society forms to deal with that historical worldview. I have been able to study this area in a wide diversity of ways. Looking at the causes of conflict and conflict resolution in Introduction to Peace Studies gave me a base in one of the most fundamental forms of societal interaction. In Migration in the Americas I wrote a paper on different options available to Mexican migrants while integrating into mainstream American society. I visited several intentional communities and read about others in Utopia and Dystopia, studying the elements that create and destroy community. In History of Gender and Sexuality and in The Color Line in US History I gained historical perspective on the ways socially constructed gender and racial identities shaped and were shaped by cultures. I am especially happy with my Writing Certification research paper, "When Normal People Do Abnormal Things: The Psychology of Perpetrators, Bystanders and Upstanders." Written in Human Rights Seminar, I am proud of how I was able to investigate the social and intercultural issue of crimes against humanity through the lens of a psychological theory, cognitive dissonance. Combining psychological, sociological and anthropological viewpoints in the paper allowed me to see possible solutions to a very large problem.
In the context of this competence, I have used the word "culture" to describe elements that link people who may have never met into a single group. My competence also includes intercultural study, looking at the boundaries between cultures and what happens when they blur. During my first semester at Prescott College, Contemporary Issues in Anthropology started me thinking about intercultural communication, ethnography as a qualitative method of studying culture, and the value of humility in any interaction with others. Through that class I also directly experienced contact with Native American cultures while participating in events surrounding the Snowbowl trial, in which several Native American tribes sued the Flagstaff Snowbowl ski resort. In Changing World Order and in Migration in the Americas I was able to directly experience a different culture by interacting with Hispanic people along the US-Mexico border. Experiencing cultures outside my own has given me perspective on the many things my culture takes for granted, from gender roles to what it means to be polite.
The Psychology of Society and Culture is the study of individuals within the context of larger groups, and of the ways in which societies and cultures are made up of individuals. Because I study how people interact, I find connections everywhere there are people. While assisting with public school teacher training workshops in Washington, D.C. during the summer in 2006, I saw the teachers in the workshop as individuals with individual learning styles and histories, as part of the small group we formed during the workshop, and as their roles as teachers within the monolithic D.C. public school system. Working as Volunteer Coordinator at Prescott Fine Arts Association over the past year, understanding the wide variety of individual and societal backgrounds volunteers come from has been invaluable. Even within the one-to-one interactions I have daily with my boyfriend, parents and friends, I use everything I know about psychology, society, and culture.
My senior project, The Psychology of Volunteer Recruitment and Retention, is a demonstration of my competence both academically and practically. The reasons why volunteers choose to volunteer and why they stay or leave fascinates me. It is both an individual question, looking at the incentives and disincentives for each volunteer, and a question of the volunteer within the context of other volunteers, the organization, the culture of volunteering in Prescott, and indeed the culture of volunteering nationally and globally. By researching motivation through books and articles and by holding interviews with individuals to gain their unique perspective on their unique situation as volunteers at Prescott Fine Arts Association, I will demonstrate my ability to succeed in academic, work, and personal worlds.
During Human Rights Seminar, I had to look at my own beliefs about when violence is appropriate and confront my tendencies to shy away from hard decisions not because of conscious moral choices but because of fear. In my Writing Certification III paper written in that class, I came to the conclusion that genocide is stopped by individuals influencing other individuals; that the simple observation of someone else doing the right thing can break a cycle of powerlessness. In a way, my education has been about finding my own power within society and culture. I believe my competence prepares me to increase social justice in the world through every relationship I have.
Senior Project Description
My senior project on the Psychology of Volunteer Recruitment and Retention will focus on volunteers in the arts and will investigate what motivates people to volunteer and why they choose to either continue volunteering or leave. I will center my research on Prescott Fine Arts Association (PFAA), a 38 year old nonprofit arts organization with over 500 active volunteers and only one full time staff member, which thus depends entirely on volunteers for its operation. This project will culminate in two pieces: 1) a major research paper incorporating both academic research and personal interviews; and 2) a video documentary of interviews with PFAA volunteers. The research paper will provide the academic component of the project, while the documentary will allow the research to be accessible to the public and useful to PFAA as promotional or archival material.
This project will apply the knowledge of how people work in groups that I've gained while studying the Psychology of Society and Culture to the non-profit arts world. Volunteers are an especially crucial element in the growing non-profit industry, and the field of volunteer management requires the knowledge of both individual and group psychology upon which my competence focuses. By creating visual and written documentation of volunteer research, this project will be a stepping stone in my career goals of working in the nonprofit arena, and in my life goals of working with people.
Over the past year, I have worked at Prescott Fine Arts Association as an intern, including acting as Volunteer Coordinator. I have developed relationships with individual volunteers as well as an awareness of how the organization works as a whole. This knowledge will serve as a base for deciding where to look for the information about volunteers I need and as context for understanding how each individual volunteer fits into the organization as a whole. My breadth in Theatre gives me a further context for understanding volunteers in the arts as differentiated from, for example, volunteers in the health industry.
My schoolwork has prepared me for creating both a research paper and a documentary. Contemporary Issues in Anthropology served as my introduction to ethnography and to creating a documentary, including basic knowledge of interviewing, filming, and editing. Based on my studies of ethnography and statistics, I have decided to perform qualitative research through personal interviews. Although I will not be trying to form mathematically significant conclusions from this data, I believe the personalization, emphasis on individual experience, and ease of communication provided by interviews is the best way to gather and disseminate the information I am examining. I feel well prepared for writing a research paper based on research and interviews with volunteers. I am confident in my ability to do comprehensive research in the field of volunteer psychology, further investigate my findings through personal interviews, and incorporate both into a polished paper. My senior project will be a demonstration of my competence both from an academic standpoint in doing original research, and from an activist standpoint in making that research available, convincing, and useful to others.
Liberal Arts Statement
One of my favorite t-shirts quotes Mark Twain, who said, "I never let my schooling interfere with my education." Throughout my life, education has been about far more than what I do in class. As a homeschooling child and teenager, I learned by reading fantasy novels, talking with friends, traveling, acting at local theaters, and any other activities that sparked my interest. When I was older and taking English 101 and Physics 101 at community college part time, outside of the classroom I learned about neuroscience, linguistics, gender theory, cooking, Beatnik poetry and Buddhism. I wore my Mark Twain t-shirt on test days and copied puzzling test questions on to scrap paper so I could take them home and figure them out after the test was over. Learning has never been only what I do in a classroom, but a primary element of my life.
My education during the last few years at Prescott College has held true to form. The liberal arts do not stand separate from the rest of my schooling or the rest of my life. Both my competence and my breadth are in areas that cover a wide range of experiences and traditional subjects, because I truly believe that the world is all of a piece. Holistic education is not the best way to learn; it is the only way to learn. Swimming through canyons and falling asleep to the sound of elk calls, running ANOVA statistical analyses, setting up and running lights for African Inspired Dance performances, discussing NAFTA and intentional communities and creationism, interviewing demonstrators on the Courthouse square—everything I've done at Prescott College, in and out of the classroom, is part of how I understand the world. I know I will continue to learn from everything I do, and perhaps the most valuable thing I've gotten from Prescott College is a skill set with which to do so. Practicing skills like research and academic writing have sharpened my critical thinking skills and increased my range of understanding. Most importantly, the passionately engaged community of thinkers and learners I have found here have been and will remain an inspiration for life-long learning and for using that learning to better the world.
I came to Prescott College because I wanted to save the world and didn't know how to go about it. I've found people here who throw themselves into creating positive change. I've found mentors in books and in person that suggest ways to look at the world I'd never thought of. I understand the world in ways I didn't three years ago: my understanding of politics, history, the environment, how I can be a better person and how I can help others be better people has grown exponentially. I've had constant encouragement to take my learning one step further, to push understanding into application. Just having practice at that step would be huge, but I have tools to do it which I didn't have three years ago.
Through class discussions, research, and academic writing, I have expanded my toolbox of ways to gain, interpret, and communicate information. Through class trips to Mexico, the Snowbowl trial, intentional communities, and of course orientation in the wilderness, I have expanded my conceptual model of the world and the variety of people in it. Through service both in class and out and through continual encouragement from classmates and mentors to make my projects useful as well as interesting, I have gained confidence in my ability to make positive change in the world. Ultimately, this is what Liberal Arts means to me: I am part of the world, and as it changes me, I change it.