College student bereavement, scholarship, and the university: A call for university engagement

The prevalence of bereavement among traditional-aged college students shoul d impel universities to assist bereaved students on their campuses. Dealing with bereavement can not only challenge a college student's completing the developmental tasks that our society sets for the later adolescent years, but also imperil the student's remaining in school and graduating. It is in the best interests of the university to develop and implement a variety of effective interventions to assist bereaved students. The author argues tha t universities are communities devoted to scholarly endeavors and should ex plicitly incorporate the dimension of compassion and caring. An abbreviated case study is used to illustrate the situations in which one grieving stud ent found herself when she returned to school following the death of her fa ther. A call is made for greater university engagement by forming a univers ity-based bereavement center to coordinate and conduct coherent inquiry tha t fulfills the scholarly functions of discovery, application, and instructi on. Four specific actions for a bereavement center are to train nonbereaved students to provide peer support, to provide structured interventions for college students at risk of bereavement complications, to raise consciousne ss about bereavement on the university campus, and to conduct research into various bereavement populations and bereavement topics.