Diversifying Community Engagement Programs for Nursing Students: Underrepresented Students as Social Change Agents

The research on community engagement of college students from minority groups is underdeveloped. It has often adopted an essentialist and oversimplified approach that has homogenized various underrepresented student groups. This article contributes to bridge this gap by examining community engagement programs involving nursing students from the Jewish ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, a minority group that is clearly underrepresented in Israeli higher education system and nursing schools. Based on mixed methods that include a survey and in-depth interviews, this study analyzes the ultra-Orthodox nursing students’ social activism and how these students experience their community engagement and perceive its effects on them personally and on their communities.

The findings suggest that by enrolling in academic studies, ultra-Orthodox nursing students cross social and cultural boundaries, and often this choice is delegitimized in their community. However, the students' ability to contribute to their communities through the academic framework helps legitimize their decision to pursue an academic education. Hence, the students' community engagement helps reinforce the academicization and mobilization of the ultra-Orthodox society. This case study proposes that volunteer nursing students from minority underrepresented groups can bridge between the Academy and their communities, serving as agents of knowledge and change.

Their community engagement alleviates their hardship that stems from the liminality embedded in their experience of threshold concepts. There is a need for an inclusive policy that promotes the participation of diverse students in community engagement programs in nursing schools, challenging these programs' White, middle-class bias.

Zvika Orr
PhD
Senior Lecturer
Jerusalem College of Technology

Biography

Dr. Zvika Orr is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Nursing at the Jerusalem College of Technology, Israel, where he also directs the Flagship Community Engagement Program. Since 2019 he is also a visiting scholar at Cermes3 research institute in Paris, France. He received his MA in anthropology and PhD in public policy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2017-2018, he was a postdoctoral visiting scholar at UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology and Center for Social Medicine.

Dr. Orr has published on nursing education, human rights, NGOs, organ trafficking, disabilities, professions, community-engaged research, and university-community partnerships. He currently studies de-stigmatization in mental health with Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, and emergency department practices with UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He has received scholarships, grants, and awards from institutions such as Wolf Foundation, Max and Bella Guggenheim Foundation, Council for Higher Education, Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, Rothschild Foundation, and Israeli Anthropological Association.

Phone: +972-54-7461666
Email: orr@g.jct.ac.il

Co-Author(s):
Edith Blit-Cohen, PhD
Maya Vardi, MSc
Bina Be'eri, MA
Daphna Golan-Agnon, PhD