Honors Conference on Sat., April 24

By Mark Piper

If I can survive everything up to and including Saturday, April 24, I think I can finally say I’ll make it out of Saint Xavier alive!

This is because the last real push or assignment I have before I can relax and enjoy the waning days of my college career is the Annual Saint Xavier University Undergraduate Honors Conference.

The Conference will be held from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on April 24 in S-113, S-101 and N-104 in the Warde Academic Center, with a banquet and awards ceremony to follow in the Butler reception room. A key note address will be delivered by Matthew Costello, Ph.D., of the Department of History and Political Science.

Though I may have joined the honors program late, I sure made up for lost time this past year with countless hours of sifting through and collecting research and data for my own project which I present on Saturday. My honors capstone project, (my thesis, if you will) is entitled “Examining the Missing Link: Is social consciousness the link between higher education and political participation?”

I examine the link or correlation between higher education and political participation which I quantify as voting. I posit that the plethora of literature on this topic misses a possible connective mechanism, what I call social consciousness.
My hypotheses were simple; college students here at Saint Xavier University that were female were more likely to vote or have voted than their male peers, Catholic students at this Catholic institution were more likely to vote or have voted than non-Catholic students; white or Caucasian students were more likely to have voted than other races of students, and all of these would give attribution to Saint Xavier having influenced their decision to vote. Those hypotheses were largely based on the literature and past polling research. I also had one other hypothesis, that Saint Xavier was an institution that impressed social consciences on its students and therefore students would attribute the social consciousness of Saint Xavier or its ethos as a large influence in their decision to vote.

For my project I used my own survey instrument, which was administered with the approval of the Intuitional Review Board (IRB) and the National Student Engagement Survey (NSSE) results for Saint Xavier from 2006. It was, by undergrad standards, an in-depth study. It was time-consuming and there were times where I just wanted to throw in the towel, especially given my quantifiable results (which if you’d like to know you can come to N-114 on Saturday and find out)!

It will be good to present my years worth of work; perhaps it will be better to have brought it to a successful conclusion. Either way I’m looking to the presentation and my slightly less stressful life thereafter.

Mark Piper is a senior political science major with a minor in pastoral ministry. He is from Stoughton, WI and is president of the Student Government Association. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.