Higher Education as Partner in Disaster Response
missing or misrepresented. The dialogue was recorded, and detailed notes were transcribed and integrated into the analysis process.
faith-based institution, one military college, one state college, and one private liberal arts college.
Data analysis All transcripts, notes, and documents were coded for key points, patterns, and themes; in the first coding phase, I used descriptive coding to label sections of the data with topical words or phrases.17 This was especially important for coding narrative sections that described what was actually happening immediately after Irene. I also used structural coding to label concepts emerging in the data that directly addressed the second research question (i.e., promising strategies and practices).18 To some extent, I used “in vivo coding” to mark words and phrases used by the participants themselves that could be useful in describing the concepts that emerged. During a second phase, codes were grouped into categories, or clusters, to illuminate common themes through pattern coding.19 Data from interviews were compared to data from documents to further illuminate and clarify the analysis, and then a comparative analysis among cases was used to highlight the most common themes. Findings were grouped by these themes into a handout for the member-checking session described above, and comments from the memberchecking session were used to triangulate the previously collected data. Draft versions of this article were read and reviewed by multiple faculty members and peers at my institution who served as “critical friends” (i.e., scholars external to the phenomenon being studied whom I asked to evaluate my inferences and findings).20 Lastly, a full draft of the article was sent to each interviewee with a request that they review how their perspectives were represented and comment on the findings, if applicable. Interviewees did not express any concerns with representation or interpretation of their stories.
Campus One: A Small, Faith-Based Private College Campus One is a small, faith-based institution of about 2,000 undergraduate students, most of whom are from outside Vermont. The campus has a long history of service tied closely to its faith-based mission and participates regularly in the local community as well as in the global community through alternative breaks and other service-based travel study programs. This campus did not see any immediate impacts of the storm, as it was located further away from the most heavily impacted communities. Like most of the campuses in the study, classes had just started when Irene hit Vermont. While this campus has a history of responding to significant international events (such as the earthquake in Haiti), it did not participate as heavily in response to Tropical Storm Irene. The campus did arrange for a one-day service event during which students signed up to load into a bus and head out to help a community in need, but the campus struggled to identify appropriate service projects, perhaps due to the lack of relationships with those who were “on the ground.” The campus staff member interviewed also noted that students didn’t really seem to know what was happening further away from them within Vermont because they did not see it as much through social media or national media outlets, and they therefore did not express as much interest in getting involved.
Description of Cases In selecting four cases to include in this study, I used all three of Thomas’s categories: (1) I had “local knowledge” of these campuses through my membership in the Vermont Campus Compact network to which we all belonged (a network focused on civic engagement priorities);21 (2) three of the campuses chosen were “key cases” in that they helped to illuminate the process through which campuses engaged in response; and (3) I included one “outlier”—a campus that had not engaged quite as significantly in response efforts—to illuminate different angles to the story.22 Campuses also represented a range of geographical locations and proximity to the storm’s effects and a range of institution sizes. The sample included one
[T]he campus struggled to identify appropriate service projects, perhaps due to the lack of relationships with those who were “on the ground.”
Campus Two: A Private Military College Campus Two was perhaps the most heavily involved in Irene relief, and for the longest period of time. This campus enrolls approximately 2,300 students, a student body made up of both cadets and civilian students. Many students on this campus were trained in emergency response and high-water rescues, which meant that they got involved in response almost immediately on the night of Irene’s impact. In addition to the skills of their students, this campus was also located in close proximity to a town that had been severely damaged by Irene. Students could not avoid the sights and sounds of Irene’s impact, and many of the faculty and staff on the campus live in the local area. This campus set up a response office staffed on a daily basis with shifts for which students could sign up. The campus eventually designed an orientation in which all students participated before community involvement. The existing relationships between college staff and community groups/organizations served to jumpstart campus involvement and 61