Category: Service in Action

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Reflecting on Georgetown’s Composition of Place in the Downtown

graphic of the buildings around the capitol campus
This week’s post is an invitation to consider the geospatial reality of Georgetown’s downtown location. What meaning can we gain by entering more fully into the physical context of our campus and its surroundings?

St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and patron of Jesuit schools around the world like Georgetown, possessed an impressive awareness of spatial dynamics. What do I mean by this? The Jesuit founder thought carefully about how the physical location of things influences our spiritual lives and how we go about realizing the mission of our work. In this way, the 16th Century saint was ahead of his time in his geospatial consciousness. The Jesuits were unique among religious orders of the period, for example, because of Ignatius’ insistence that locating Jesuit institutions in urban cores would bring about more mission advancement. Serving the needs of the human (people) and physical (places and spaces) city has been a hallmark of Jesuits for the last five centuries. This is one of the many reasons that most Jesuit schools around the globe are located within cities. 

But Ignatian emphasis on the mission opportunities in the city is about more than administration. In the Spiritual Exercises, the guided, developmental retreat that the Jesuit founder created, Ignatius insists that prayer experiences need to be rooted in a “composition of place.” Here is the original text from the Exercises: “It should be noted here that for contemplation of meditation about visible things … the ‘composition’ will consist in seeing through the gaze of the imagination the material place where the object I want to contemplate is situated…” (Spiritual Exercises, 47). Here we see that Ignatius is inviting the one engaged in prayer and meditation to get concrete and material about the details of their imagination. This prioritization of real description of actual objects of contemplation suggests that fruitful prayer and meditation is not a flight into fantasy but a deep engagement with the reality of one’s experiences. A very basic way of putting this is that context matters. 

Context is intentionally the first stage of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (described here by Mission in Motion) because of this Ignatian composition of place. The idea is that any meaningful learning activity must first be situated within the material place of learning and the persons and things that comprise that place. In this way and inspired by St. Ignatius, I invite us to journey into this semester of learning at SCS by coming to better understand the composition of place for our campus. What does it mean that our study and work are based in the physical place of downtown Washington, D.C.? How can the urban context and environment of our learning inspire the ways that we engage with the tasks of education this semester? 

All of these questions about context are especially appropriate for us at Georgetown as the movement toward a unified Capitol Campus continues. In a year’s time, the SCS campus at 640 Massachusetts Avenue will migrate to 111 Massachusetts Avenue and become co-located with other schools and units that comprise a comprehensive Georgetown anchor of graduate and professional education in the downtown. The meaning and implications of our geo-location will take on more importance as SCS shifts locations in the neighborhood and additional consideration is given to the School’s urban surroundings. 

For the time being, I invite the SCS community to continue to take seriously the place-based reality of the current campus situation at 640. One way to engage deeply with this embeddedness is by understanding the place. You might consider learning about this neighborhood through reported data about the composition of place via the U.S. Census. You might also consider spending time getting to know the people and places that comprise our neighborhood. Are there opportunities this semester to better understand the challenges and opportunities facing the persons, places, and spaces of this particular neighborhood? How can our learning pursuits serve these needs? 

In all things at Georgetown, we are encouraged to seek out the resources of our Jesuit heritage and traditions in ways that inspire our present endeavors. As we continue our SCS operations in the downtown and contemplate our future operations in a more coherent Capitol Campus, I invite all of us to more deeply reflect on the significance of our spatial reality.

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Mass of the Holy Spirit on the Hilltop Invites Community to Rediscover Our Shared Purpose as Academic Year Begins

May be an image of 3 people, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and text
This year’s Mass of the Holy Spirit, an annual tradition at Jesuit institutions that dates back five centuries, emphasized the spiritual gifts needed to flourish as an academic community. 

The annual tradition of the Mass of the Holy Spirit, a practice celebrated across the global network of Jesuit institutions since the religious order first founded schools five centuries ago, presents a welcome opportunity to consider the meaning of a Georgetown education. Each year, the Mass presents both the same and new reflections at the dawning of a new academic year. The readings from Scripture all point to the need for greater reliance on the Holy Spirit as a giver of spiritual gifts that we most need to realize our mission. Of special importance at an institution of higher learning are the gifts related to knowledge, inquiry, communication, and discernment. While a traditional Catholic religious ritual, I think emphasizing the universe of spiritual gifts needed to sustain the academic enterprise of Georgetown can resonate with people of all faith traditions and those with no tradition at all. 

The homilist for this year, Fr. Bill Campbell, S.J., the new Superior of Georgetown’s Jesuit Community, focused his reflections on the historical analogy between the founding of the Society of Jesus (or the Jesuits) by college students attending the University of Paris in the 16th Century and our contemporary experience at Georgetown. The similarities in these situations are striking: Both Paris and Washington, D.C., have prominent rivers that their prominent universities abut; both the founding Jesuits and today’s Georgetown students come from homes around the world; and both of these student populations knew how to have a good time after working hard in their courses. 

The urban experience of these educations presented many opportunities for both reverie and reverence, a reminder to us today that our experience at Georgetown is enlivened by our embeddedness in a global capital city. 

But Fr. Campbell’s main point was not just about the urban similarities in this comparison. He ended his reflection about the early Jesuits by noting that we still remember the names of the seven early companions (Faber, Xavier, Laynez, Ignatius, Rodriguez, Salmeron, and Bobadilla) because they wrote history with their lives. By professing in faith their vows to a new religious order, at a time of great challenge and resistance to such a formation, these Jesuits chose to use their higher education in the service of a noble purpose that still benefits the world today. 

The question to us in 2024 at Georgetown: How will we use our Georgetown experience in service of a larger, more noble purpose than our own personal aims or professional goals? To what do we owe our faith in the transformative possibilities of a university education rooted in the Jesuit tradition of academic excellence?  

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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SCS 2024 Commencement Celebrates Graduates, Encourages Compassion and Cultivation of Life-Long Relationships

This year’s SCS Commencement featured poignant reflections about the state of the world and how graduates can contribute to peace, justice, and the common good. Watch the ceremony on Facebook.

After months of diligent preparation, the SCS Commencement Ceremony last week was a triumphant experience of celebration and meaningful reflection on the purpose of our education at Georgetown. For the first time, SCS was the first school-based ceremony of the weekend and the event took place on a beautiful May afternoon in Washington, D.C. With planes overhead in the flight path of the airport and the familiar chimes of the Healy Hall bells, the sounds and sights of the graduation festivities created an atmosphere of excitement and joy. Occurring against the backdrop of profound challenges for humanity in the country and around the world, each set of remarks invited the proud graduates to consider the deeper meaning of their time at Georgetown. In this way, the SCS Commencement featured many direct references to Jesuit values and the Ignatian principles that guide the University’s mission. 

Norah O’Donnell served as the Commencement Speaker and invited SCS graduates to reflect on the quality of their relationships as the key to a “well-lived life.” 

Fr. Greg Schenden, S.J., Director of Campus Ministry, gave the invocation prayer that called upon the graduates and the entire community to continuously commit to the “ongoing work of formation” in a “spirit of belonging.” His prayer reminded the assembled of the “gift of our mission” that is realized through the practices of discernment and reflection that ultimately lead us to be in solidarity with all.  Rabbi Rachel Gartner, Senior Advisor for Spiritual Care at SCS, delivered a moving benediction to close the ceremony. Rabbi Rachel’s prayer centered on gratitude and the “gift of our lives” that help sustain us to meet and address the “brokenness and anguish of our world.” A broad vision and a wide horizon are needed, prayed Rabbi Rachel, in order to rejoice fully when we “can all rejoice together.” Both religious leaders signaled the shared commitment across the religious traditions represented at the University to work for peace, justice, and the common good. 

Norah O’Donnell, Anchor and Managing Editor of “CBS News,” as well as a Triple Hoya (including two SCS Degrees: a Master of Liberal Studies and an honorary degree awarded at the ceremony), delivered the primary commencement address. O’Donnell, referencing the deeper mission and purpose of Jesuit education, called on the graduates to be inspired by their relationships. She distinguished between three kinds of relationships: the relationship with the self, between the self and family and friends, and between the self and the larger community. At each of these levels, reflected O’Donnell, we are called to find meaning and purpose: “This I know is true. Of all that I have done and learned through my education here at this same graduate school, from friends and family to interviewing the most fascinating people in the world, it is this: The quality of your life is built on the quality of your relationships. That’s it. That’s my thesis for a well-lived life.” O’Donnell’s reflections acknowledged the growing cultural and political polarization in the country and around the world, encouraging more listening and more compassion and curiosity toward those with differing views. 

In addition to these poignant reflections, the SCS Commencement featured the usual business of graduation, including the awarding of more than 1,000 degrees. This annual exercise is one of the cherished opportunities for all of the SCS community to be together and celebrate the shared purpose of our educational endeavors. SCS is a school with a diverse portfolio of programs and offerings, but it is ultimately united by a mission to transform its learners into graduates who can realize a better future. 

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Getting to Know the Context of the School of Continuing Studies

 This week’s post is a contextual introduction to the School of Continuing Studies, inspired by the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm. 

Last week, Mission in Motion offered an Examen reflection, inspired by the University’s Jesuit heritage, to help graduating students reflect on the meaning of the coming Commencement exercises. This week, I would like to apply some of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP), the inspirational framework for teaching and learning in Jesuit schools inspired by the dynamics of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and the principles and practices of Ignatian spirituality, in order to fully appreciate the meaning of the SCS approach to learning on the eve of Commencement. The IPP is an interrelated and interconnected process that supports the student and the teacher as whole persons throughout the learning process. An Ignatian Pedagogical approach begins with Context, moves to Experience, and then follows with Reflection, Action, and Evaluation. The cycle is continuous and dynamic.

The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) is an interrelated set of dynamics organized around a meaningful learning process, with Context at the beginning. 

Inspired by the IPP and its stages of learning, I would like to offer a brief reflection on the context of SCS. My hope is that sharing a bit more about the reality of the School will be helpful over the coming week of Commencement, especially for those traveling to the graduation events and meeting SCS for the first time. This introduction to the context of our learning community will hopefully help visitors appreciate how the School achieves a unity of mission and purpose in light of the diversity of students, modalities, and disciplinary approaches. 

According to the IPP, context refers to the establishment of the background conditions and factors that influence the learning situation for students and teachers. According to the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy at Loyola University Chicago, context is:

“Clearly the background of the framework. As St. Ignatius directed, we always want to recognize how the time and space we occupy, and the socio-geo-political happenings of our day have relevance for our teaching and students’ learning. Context is constantly evolving and therefore must be under on-going consideration.”

The foundational importance of context is related to the insistence by St. Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises to enter into a “Composition of Place,” at the start of imaginative prayer and meditation exercises. The retreatant is invited to consider all the physical and material details of the scene in which one is entering so as to faithfully and humbly acknowledge what is already at work in a particular situation. We can then apply this approach to context by exploring all of the basic details that comprise the School of Continuing Studies. One way to do this is to enjoy this four-minute video introduction to the history of the School. Another way to do this is to read the latest SCS Dean’s Report, which provides both descriptive statistics about the composition of the School’s students, staff, and faculty but also a values-driven orientation to the mission commitments of SCS programs and initiatives.  

Reading through the 2022-2023 SCS Dean’s Report is a good way to better understand the mission and purpose of the School and who it serves. 

One might most fully appreciate the context of SCS by spending time reflecting on its particular mission: “To deliver a world-class, values-based education to a diverse array of communities and individuals throughout their academic and professional careers; to improve employability and develop workforces; and to contribute to building a civic-minded, well-informed, and globally aware society.” You might become more familiar with how SCS realizes this unique mission, in the context of Georgetown’s overall Jesuit mission and purpose, by spending some time reading through the examples shared on the Mission in Motion blog. 

I hope that a fuller picture of who SCS is and why it operates helps all of us appreciate the deeper meaning of the Commencement exercises. This is a time for celebration of student accomplishments. It is also a time to reflect on who we are as a School and why our mission matters for the betterment of the world.