Author: Jamie Kralovec

Posted on

Reflecting on Georgetown’s Mission as a Resource for the New Academic Year

This week’s post is a reflection about the nervousness of starting a new academic year. Can we turn our jitters into joys by leaning more into the resources of Georgetown’s mission? 

A new academic year brings with it so much anticipation. These feelings are experienced in both similar and different ways by our students, faculty, and staff.  Many new students are likely asking: Do I belong at Georgetown? Can I effectively balance my academic, professional, and family commitments? What decisions will I make during my time at the University that will have a lasting impact on my future? Our staff members are likely asking: How can I best serve these incoming students? What challenges in the student experience should I be prepared for? How do we handle both the sameness of a new semester and its unpredictability? And our faculty are likely asking: How can I innovate and refine my craft of teaching in a way that registers with my students? How will I engage sensitive discussions that will inevitably arise about the U.S. presidential election and conflicts in the Middle East? What will inspire me when the semester feels long and the work is tiring? 

All of these are questions that I have either heard from others or asked of myself as a student, staff, and faculty member. I think that the recurrence of these kinds of questions is a healthy sign for an academic institution like Georgetown with a lasting mission and set of values that are intended to guide our way. In his article in America Magazine, “The Classroom as Holy Ground,” former Georgetown Vice President for Mission & Ministry, Fr. Kevin O’Brien, S.J., describes the nervousness at the root of this regular experience of working in education: 

“Every semester begins the same way. I walk to the door of the classroom and catch my breath. Like an actor walking on stage, the nervousness of a teacher on the first day—or any day—is natural. It is the same now that I am teaching college as it was when I taught high school before joining the Jesuits. The more I teach, however, the more I realize that it is not just nervousness I feel on the first day. Along with the anxiety is awe, because I am beginning to appreciate how the classroom is holy ground, a place where I can encounter God.” 

In this way, the pre-semester nerves of a new academic year tell us that something deeper, more meaningful than surface-level worry is happening when our attentions turn to the start of fall classes. If we give ourselves the time and space, we can actually convert these anticipatory feelings into some soul-searching and self-discovery that can animate our personal and professional growth at Georgetown. Our jitters can become our joys. I believe that our mission and our Jesuit and multi-faith traditions can inform this journey for all students, faculty, and staff as they begin anew this fall. 

Here are three suggestions arising from Georgetown’s religious heritage that you might consider as a new academic year gets underway:

  1. Pay Attention to Your Feelings: There is something very important about spending a little time each day pausing, slowing down, and growing in awareness of your inner experience of the day’s activities. The Ignatian tradition offers a spiritual practice, the Examen, to help with this need to slow down and process the many emotions that we experience on a daily basis. By regularly attending to the flow and movement of our feelings, we become more able to recognize patterns, both consoling and desolating, and then make better choices about how to flourish and live into our gifts and talents and pursue our mission and purpose in life. Try attending a Digital Daily Meditation (sign up here) if you would like to practice these kinds of pause moments during your semester. 
  1. Engage Your Georgetown Experience with All of Your Senses: The Spirit of Georgetown invites us to educate Whole Persons who become Contemplatives in Action. To realize this ambitious vision of personal formation, we must allow ourselves to enter into every learning experience by using not only our heads but also our hearts and our hands. The transformative potential of a Jesuit education is only possible when we use all of our mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological, and physical faculties in the knowledge process. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, would strongly encourage you to daydream, use your imagination, and savor your sensory experiences. 
  1. Find a Mentor or Guide To Accompany Your Journey: The spiritual life should not be a solitary venture. Instead, the inner journey of the self should be joined with resources in a community, including the steady guidance of trained spiritual teachers and directors. St. Ignatius counseled that retreatants be paired with these trusted guides who could help direct a path to deep inner knowing and experience of the Divine. Today, we might say that any kind of mentor figure, whether a leadership coach, advisor, counselor, chaplain, or spiritual director, can play this role. Regardless of the type, I encourage you to find someone to accompany you and journey alongside your Georgetown experience. 

I hope the coming weeks reveal new possibilities for you. As your fall semester journey begins, whether this is your first semester at Georgetown or your twentieth, I wish you peace on the next steps. 

Posted on

Shining a Storytelling Spotlight on a Key Member of the SCS Summer Team

Stylized portrait of Haroot in a Georgetown shirt sitting in a chair
This week’s post is a promotion of the recent Georgetown Faces profile of Haroot Hakopian, SCS assistant dean for student affairs. 

Mission in Motion has regularly reflected on how Ignatian spirituality has a narrative or storytelling style. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and creator of the Spiritual Exercises, believed that entering deeply into prayer and meditation requires the full use of the imagination. In order to do this, one making a retreat or praying in an Ignatian way is invited to imagine the characters in particular Gospel stories and then to insert oneself into those scenes. The perspective of the characters is multi-dimensional as Ignatius considers how different observers—self, others, and God—might be viewing the same event or situation. This movement to consider multiple lenses of perspective is ultimately intended to increase the individual’s depth of gratitude for the dynamic diversity of all created things. Understanding our spiritual condition and where we are being drawn to greater interior freedom, love, and generosity means better understanding the stories we tell about ourselves, each other, and God. 

I am reminded of these imaginative principles of Ignatian spirituality when I appreciate Georgetown Faces, stories about the unsung heroes, beloved figures, and dedicated Hoyas who make Georgetown special. The entire purpose of this series is to tell the story about Georgetown through the stories of the people that make up this large and dynamic institution. We come to better understand what matters to this university by learning through interviews, photographs, and descriptive text what matters to the diverse faculty and staff that animate Georgetown’s mission and values. I think this is a really captivating way to realize one of St. Ignatius’ famous adages: Love is shown more in deeds than in words. 

The most recent Faces profile shines the light on Haroot Hakopian, SCS assistant dean of student affairs, who began his Georgetown career as the academic and curriculum director of the Summer College Immersion Program (SCIP), a deeply mission-aligned SCS program that this platform has reflected about many times. The profile on Haroot focuses on the ways that he brings to life the Spirit of Georgetown in his engagements with a large and diverse group of summer high school students. In particular, Haroot names how the Jesuit value of cura personalis (care of the whole person) is a key ingredient in helping SCIP students, who are first-generation college seekers, navigate their own stories of identity and how these stories relate to the process of college admissions. 

As we approach the end of the summer semester, I invite you to read Haroot’s story and reflect not only on his contribution but that of the entire summer team at SCS. 

Posted on

Olympics Bring Together SCS Community, Illustrate the Possibilities of Peace around World

This week’s post is a reflection on the possibilities for peace arising from the Olympic games. SCS staff and faculty gathered recently to enjoy a potluck and watch the exciting competition.

Pope Francis recently gave an address on the eve of the Summer 2024 Olympic games in Paris. In the global context of ongoing war, conflict, and crises of various kinds, the Pope offered sports as a sign of hope. According to Francis, the Olympics have always possessed the power of cultivating unity: 

“According to ancient tradition, may the Olympics be an opportunity to establish a truce in wars, demonstrating a sincere will for peace. … Sport also has a great social power, capable of peacefully uniting people from different cultures. … I hope that this event can be a sign of the inclusive world we want to build and that the athletes, with their sporting testimony, may be messengers of peace and valuable models for the young.” 

I had these ideas in mind this week as SCS staff and faculty gathered for a fun and informal lunch potluck organized around watching live coverage of the Olympics in the atrium. It was delightful to see the different food items that made up a deliciously diverse display of offerings. The wide array of tastes reflected the richness of the SCS community. And there was much rejoicing as we watched the events in real time. Conversations were sparked among staff about their own memories of the Olympics and how our individual experiences of watching the games bonded us together. 

The Olympic Games are both  enjoyable and the subject of study and discussion. Georgetown’s Sports Industry Management program contributes to this engaged study of global sports.  

Georgetown has a lot to say about the 2024 games in Paris with two SCS alumnae competing and other Hoyas also joining in the competition. Students in the SCS Master’s in Sports Industry Management program are regularly studying and discussing this global event as part of their coursework and applied learning. In this way, Georgetown treats global sports not just as an activity to be enjoyed as spectators but as a subject matter to be seriously engaged and understood. It is with Pope Francis’ remarks that I believe this latter purpose of sports can be more deeply explored. 

In addition to the excitement and the fun of convening to watch intense competition, how do global sports potentially contribute to peace in a time of conflict? What about the occasion of global competition can interrupt patterns of conflict, invite a pause, and encourage a reset in situations of tense disharmony and fighting among peoples? I do not think it is naïve to believe that sports possess this possibility. 

As we continue to enjoy the storylines and triumphs coming out of Paris, I invite us to reflect on the communitarian meaning of sports and how global athletic competition can serve the cause of peace.

Posted on

July 31 Feast Day of St. Ignatius Offers Annual Opportunity to Reflect on Meaning of Adult Learning

This week’s post is a promotion of the upcoming feast day of St. Ignatius, which is being celebrated by Georgetown at a 12:10 p.m. ET mass in Dahlgren Quad followed by a reception. Event details are here. 

The Catholic ritual of feast days helps to remember, honor, and celebrate persons who have been important in building up the community of faith. The diversity of holy people honored by feast days is a sign of the Catholic Church’s global reality and invites deeper gratitude about how a long historical tradition has endured and evolved in ways that nurture and encourage people of faith. It is with this appreciation that we approach a sacred milestone for every Jesuit institution in the world: the July 31 feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola. At Georgetown, community members can participate in the feast day by attending a 12:10 p.m. ET mass in Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart followed by a light reception in Dahlgren Quad. It is important to note that this celebration is open to all at the University. 

Mission in Motion regularly reflects not only on the significance of the Ignatian feast day but also on many personae of Ignatius and the various ways that anyone in the Georgetown community, regardless of their religious tradition or relationship to spirituality, can find something inspiring and relevant in the life of this Sixteenth Century figure. At SCS, there are obvious ways that St. Ignatius relates to the unique dynamics of our learning community and our particular mission and values as Georgetown’s vibrant home of professional and continuing education. I would like to highlight one feature of the Ignatian biography, the Jesuit patron as an adult learner, and offer some relevant connections with the learners who comprise the SCS student population today. 

According to the most recent SCS Dean’s Report, SCS students range from 19 to 79 with an average age of 32. This means that most of the more than 9,000 registered degree and non-degree students that call SCS home are adults. Such a demographic reality makes sense given the School’s emphases on employability, workforce development, and the diversity of lifelong learners. Teaching adults requires a specific kind of pedagogical attention that differs in important ways from younger students. The adjustment that SCS faculty make to effectively guide their adult learners can be supported by certain resources in the Ignatian traditions of spirituality and education. Adult learning is one of the less appreciated subjects in Jesuit higher education and I believe that SCS contributes to the national and global Jesuit discussion in important ways. 

First, adults tend to prioritize their own experience as a text for learning. With so much life lived, especially professionally, SCS adult students arrive at their classrooms with much to share with their teachers and fellow students. In this way, faculty are especially encouraged to make space in class activities and learning strategies that give adult learners the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of their considerable life experience. And like St. Ignatius, a significant proportion of SCS students have military-connected experience, which adds even more dimensionality to classroom discussion. 

Second, adults tend to need special permission for reflection. Leading busy lives of work and family obligations means that reflection time, including prayer and meditation, often gets pushed to a backburner. But certain resources in the Ignatian spiritual tradition, like the Examen, give adults an opportunity to spend a short amount of time (five to 10 minutes) pausing and slowing down. The intense practicality of Ignatian spirituality, its ability to be implemented in the course of a busy day, appeals to adults in a special way. I think that adults are especially inclined to welcome class activities and teaching approaches that emphasize slowing down and reflecting as part of the course experience. In leading retreats and in teaching courses, I have found that many adult students express gratitude for the opportunity for silence, a gift not easily afforded to them because of many other commitments. 

Third, contrary to assumptions, adults are not fully formed just because they have lots of life experience, including considerable time in a career. In this way, adult learners benefit greatly from Ignatian discernment and ongoing reflection about how to realize one’s meaning and purpose vocationally. Discerning vocation does not only happen before finding one’s first job placement. Rather, vocational discernment, an ongoing reflection about how my gifts and talents are aligned to my professional choices, is a lifelong practice. Ignatian resources are especially helpful for adults seeking to transform the knowledge, skills, and values of a Georgetown SCS program into an even more meaningful professional journey.

As you can tell, adult learning and the Jesuit traditions that St. Ignatius developed have so much relevance for our SCS community. I hope this feast day presents an opportunity to gratefully enjoy our Ignatian heritage and its enduring meaning for our community. 

Posted on

AJCU Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation Assembly Brings Together University Colleagues at a Critical Time

The AJCU Assembly brought together delegations of faculty, staff, and administration from across the network, including a group from Georgetown. 

One of the lasting joys of working for Georgetown is the opportunity to connect with colleagues across a national and global network of Jesuit schools. The U.S. network of colleges and universities, organized by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU), comes together in regular intervals to convene, network, reflect, and commit to action steps as a larger community of practice. It is important that individual schools, however unique and distinctive as single units, grow in awareness about the ways that all Jesuit institutions share a common mission. 

This week, Loyola University of Chicago hosted the Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation Assembly and welcomed delegations from the AJCU schools. This conference engages the areas of faith, justice, and reconciliation using the lens of the Jesuits’ Universal Apostolic Preferences, particularly the priority of creating a hope-filled future. A new feature of this year’s assembly, which typically takes place every three years, is that six thematic commissions presented their findings. These commissions, which included “The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm: Responding to Students and their Hungers” on which I served, spent over a year responding to a charge issued by the AJCU. 

Each commission created some tangible outputs from their work, including position papers, online resources, and prompts for continuing reflection. Other commissions included Jesuit Prison Education, environmental sustainability and Pope Francis’ Laudato Si, Citizenship & Democracy, Student Spiritual Growth & Mental Health, and Justice & Reconciliation. Each commission was presented at the assembly along with plenary speakers and workshops and posters. The topics covered all reflect the big challenges facing higher education at a perilous moment in history. Declining faith in democratic institutions, a crisis of mental health, the persisting legacy of injustice as a result of enslavement by Jesuit schools and oppression of Indigenous peoples, a warming planet, and a need for a reimagined way of presenting a Jesuit style of teaching all speak to the urgency of this moment. 

Imam Yahya Hendi, Director for Muslim Life at Georgetown, leads the Assembly in morning prayer. Each day of the Assembly featured a prayer practice from a different religious tradition. 

A key message threaded throughout the week was that there is hope in our colleges and universities because of the depth of resources arising from the Ignatian traditions of education and spirituality. Jesuit institutions are challenged to present a hope-filled future as a realistic vision. Realizing this vision requires sharing Ignatian resources that can counter the temptation to despair. In particular, Ignatian discernment, healthy Ignatian detachment, and Ignatian moral, spiritual, and intellectual imagination all offer opportunities for hope and meaningful change.

At a time of growing social exclusion and rising fear of migrants and refugees, for example, Fr. Marcel Uwineza, S.J., President of Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, invited the AJCU to consider hospitality and love as names for God. In another keynote, Anna Bonta Moreland, a theologian at Villanova University, paired the crises among young adult learners of choice paralysis, a lack of leisure, and the epidemic of loneliness with the Ignatian strategies of discernment, Cura Personalis, and detachment. Young adults, counseled Moreland, can resist the tendency toward self-rejection through practices of self-care that build up the whole person. 

There is no doubt that Jesuit higher education is being called upon to meet some of the most pressing challenges of the day. This week’s Assembly proved the strength of this larger network of colleges and universities and indeed offered hope for the future. 

Posted on

Recent SCS Graduate Accomplishes Major Feat, Running Down Every Street of Washington, D.C., and Discovering More About Himself and the City Along the Way

The Mission in Motion blog tells the real-time stories of how Georgetown SCS students, faculty, staff, and alumni live out the Jesuit mission and values of the university by putting these values in action in ways that serve justice and the common good. This week, we interview Dion Thompson-Davoli, a May 2024 graduate of the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning program. Dion was recently featured in a Washington Post story, “He Ran on All* 1,838 Streets in D.C. This is What He Saw,” because of an incredible achievement: He ran down every single street in Washington, D.C., (over 1,400 miles worth of running!) in the last two years. 

What makes this running adventure so compelling as an example of mission commitment is that Dion allowed himself to reflect deeply about the urban realities of Washington, D.C., as he undertook this arduous project and encountered people and places in such an intense way. 

At Georgetown, Dion achieved distinction for his record of academic excellence, including the completion of a novel capstone project about industrial zoning policy and an award from The 2024 Georgetown Public Policy Challenge for a group project about revitalizing downtown through an innovative urban policy proposal. 

In addition to academic commitment, Dion stood out at SCS for his attention to building community and sharing the University’s mission and values, serving, for example, as the SCS standard bearer during the procession into the 2024 Baccalaureate Mass at Commencement. 

In the interview, Dion shares more about his motivations for taking on the multi-year adventure, what he learned, and how his experience shapes his understanding of urban planning, and what, if anything, was spiritually significant about his travels. 

This week’s post is an interview with recent SCS graduate Dion Thompson-Davoli, who was featured in the Washington Post for running down every street in Washington, D.C., over the last two years.
  1. Tell us about what led you to take on this project. As a recent Georgetown graduate with so much else happening in your life, why did you embark on this lengthy adventure? 

Towards the end, when I was running in neighborhoods five or even 10 miles from my home, the project became a huge time commitment. At first, though, it was just a way for me to stay locked into a fitness routine while juggling a pretty challenging work and school schedule. I would go out to jog as normal and try to mix up what streets I was running down, figuring that diversifying the places I went would make me look forward to it more and keep my mind off the mundanity that makes running a difficult thing to stick with. Once I systematized it and started to think that hitting every street in the city might be an achievable goal, I started to spend more time planning routes and biking or taking the Metro around the city to start and end in different places. So the time commitment really ramped up as I got deeper into it, but at the same time so did my feeling that it was actually possible to finish. Those two things really offset each other to keep me plugging at it. 

Dion graduated in May 2024. During his time at Georgetown, Dion achieved academic excellence in the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning program and contributed to his communities by exemplifying the University’s mission and values. 
  1. I imagine being an urban planner influenced how you experienced your journey throughout this diverse city. How did running shape your view of Washington as a city divided by race and class? 

It’s an interesting question. I didn’t really go around telling a lot of people about the challenge, but when I did they would frequently say things like, “You’re taking a big risk, running in some of those neighborhoods” or “I hope you don’t get jumped.” Which, you know, was often phrased insensitively, but is kind of fair. People I chatted with in D.C.’s more violent areas told me similar things. It’s a very unequal city, one with a lot of concentrated poverty and violent crime. Most people who have the means to stay out of the less well-off areas tend to do so, and not without reason. 

Still, I gained some valuable perspective along the way (and never felt unsafe, fortunately). People in my peer group tend to have a caricatured mental image of poorer neighborhoods that’s totally out of step with the day-to-day life in them. Despite what some teenagers once joked to me once while I was out running off Alabama Avenue, there aren’t just bullets whizzing down the streets. My experience of D.C.’s troubled neighborhoods was mostly of elderly homeowners waving from porches, high fives from kids out playing in front yards, and people just living normal lives in their communities. 

I will say, though, that the wealth inequality between neighborhoods in the city is really shocking when you cross between them as often as I did while I was working on this. As a planner, I actually think it’s kind of a good thing that those disparities exist so close together—one problem I see with the way we live in the U.S. today is that most of our communities are really segmented by class and wealthier folks can wall themselves off from even seeing poverty much of the time. Cities like D.C. are some of the few places that’s less true. This isn’t a policy prescription or anything, but I really do think that people who are exposed to one another across those dividing lines are better able to come together and work on common challenges. The continued existence of grinding poverty in a country as blessed with wealth and dynamism as ours should shock us.  

  1. What do all neighborhoods share in common; and what makes them different?

Besides the socioeconomic issues, I have to say D.C. is lucky to be almost entirely composed of beautiful, diverse neighborhoods. There’s historic reasons for that—including the legacy of not having had much in the way of 20th century heavy manufacturing, and avoiding the worst excesses of the freeway building era—and we also have varied topography, great local architecture, and an overall well-maintained public realm. 

We also benefit locally from being at the center of American governance. There’s an embassy everywhere you turn, even in a lot of the neighborhoods. Historic monuments and public art, too. People vie for attention here with ostentatiously beautiful buildings and homes. The National Mall is a jewel, especially for joggers and walkers. All of this stuff comes together to make it a great city to run in. 

Dion recorded this incredible feat using a running app that documented all of his running trips throughout the city. 
  1. When I look at the map of the miles you logged, I am reminded of St. Ignatius walking nearly 400 miles as part of his pilgrimage journey in Spain. Did you engage in this running as a pilgrimage of sorts? Was there anything spiritual or sacred to you about taking this on as a practice? 

I’ve always been inspired by the Ignatian tradition, and jogging certainly brings me closer to God. It’s a time where I really feel embodied, where I consider the experience of being alive in this physical, fragile form. Physicality is one of the great gifts that each of us has been given, no matter how we experience it. Jogging is also very solitary, so I think combining those two things makes it feel very spiritual to me. It’s a great time to do an Examen, or just feel apart from the everyday grind.

Posted on

SCS English Language Center Hosts Event on Japanese Cultural Experience, Advancing Georgetown’s Global Mission

Hiroko “Mai” Sano (far right) is a student in the SCS English Language Center who presented this week at the School about Japanese calligraphy and her experience as an Airbnb experience host. 

Mission in Motion has dedicated several posts in recent years to the work of the English Language Center (ELC) at SCS, a more than 60-year-old English language and teacher training center, which manifests the Jesuit mission of the University in many ways. One way to enter into a deeper appreciation of ELC’s commitment to embodying Georgetown’s values is by spending time with its mission statement: 

“The mission of the English Language Center is to promote global understanding and education through programs and services that enhance English language proficiency, language teaching, and intercultural understanding.”

Inherent in this statement is an orientation to education that serves the common good by creating the conditions, through language exchange and teaching, for greater cooperation and collaboration among people across the world. I read in this mission clear evidence of the Jesuits’ founding vision to be a global religious order, binding a global group together through a constellation of different works and projects. A “community in dispersion,” a motif of early Jesuit history that was amplified during the initial COVID-19 lockdown, is realized through the programs and offerings of the ELC. Many graduates return to their home countries with increased language proficiency that enables greater intercultural understanding. 

Mai’s presentation, framed as an expression of the mission of the ELC, exemplifies how Georgetown strives to realize intercultural understanding through the education that it offers. 

Reading this mission statement is how Andrew Screen, ELC professor, began the ELC Social Hour at SCS this week. The program, “Japanese Calligraphy Writing With Hiroko ‘Mai’ Sano,” was an interactive global immersion in Japanese culture led by ELC student Hiroko ‘Mai’ Sano. In her presentation, Mai shared her work as an Airbnb experience host in Tokyo, Japan, as well as a junior high school English teacher. In the course of sharing, Mai also demonstrated via videos how she helps visitors learn to write Japanese calligraphy and make udon noodles from scratch. There were some especially poignant moments, including a description of a visit to Japan by a Ukrainian woman who felt deeply at peace with Mai in spite of the turmoil and conflict in her own country. A key theme emerged throughout the presentation: kindness and hospitality are reliable means to greater cultural understanding. Also, English language learners can deepen their own English language skills by sharing their cultural realities with others. Mai gifted the audience with her intimate insights about life in Japan. 

The room was full for the social hour and attracted fellow ELC students as well as SCS faculty and staff who wanted to learn more. The event was a powerful reminder of the transformative possibilities of Georgetown’s global education. The Spirit of Georgetown explicitly calls out values like “Community in Diversity,” “Interreligious Understanding,” and “Educating the Whole Person” that get at the core work of the ELC. This week’s brief experience of Japanese culture exemplifies how Georgetown enriches a world in great need of increased cultural understanding and mutual cooperation.

Posted on

Juneteenth Holiday Presents Opportunities for Spiritual Growth and Communal Reflection

This week’s post is a reflection on the Juneteenth holiday and the spiritual resources necessary to sustain the long struggle for freedom and equality. Explore Georgetown’s Juneteenth resources. 

Earlier this year, Mission in Motion shared a particularly Ignatian approach to the spiritual work of anti-racism through the 6-week retreat co-facilitated by Georgetown and Holy Trinity Catholic Church entitled “Setting Captives Free: Racism and God’s Liberating Grace.” With next week’s Juneteenth celebrations on the horizon, I would like to offer encouragement to consider how the ongoing struggle for true freedom and justice for all includes a spiritual component. Highlighting this dimension of the work of racial justice is rooted in Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and mission and the Spirit of Georgetown, particularly our expressed values commitment to being a “Community in Diversity.” 

In reflecting on the personal meaning of Juneteenth, Georgetown undergraduate Bilquisu Abdullah emphasizes how this occasion helps her connect with the pride of her identity: “For me, this year Juneteenth is about nurturing the joy I find in my Black identity. That means doing the things I enjoy most with my BIPOC peers and recentering the conversation of Black liberation in a positive way.” 

Ella Washington, Professor of the Practice in the McDonough School of Business, echoes this affirmation of joy when she says:

“Whether by attending a Juneteenth celebration or supporting a Black-owned business, I look for opportunities to define what the holiday represents to me and Black people across the U.S. I also consider joy to be the greatest form of resistance, especially as a Black woman. Finding opportunities of joy and jubilance with my family and friends is a way to live into the dream of my ancestors and into the spirit of honoring Juneteenth.” 

Together, these testimonies reinforce how Juneteenth is a critically important annual milestone to celebrate the joy and jubilation of freedom. But the holiday also presents a spiritual opportunity to reflect on how individuals and social structures continue to challenge this journey to greater freedom.

In a recent article in the Jesuit Higher Education Journal, Marquette University Director of the Faber Center for Ignatian Spirituality Michael Dante reflects on a “A Spiritual Direction Approach Aimed at Creating Belonging.” Dante maintains that meaningful confrontation with racism and white privilege means understanding these dynamics at the “spiritual level.” In order to realize this dimension, Jesuit campuses need to develop spiritual programs that help community members “see and live out of the understanding that all people are created in the image and likeness of God.” Members of the majority community whose perspectives and identities dominate need to get in touch, Dante argues, with how their vision often excludes the experiences of others who are “marginalized, excluded, and invisible.” 

Thankfully Ignatian spiritual direction and retreats, like the Setting Captives Free program, offer participants the opportunity to undergo their own “inner journey around blindness” to become more aware and more conscious of why many BIPOC members of the university community do not always feel like they belong. Pope Francis has described these dynamics, referring to racism as a “virus that quickly mutates and, instead of disappearing, goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting.” 

While Juneteenth is certainly a time for celebration of the struggle for freedom and equality, it is also an important time at Georgetown to re-commit to this long-haul work of racial justice. Spiritual resources can accompany that journey. 

Posted on

5 Steps to Facilitate Meaningful Meetings: Insights from Georgetown’s Summer Programs

This week’s post is about the importance of small group discussions and how effective facilitation can help participants, like the students participating in Georgetown’s summer programs, strive for deeper meaning and purpose in their education.  Image is from Georgetown’s “A Different Dialogue Program.” 

As the summer gets underway, a dedicated team of SCS staff has been preparing for months to welcome students for a wide-ranging set of summer programs. These summer experiences cater to the needs of diverse student audiences, including high school students from around the country coming to main campus for a dedicated experience of university life. Some programs last the duration of the summer months and others are shorter in length. Mission in Motion reflects each year, for instance, on the mission-driven Summer College Immersion Program (SCIP), a three-week residential experience of Georgetown for talented students in the KIPP Foundation and Cristo Rey Network of schools. What is distinctive about Georgetown’s summer offerings is that they present students with the opportunity to engage with Georgetown’s traditions of academic excellence, community, and globally significant position in the nation’s capital. 

Each summer semester requires an entire year’s worth of planning and preparation. As part of this effort, the summer staff reviews and evaluates how it can improve its delivery of services and support for summer students. As part of this year’s effort, I was invited to deliver a training for the staff working for Georgetown’s High School Summer Academies. The Academies are one, two, or three weeks in length and organized around different thematic areas, like Biotechnology, American Politics, and International Relations. Some of the students venturing to Georgetown’s Hilltop campus have never traveled to Washington, D.C., or had the experience of living independently in a college dorm. The summer staff hoped that I might provide some guidance for how to effectively facilitate small group discussions for students throughout the summer. 

Summer staff serve as resources to the students as they navigate classes and life on campus. The convening of small groups throughout the summer is invaluable for many reasons, including the formation of deeper bonds among smaller groups of students outside of the traditional classroom experience. Small groups also help summer students reflect on the learning occurring within classes. I introduced some suggestions for practices rooted in Ignatian pedagogical principles. My view is that facilitating an effective small group is a key skill that is transferable to many areas of professional life. But more than organizational effectiveness, facilitation as a skill relates to helping others experience the deeper meaning and purpose of a Georgetown education rooted in the Jesuit tradition of education. My five-step framework for facilitating can help convert an ordinary experience of group discussion into something more meaningful.

First, Invite: Make sure your attendees know what to expect during the meeting and what they are being asked to do. Too often, we do not consider how a small group conversation can become a rich opportunity for learning and growth. To ensure this possibility, the facilitator needs to set the expectations in advance about how participants are expected to show up and participate. 

Second, Create the Space: Establishing a space as safe, brave, and sacred means making certain intentional decisions about the meeting setting. This means that the facilitator needs to think about the arrangement of chairs and how participants are able to see each other, communicate with each other, and learn from each other. Creating space also means being clear about the community agreements that will govern discussion. For instance, how will the group handle confidentiality, technology, and conflict in the space? Responsible facilitation means being clear about the ethics that will guide the process. 

Third, Maintain the Space: Facilitation is an active practice because it necessitates being involved throughout the experience. The facilitator needs to get involved when community agreements are violated or the group is getting off track. This means reading the room, so to speak, and making judgments about what the group needs in order to sustain the discussion. Effective facilitators also recognize opportunities to healthily work through conflicts emerging in the space. Some conflicts are too big and difficult for a group so must be managed outside the group structure. Maintaining the space also means monitoring time and keeping the group on time. 

Fourth, Check In: Facilitators learn to interact with a group in ways that respond to the group’s particular needs. Each group has a different life and a different culture. It is helpful for the facilitator, especially in a learning experience at Georgetown, to time and again remind the group of the larger purpose of the activity. Why are we here? How does this discussion help deepen the meaning that you are making of your time in the classroom? The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm puts “reflection” after “experience” because meaning-making of an experience requires intentional interior processing of all that happened during the experience itself. 

Fifth, Transition: How the meeting ends is in the control of the facilitator. The hope is that participants know when the conversation concludes and how this particular meeting relates to the next one. Giving the group good incentives to return to the following conversation is helpful to maintaining the energy and buy-in of the participants. One helpful way to transition is to mark the end of the meeting with some symbolic practice, like a poem or prayer or piece of music. 

Georgetown’s summer staff teams gives students an accelerated experience in a short amount of time. Their work is invaluable and critical to ensuring that the University’s Jesuit mission and values come to life in the student experience.

Posted on

SCS Faculty Leader Demonstrates Georgetown’s Values by Helping Advance Federal Legislation to End Parkinson’s

The week’s post explores the Jesuit educational commitment to public service by highlighting the efforts of SCS Faculty Director Carol Blymire to support federal Parkinson’s legislation that recently passed the U.S. Congress. 

In recent weeks, Commencement celebrations have highlighted graduating students in the Georgetown community whose achievements and personal stories exemplify the University’s Jesuit values. The annual graduation exercises serve as a helpful moment of reflection for the entire community about the deeper meaning and purpose of a Georgetown education. Faculty play an essential role in this mission-driven endeavor through their valued contributions of teaching, research, and service. The invitation to faculty to use their intellectual and professional gifts in service of the world’s great needs is a distinguishing hallmark of the mission of Jesuit higher education. 

This week I would like to highlight the work of Carol Blymire, Faculty Director of the Master’s in Public Relations & Corporate Communications program. Carol has been assisting the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Parkinson’s community for over 20 years, utilizing her professional skills and training to help promote causes dear to the Parkinson’s community. The most recent effort of this kind was legislative advocacy for The National Plan to End Parkinson’s Act, which successfully passed the U.S. Congress in May 2024. The bill advances national efforts to treat, prevent, and cure Parkinson’s through federal research funding. 

Carol describes her professional contribution to this monumental achievement in this way: 

“Working with advocates to tell their stories to Members of Congress, using persuasive comms skills honed over decades in my career, and calling on folks in my network far and wide to get this across the finish line were some of the most important tools in my PR toolkit for this effort.”

What is noteworthy about this observation is the degree to which it affirms the SCS style of mission-driven professional education for adult learners seeking to positively impact their communities. Professional learners are being educated to gain new skills and perspectives, but also to develop strategies for effectively leveraging their own considerable experience and knowledge in service of new tasks demanded by their industries. Professional skills learned at SCS, through the work of faculty leaders like Carol Blymire, help students achieve what Jesuit Superior General Arturo Sosa calls “public service as a personal commitment.” 

Sosa’s 2018 address, “The University as a Source of a Reconciled Life,” is an instructive way to make meaning of faculty contributions to the common good: 

“Becoming world citizens would be one of the outcomes to be achieved from studying or working in an educational institution of the Society of Jesus. It is one of the constituting dimensions of the individual, which we seek to foment and support during the educational process. It is also necessary in order to lay down the conditions to be able to listen to the call to provide a public service as a personal commitment. Being called upon to make a direct commitment in politics involves placing oneself at the service of reconciliation and justice, and is both complex and necessary.”

It is heartening that SCS students have faculty models across the programs who put into practice in their own professional areas of work what they share in their classrooms. SCS faculty are helping their students listen to the call to be of greater service in a world that greatly needs them.