Since the start of the global pandemic, Mission in Motion has provided resources, information, and reflections about how the School of Continuing Studies, rooted in the Spirit of Georgetown, is addressing the needs of our diverse community. For more than a year, the blog has shared inspiring examples of work at SCS grounded in a commitment to educate the whole person. SCS students, staff, faculty, and alumni have sustained the bonds of community despite being dispersed across the country and the globe. SCS and larger Georgetown efforts to promote racial justice that aspire to our University value of Community in Diversity have been a major focus of these weekly reflections. Along the way, the blog has hopefully helped readers understand what is distinctive about an approach to professional and continuing education animated by the Jesuit tradition.
This week, I call attention to a course opportunity this fall that incorporates the University’s Jesuit values in a holistic way. Since 2016, “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” has been offered as a free elective open to any degree-seeking student at SCS. The course, which Mission in Motion highlighted last year, is a unique option in the SCS curriculum in that it is truly interdisciplinary by bringing together students from across the academic degree programs. The course is also unique in that it is community-based learning, organized around opportunities for students to address the direct needs of vulnerable persons through service opportunities facilitated by Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service.
The course has been renamed “The Reflective Professional: Journeying Toward Mission-Driven Leadership” to signal how critically important reflection and leadership are in the development of professional students. The pandemic has demonstrated how necessary it is to form SCS graduates who are prepared to take on the economic and social justice challenges facing their communities in the U.S. and around the world. Inspired by the Jesuit tradition, an important motivation is an understanding that generous action in the world flows from habits of reflective self-awareness and self-discovery. This is an invaluable opportunity for students to pause and discern their values and how they want to apply these values in the workplace. The course, which is organized around the foundational concepts and applications of Jesuit education and spirituality, features professionally relevant topics like:
- Frameworks for professional reflection
- Theories of leadership, including spiritual leadership
- Discernment as a strategy for professional decision-making
- Exploration of Georgetown’s mission and values
- Models for inter-faith collaboration
- Contemporary social justice issues, like immigration reform and the climate crisis
The class is open to and welcomes students from all faith traditions or no faith tradition and presents an important opportunity to engage with mission-driven leaders at Georgetown and beyond. An alum of the course described the transformative experience of hearing directly from such a diverse set of guest presenters: “The speakers who moved me the most had journeyed deeply inside their humanity and then touched mine.”
Degree-seeking students who are interested in “The Reflective Professional: Journeying Toward Mission-Driven Leadership” (LSHV 480, CRN: 40526) should reach out to me, Jamie Kralovec, course instructor and SCS Associate Director for Mission Integration (pjk34@georgetown.edu).