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Staff Appreciation Day Builds Community, Highlights the Diverse Talents of Georgetown’s Workforce

This week’s post reflects on Staff Appreciation Day at Georgetown, an occasion to grow in gratitude for how our staff members animate Georgetown’s mission and realize a “Community in Diversity.” 

Mission in Motion has regularly highlighted the many ways that staff members contribute to realizing Georgetown’s mission. Previous interviews on the blog have explored the unique talents of our staff community and how these gifts are brought to bear in support of our shared educational endeavors. I hope that readers come away with a clear sense about how such a complex global organization like Georgetown needs a talented and diverse team of employees in order for the university to flourish. 

This year’s Staff Appreciation Day hosted on the Hilltop Campus (a Capitol Campus event will take place in the spring) was an experience of gratitude for the committed members of our community who make Georgetown run. As the largest private employer in Washington, D.C., Georgetown has an enormous influence on the economic fortunes of this region. I was especially struck this year by the turnout, impressed by the size of our workforce, and amazed about how these essential roles, however diverse in their functions and locations across the university, come together to form a coherent whole. In the language of Georgetown’s mission and values, Staff Appreciation Day really puts a finer point on our being a “Community in Diversity.” 

This rich diversity was evident in so many ways. Different offices and sub-communities among the staff, like the Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), had tables and offered resources and impromptu conversations. The spread of food was nutritious and delicious and helped spark fellowship and camaraderie. There was music and even dancing! Despite the threat of rain, the mood was friendly and celebratory. I walked away with a gift from the raffle (a nice Georgetown mug!) and some lasting memories about connecting with both new and old colleagues. I was delighted by the number of conversations that led to a commitment to set up a meeting to find more time to meet and connect. 

I hope that this annual occasion helps the larger university community grow in awareness and gratitude about how staff members working in front and behind the scenes help animate Georgetown’s mission and values. I also hope that this festive gathering encourages staff members to continue seeking out the spontaneous sparks of affection that are possible when we come together as one.

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Election Season Puts Reflective Resources into Action at Georgetown

This week’s post explores the election season upon us from the perspective of Georgetown’s mission and values. The University is offering resources for navigating election time in a spirit of reflection. 

With less than two months to go until Election Day, Georgetown students, faculty, and staff have already made some plans about how they will spend this politically significant semester. In the last few weeks, the Georgetown community has received several communications about various resources on the campuses that support the democratic process and encourage civic participation. At the heart of the social teaching of the Catholic and Jesuit tradition is a belief that voting and other forms of political leadership can support the common good. At the same time, there is a widespread recognition that the turbulence of American political life can take a mental toll on our community. The temptation can be overwhelming to simply get stuck in an endless cycle of paralysis by reading and viewing news and scrolling for the latest updates. 

The occasion of election season is another reason for gratitude for Georgetown’s mission and values and the reflective practices that they encourage. To be Contemplative in Action, as our Spirit of Georgetown calls us to be, is to enter into a life of engaged activity, sometimes stress-inducing and difficult, in a spirit of generous reflection. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, believed that a person’s contemplative grounding need not be compromised by an active and busy life with many commitments. Translating such an idea to this fall semester, I think Ignatius would remind us that the hectic pace of national affairs caused by the election does not necessarily mean that we should become so absorbed as to lose touch with our own need to pause, reflect, and make meaning of what we’re experiencing in current events. 

Thankfully there are many ways at Georgetown to engage in reflective pauses in a season of election. Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice, in partnership with Student Affairs, for example, has created a resource page of Election Reflection programs. Reading this list is a vivid reminder of the many different ways our university community, leveraging the many gifts and contributions from across the campuses, is capable of coming together at important times. I am pleased to add to the offerings with “A Civic Examen: Spiritual Grounding in the Ignatian Tradition at Election Time,” on October 24 at 2 p.m. ET on Zoom (Register at this page). The Examen has been a central focus of Mission in Motion and is incredibly adaptive as a spiritual resource for mindful reflection about one’s inner movements. I was partly inspired to contribute to this season’s programming because of this article in America Magazine by Tim Muldoon, “Election Season Is the Perfect Time to Pray the Examen.” Muldoon explains that the Examen is a suitable companion for reflecting during tumultuous times because of its emphasis on locating emotional balance and authentic purpose in the midst of conflicting emotions. 

Georgetown’s proximity to the national government and the symbols of American democracy adds to the University’s capacity for meaningful impact on the common good. The political life of the country is a feature of Georgetown’s programs, professional development, and extra-curricular life. I hope that you can find ways to engage this election season by seeking out the community resources that Georgetown is making available. 

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Capitol Campus Mass of the Holy Spirit Encourages Openness to the New (and Old)

This week’s post reflects on the Capitol Campus Mass of the Holy Spirit. Seen here are students leaving the Mass at Holy Rosary Church and proceeding to the Law Center for a reception. 

Mission in Motion recently reflected on the Mass of the Holy Spirit that took place on the Hilltop Campus and now, thanks to dedicated efforts to build Georgetown’s Mission and Ministry presence in the downtown, can reflect on last weekend’s Mass of the Holy Spirit on the Capitol Campus. 

In recent years, the Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) Mission and Ministry team has worked hard to build a neighborhood partnership with Holy Rosary Church on Third Street NW where the Catholic community celebrates weekly Mass. Today, the opportunity for the Catholic community to worship together has expanded beyond GULC to include students, faculty, and staff from SCS and the other units that make up the Capitol Campus. 

A sign of this effective partnership was the robust attendance by over 75 students, faculty, and staff at the Capitol Campus Mass of the Holy Spirit, which was presided over by Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., Ph.D., Vice President for Mission and Ministry, and co-celebrated by several Jesuits from the nearby Gonzaga Jesuit community. On a beautiful Sunday evening, this religious gathering convened a diverse group of participants seeking spiritual consolation and greater community connection. All of it took place on the developing Capitol Campus (for more, read “Reflecting on Georgetown’s Composition of Place in the Downtown”) with the service occurring at Holy Rosary and a post-Mass reception taking place outside the GULC Campus Ministry suite in McDonough Hall. The short walk from the church to the campus contextualized the reality that Georgetown’s downtown presence is accelerating, marked by the opening this fall of the McCourt School of Public Policy at 125 E Street (pictured above as the building on the far right) and continuing construction of the 111 Massachusetts Avenue building (pictured below) that will house SCS and other schools and units starting next fall. 

111 Massachusetts Avenue, which is under construction and will be home to SCS and other units in 2025, is another sign of Georgetown’s accelerating presence in the downtown. 

Fr. Bosco’s homily pointed to themes of openness to both continuity and change by deeply exploring the meaning from Mark’s Gospel of being “opened.” The Aramaic line from Chapter 7 in Mark, “Ephphatha,” which means “Be opened!” is in the context of Jesus healing a deaf person. For Fr. Mark, this presented a point of departure for more consideration of what this openness might mean for us at Georgetown in 2024. In particular, Fr. Bosco called for us to pay more attention to the small details of our everyday lives. So many of us, obligated by the press of constant tasks and activities, forget to find beauty and goodness in the details of life. 

The need for prolonged attentiveness for the potential of deeper mystery and insight to emerge from reflecting on the objects of our sensory experience can be especially realized, Fr. Bosco noted, in the pondering one does of great art and literature. A patient and unhurried stroll through a museum presents an obvious opportunity for this delighted gazing. But so does the intentional commitment to opening ourselves up to new ideas, new people, and new perspectives as part of our learning at Georgetown. Openness as a spiritual and moral theme can then move from the personal or individual to the communal. 

As our learning at Georgetown does not take place in individualized silos, we are invited to consider what it means to learn together. Common experience suggests that life in community, however motivated we are by an aspirational shared mission, can be difficult. And these challenges become harder when division and conflict surround every part of our lives and spill over into the context of our education. We live in such a moment today. The temptation is to close off from ideas and views different from our own. Fr. Bosco’s homily encouraged the opposite: Part of the task before us this year is to expand the horizons of our perspectives by meeting old and new ideas with openness. No matter the discipline of our formal study at Georgetown, everyone engaged in this common project can grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually.

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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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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. 

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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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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. 

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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.