This week, the SCS community opened its doors for the first in-person prospective student open house in more than three years. The well-attended event featured dedicated program staff and faculty sharing insights about SCS with everyone who made their way to the downtown campus. With festive music and a generous spread of food, visitors experienced first-hand the hospitality and mission commitment of the SCS community.
A recent Mission in Motion post explored the School’s biennial marketing campaign, themed this year as “Be continued.” As I walked around the open house, I noticed how prospective SCS students manifested the energy of the campaign. As they waited in line to talk to a particular faculty member or made spontaneous conversation over food with fellow prospects, these visitors to the SCS campus displayed an eagerness and an enthusiasm about their professional futures. And this future-directed energy from potential students was received warmly by friendly and informative staff and faculty. Conversations were more than interactions that transacted information. I noticed meaningful conversation occurring on multiple floors of the building.
The culture of an organization is reflected in its people. In this way, the community of SCS faculty and staff are the living embodiment of the Spirit of Georgetown. A student’s enriching experience of meaning, belonging, and purpose at SCS arises from the tremendous efforts of the faculty and staff community working in a coordinated way to deliver on the promise of a Georgetown education. The scale of this enterprise and the many parts involved is not always visible to students. But the open house revealed how the SCS staff and faculty community work together to make the mission come alive.
Later in the day, the SCS community again put the mission into motion. SCS GradGov members, the elected students who represent the School on the university-wide graduate student governance body, passed out free roses in the late afternoon preceding evening classes. Everyone was invited to take some flowers as a token of appreciation. I even noticed that the students purposefully placed boxes of roses in staff office areas with a note of: Thank you for your work! I observed how fellow staff members embraced this gesture of gratitude on Valentine’s Day. The dynamic of mutuality required in a well-functioning structure of relationships between students, staff, and faculty points to the deeper meaning and purpose of a Georgetown education.
This GradGov initiative coupled with the open house on Valentine’s Day brought to mind the poetic prayer, “Falling in Love.” Often attributed to former Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe, this prayer reflects the ways that having a durable and abiding purpose in life and work, anchored in a dynamic relationship with God or whatever one names as the transcendent Other or mysterious ultimate in their life, is the motivation that sustains everything. I like to think that events taking place on this Valentine’s Day reveal the loving commitment and deeper sense of purpose that students, faculty, and staff bring to the shared endeavor of professional and continuing education at Georgetown SCS.