One of the great strengths of the SCS approach to professional education is the intentional emphasis on Georgetown’s Jesuit mission and its relevance to the tasks of lifelong learning. The connection between Ignatian values and continuous education is well-established in the biography of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The Jesuit founder experienced a transformative conversion after a life-altering battlefield injury that ultimately led him to re-chart his life’s journey in the service of his ultimate purpose: praising, reverencing, and serving God in all things. This new direction demanded different skills, capacities, and knowledge than those required by his former, pre-conversion lifestyle. St. Ignatius went back to school, quite literally, in order to fulfill his noble purpose.
In this way, St. Ignatius presents an exemplary case of continuing education in action that continues to inspire our approaches today. It is with this Ignatian inspiration in mind that I reflect on this week’s Knowledge@Noon program hosted by the professional certificates team at SCS. Branded as a presentation about “Discerning How to Be an Ethical Leader,” the training served as an entry point for participants to discover more about the professional certificate offerings at SCS, including the newly designed “Master Practitioner in Leadership” in which I serve as an instructor. I spent the hour making the case for spirituality as a key ingredient of leader development, a recommendation supported by scholarly research in management and leadership studies. I then offered Ignatian discernment and its practices as a practical bridge between theoretical support for spiritual leadership and an applied approach to integrating spirituality into leader practices.
The Ignatian spiritual tradition offers so many valuable insights to the discussion about ethical leadership. One of the main points I tried to emphasize in this virtual training is that Ignatian discernment, rooted as it is in a faith tradition, gives professional education of leaders a deeper range of resources beyond those of purely secularized approaches like emotional intelligence. My intention here is to help prospective students appreciate how Georgetown’s religious heritage as a Catholic and Jesuit university and its commitment to interreligious dialogue is unique in the marketplace of continuing education programs.
There is so much more to say about these connections but I recommend that you inquire about professional certificates, like the Strategic Thinking and Leadership Academy and the Master Practitioner in Leadership, to learn more about how Ignatian principles manifest in SCS programming.