This week’s Mission in Motion highlights Georgetown’s Jesuit Heritage Month, which includes a special Instagram Live with SCS alum Karim Trueblood.
Every year, Georgetown explores the enduring contribution of the University’s Jesuit heritage and values through an entire month of programming. You can check out the diverse array of activities occurring across Georgetown that invite participants into a deeper consideration of what the five centuries of tradition of Jesuit spirituality and education mean today. Jesuit Heritage Month can be especially helpful for community members who do not know much about Georgetown’s Jesuit characteristics and desire to learn more.
Mission in Motion attempts to narrate the myriad ways that SCS lives out Jesuit values across the school community. This blog is intentional about practically telling the story of mission and values at SCS by emphasizing how this work is approached inclusively and invitationally, encouraging everyone in the community to take part in activating the core principles of the Spirit of Georgetown. The emphasis is on the “motion” of the mission, signaling that mission and values are critical because they inform how we act more generously and justly in the world. The religious diversity of SCS is celebrated in these posts and Jesuit values are offered as a resource for deeper learning and service for everyone, especially in the context of the diversity of lived experience and religious identity.
SCS uniquely manifests the Spirit of Georgetown in curricular innovations, like instructional design processes that intentionally incorporate Jesuit values into online and on-ground courses. All of the Master of Professional Studies programs include a core class in Ethics that explores professional decision-making from diverse philosophical vantage points, with special attention on the contribution of Ignatian discernment and Jesuit values. And a dedicated community-based learning course, “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice,” allows degree-seeking students to deeply explore the implications of incorporating Jesuit-inspired reflection practices, like the examen of consciousness, for professional life.
With the uniqueness of the SCS way of living out Georgetown’s Jesuit values in mind, it is very exciting that Georgetown’s Jesuit Heritage Month will include a special SCS event. On November 17 at 3:00 p.m. ET on the School’s Instagram, I will sit down and talk with Karim Trueblood, SCS alum of the Class of 2019. Mission in Motion has featured Karim on the blog and explored her distinct ways that she made Jesuit values part of her curricular and co-curricular experience at SCS.
I am very excited about the Instagram live conversation because Karim’s story of personal discovery is an inspiration for anyone who wants to live out the University’s mission and values but may not know where to start. A graduate of the Master of Professional Studies in Emergency & Disaster Management, Karim models so well how every person has their own special sacred story and no one’s story is exactly like anyone else’s. The most compelling stories are so often filled with surprises and unexpected turns. Karim will help us understand how Georgetown SCS fits into her ongoing pilgrimage of life and work. Tune in and learn more about how Karim is helping set the world on fire!
This week’s post highlights an event hosted at SCS and convened by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life: “What Is the Good Life Now? Work, Relationships, Faith, and Wholeness Today.” You can watch a recording of the event and reflect on the deep questions that were considered. Photo courtesy of the Initiative’s website.
Readers of this SCS Mission in Motion blog should be well aware that Georgetown does not shy away from asking big questions about the meaning of life. What distinguishes Georgetown’s approach is how these big questions are asked in a way that is not only about the conceptual and theoretical dimensions. Georgetown strives to encourage “the meaning of life” discussion and deliberation in a manner that stimulates practical responses and positive changes in the way that we individually and collectively live together in society. At SCS, our mission commitment is directly related to the transformation of professional and continuing education students who arrive at various points in the life cycle of their careers.
In light of the significant flux and social, economic, political, cultural, and religious disruptions of the last few years, there seem to be fewer bigger questions than this: “What is the good life now?” And this question was asked this week when SCS hosted Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life for its first in-person event at 640 Massachusetts Avenue in over three years. SCS has gratefully partnered with the Initiative in the past on these special events, which are offered as part of Salt and Light Gatherings for young faith-motivated leaders in the Washington, D.C., area who desire to explore the links between faith, moral traditions (especially the resources from Catholic social thought), and their own lives and work. The event took place in three phases: a welcoming happy hour, a panel discussion, and a reception that followed building on the conversation.
The event brought together young professionals in the D.C. area at the SCS Campus. Conversation and community-building preceded and followed the panel conversation.
I found the framing questions for the event to be thought-provoking and useful for generating deeper personal and communal reflection, so I want to share them here:
What does “the good life” look like for young leaders in Washington and the United States today? What contributes to the good life? What threatens it?
How can young people find meaning, participation, balance, and wholeness while dealing with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges, political polarization, debates over human life and dignity, and economic, environmental, and racial justice issues?
How can faith and Catholic social thought inform and guide our choices, actions, and how we live our lives?
In the SCS auditorium as well as a live-streamed broadcast, panelists pondered philosophy, religion, politics, economics, technology, and social media.
The talented panel brought together faith-motivated leaders with different perspectives and life experience, including a Notre Dame philosophy professor, a Boston College psychology professor, an author and policy advocacy director, and a young professional who has worked on immigration issues. You can watch a recording and relive the lively discussion. You can also consult a helpful list of additional resources prepared for the event.
I listened in on the conversation and noted a creative tension as a theme: the need for balance between working out one’s own philosophy of life and needing to rely on the wisdom, support, care, and teachings of others in developing this personal vision. To respect a philosophical heritage that is over 2,000 years old does not mean that one’s definition of living a good life has to conform precisely to someone else’s. Instead, determining the meaning of a good life has to take into account all of the unique factors of one’s lived experience and social influences. It is not wise nor possible to enforce a single definition of what living the good life means. But we can benefit from sustained reflection on the meaning of the exemplar actions, teachings, writings, and thinking of the wisdom that we have inherited through the ages.
So much of the conversation came back to the fundamental need to develop healthy habits of interiority and discernment. Readers of the blog will recognize these as consistent themes expressed about the way to live out the Spirit of Georgetown. No one else can claim your own interior experience. Cultivating a deep inner life, regardless of the “what” that you profess to believe about the biggest, most ultimate questions, is a solid starting point for journeying in the direction of your good life.
I am delighted to be writing for this wonderful blog, and even more so that Jamie’s last post, along with the occasion of this last weekend’s graduate student “Rest, Recharge, Renew” retreat give me such a powerful entry point.
During my last 11 years on the hilltop, it has been a consistent joy to discover aspects of Ignatian spirituality that resonate with aspects of Jewish tradition and the other traditions represented on campus. My hope in interfaith engagement is always that different traditions can provide new angles, food for further thought, and sometimes even deeper illumination into the places where they connect. All this, without needing to connect in every place!
This week’s post is offered by Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Spiritual Care, who reflects on the contemplative themes and interfaith possibilities of last weekend’s “Rest, Recharge, Renew” retreat for graduate and professional students. Rabbi Gartner also shares about the way that sacred events, like Shabbat, help us step outside of ordinary life in order to move toward it more contemplatively.
Jamie’s last blog post explored one such area of connection and resonance. One of my favorites, quite frankly.
In the last blog post Jamie sagely reminded us of the potential spiritual and emotional pitfalls of an overcommitted lifestyle, warning: “[E]ven busy adults who have important tasks to accomplish everyday can develop an unhealthy relationship to time.” One of the dangers of a utilitarian relationship with time so prevalent for so many of us these days is that it can make time into a possession that we need to use productively, and using time to contemplate doesn’t fit into our notion of productivity and therefore is a waste of our possession.
Indeed. In a context in which we don’t see contemplation as productive, it can be really hard to make the case for it. My experience in multifaith settings over the last two decades tells me that making the case for contemplation has become one of the central roles for contemporary clergy of any background, precisely because it has become so profoundly challenging and precisely because we believe so profoundly in it.
Thankfully, for me, it’s easy to make the case. Enter the Torah.
Jews like to joke that, through Torah, we brought the world the concept of the weekend; in the form of Shabbat. During Shabbat, Jews construct what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called a cathedral in time:
“Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”
As the sun sets on the eve of Shabbat, we light our plain white candles – one for everyone in the household – raise a glass of wine or juice, break simple bread, and step into that sanctuary in time. There, we leave behind the regular flow of time and the productivity we imbed in it. We do this not in order to escape life, but in order to enter into it more deeply. We step outside of ordinary life so we can then turn toward it contemplatively and “see and taste” (Psalm 34) the goodness of all of life.
If Shabbat were a person, she would high-five, fist-bump, or elbow-bump the Jesuit Walter Burghardt for naming and affirming contemplation as a “long loving look at the real” which inspires as “experiential awareness of reality” and a “way of entering into communion with reality.”
Judaism, in particular the mystical strain of Judaism, teaches that all of reality is a manifestation of the Divine. That God not merely permeates reality, but reality is an expression or embodiment of the essence of God. Seeking metaphors to describe this hard-to-grasp concept, Jewish mystics often refer to reality as a garment of God. This garment is woven of aspects of God’s very being – so it is itself ultimately Divine in both origin and nature. Jewish mystics teach that our spiritual goal is to attain the awareness that this is the true nature of all of life. We do this through what they call devekut (lit. cleaving). Devekut is essentially a communion with the Divine (through, in part, our experiential awareness of reality) that allows us to see and sense the godliness hidden within every single aspect of the material world. Through devekut we come to know intellectually, as well as to sense in our very being, the ultimate truth that all of reality is sacred, all of reality is One.
Through rest, reflection, song, prayer, communal conversation, and Torah study, Shabbat becomes a weekly, extended, and communal contemplative pursuit of – and ideally the attainment of – devekut.
We conclude Shabbat the way we begin it. In a ritual called havdallah (lit. distinction) we light candles, we drink wine or juice, and in place of eating sweet challah, we smell aromatic spices – a symbolic last whiff of the extra-soulfulness we are granted on Shabbat. Unlike the singular and white Shabbat candle, the havdallah candle contains many wicks and strands of wax composed of a rainbow of colors. The multifaceted candle invites us to weave our singular Shabbat consciousness into the glorious multifaceted activities of the week ahead. This idea is affirmed in some communities by actually placing a drop of havdallah wine or juice on our eyelids, as an invitation to see the rest of the week through Shabbat eyes. Or, as Burghardt, S.J., might express it, to turn to all of reality with a long and loving look that invites communion with it.
In Judaism, devekut is a highly valued end in and of itself. Its reward is deep joy. Through it, we find greater meaning and satisfaction in all that we do in life. And at the same time, there is a desired (even commanded) outcome of equal importance – namely, to live with greater intention, righteousness, kindness, and integrity as a result of our loving encounter with the real.
Contemplation, Shabbat, devekut are meant to lead to living in a way that honors what we come to know through them – that everything and everyone is ultimately divine in origin and nature. It’s our joyful and sacred obligation to live according to that awareness and to become maximally productive in the things that matter most: what we bring to this world and how we treat one another in it.
May it be so.
Please consider joining me and Jamie for upcoming retreats as they are announced. We’d love to see you at them.
This week, Mission in Motion considers contemplation as a response to an overly utilitarian approach to time. The upcoming graduate and professional retreat offers an opportunity for living out the Spirit of Georgetown value of “contemplation in action.”
The upcoming graduate and professional student retreat, “Rest, Recharge, Renew,” is being offered as an opportunity for busy students to take some time away from the pressures of work and school and enjoy each other’s company in a beautiful, natural setting. The motivation for organizing the retreat is as simple as the tagline: rest, recharge, and renew. Graduate and professional students are accustomed to daily and weekly routines that require rigorous time management in order to fulfill their obligations as students balancing lives outside of the classroom. Making the time and space for this kind of structured experience of relaxation in the company of other students is well worth the effort. Making space for retreat, a temporary interruption and dislocation from daily routines, is a healthy and fulfilling use of time.
The retreat has me reflecting on the nature of time and how graduate and professional students relate to time. If we take seriously the Spirit of Georgetown value of “contemplation in action,” which is the value that motivates retreat programs across the University, how do we make sense of the tension between these ideas? How does the seeming paradox of “contemplation” and “action” relate to the life of a graduate student at Georgetown? What from the many spiritual traditions represented at Georgetown can help us answer these fundamental questions?
Despite the disciplinary diversity of graduate and professional programs, I think a common trait of these students is the limited amount of time for activities that might be considered non-essential. The weekly calendar quickly fills up when school, work, home, and social activities are added. Economists tend to make a distinction between “leisure” and “work,” but this simple distinction does not seem to capture well the in-between range of activities. Perhaps unlike traditional residential undergraduate students taking four years to earn a degree, graduate students have a more utilitarian relationship to time. The stakes seem to be higher for older adult students with more responsibilities and the discernments about how to use their non-essential time for activity require lots of negotiation and planning. As someone with a full family and work schedule, I can appreciate these tensions.
But even busy adults who have important tasks to accomplish everyday can develop an unhealthy relationship to time. The theater critic Walter Kerr in the book The Decline of Pleasure captures the tendency to equate virtue with constant activity: “Only useful time is valuable, meaningful, moral. Activity that is not clearly, concretely useful to oneself or others is worthless, meaningless, immoral.” This utilitarian interpretation of the meaning of how we use our time has some negative consequences. For the purpose of this reflection, I think a concerning outcome of this mentality is that if time becomes a possession that we acquire, then it becomes more difficult to pause and make meaning of our lives in the midst of our activity. The questions that should be orienting our work and activity can be pushed aside if we don’t intentionally make time to ask our core questions: Who am I as a person? What matters to me? What is the “why” of my life? And what path do I need to travel in order to realize my deeper purpose?
This is where the value of contemplation comes in and can relate harmoniously with the life of action. It is important to note that there is not a single, universal way of naming and understanding a vast concept like “contemplation.” Various philosophical, religious, spiritual, and humanistic traditions have different understandings of this term and its implication for practices. I’ll be relying on an invitational and inclusive understanding of contemplation taken from the Jesuit tradition of education and spirituality. The Jesuit Walter Burghardt describes contemplation as a “long loving look at the real.” This is a way of considering contemplation and the practices it inspires as “experiential awareness of reality” and a “way of entering into communion with reality.” But what do the pieces of this definition mean for graduate and professional students? Let’s take each of these components.
Real: This is the stuff of your life that cannot be reduced to abstract concepts. The real is people, things, nature, objects, etc. Reality is living and pulsing, concrete and singular. Look: This is not analysis or interpretation, but communion with the stuff of our reality by noticing and engaging reality with all of our senses. For Burghardt, to look is to feel and to experience in our senses the fact of our whole person gazing at reality. To contemplate is to be aware that we are physical bodies in a world of other bodies. Long: This is not a recipe for length of time in contemplation, but an invitation to be unhurried about it. Burghardt describes the long nature of contemplation as rest: “[T]o rest in the real, not lifelessly or languidly, not sluggishly or inertly.” These long looks can happen on a walk, on a train ride to work, in the office or classroom, picking up our kids from school, etc. The point is that our contemplative gazing is “whole person enraptured” with full senses. And finally, loving: Contemplation is not always delightful or comforting and sometimes it surfaces the wounds and hurts of our lives. By lovingly entering into contemplation, we make it more likely that our response will be more generous and more compassionate toward others. Contemplation is not actually individualistic or indulgent navel gazing.
There is no monolithic way to translate this understanding of contemplation into meaningful practices. The “how” of contemplation depends on the individual person and their full context of life. Burghardt’s suggestions for how to do this are reflected in the upcoming graduate and professional retreat. He recommends that we can develop the capacity for long, loving looks at the real by 1) interrupting our ordinary patterns of life (by going on retreat!); 2) developing a feeling for festivity; 3) building habits of play and wonder; 4) learning not to expect profit from our contemplation or possession of our objects of delight; and 5) finding guides and mentors to accompany us along the way.
My hope is that the invitation to bring together “contemplation” and “action” sparks something for you. Find a retreat, spiritual companion, leadership coach, affirming community of peers, etc. And next time you feel yourself judging yourself for any empty pockets on your schedule, I invite you to reconsider your relationship with time. We can slow life down even in a few free moments with a long, loving look at the real.
This post relies on Walter Burghardt’s article, “Contemplation: A Long Loving Look at the Real,” as reproduced in An Ignatian Spirituality Reader, edited by George Traub (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008).
This week’s Mission in Motion shines a light on the October 22 BellRinger Ride to end cancer by funding research at Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. SCS has come together to support BellRinger as a community, including by donating to Team SCS
Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, does critically important research that translates into clinical practice. The accelerated search for a cure to this disease and more effective treatments are supported by Lombardi’s invaluable work. Framed around the Spirit of Georgetown value cura personalis (or care of the whole person), the Lombardi Center, as part of the Georgetown University Medical Center, brings the University’s mission and values to life through its life-saving care and research. Almost everyone has a deeply personal experience with cancer, so the work of Lombardi and other comprehensive cancer centers is urgent for many.
A year-round grassroots effort to end cancer by supporting the Lombardi Center has led to BellRinger, an inaugural bike ride taking place October 22-23, 2022. BellRinger is a promising community movement fueled by riders raising funds for cancer research. There are many ways to contribute and you can participate as a physical rider, a virtual rider, a volunteer, or by donating funds to the cause. What is energizing about BellRinger is the way that this inaugural ride weekend presents an important mission commitment. SCS has responded to this invitation to animate Georgetown’s mission by inviting its students, alumni, staff, and faculty to come together and make the BellRinger ride an enriching community bonding experience.
It is not too late to join Team SCS and participate in the BellRinger Weekend. You can donate to Team SCS and you can still register for the big ride as part of SCS. A virtual kick-off for SCS is taking place on Friday, October 14 from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m. ET. SCS community members can register for the kick-off meeting and learn helpful tips from BellRinger representatives about preparing for October 22. I invite you to check out SCS Dean Kelly Otter’s Instagram story extending an invitation to consider joining this important effort. BellRinger is truly a mission-grounded opportunity to share in helping end cancer and enjoy each other’s company along the ride!
This week’s post is about a new welcome video shared with SCS students that invites reflection and meaning-making during the early stages of a new semester. You can watch the video and then explore the Spirit of Georgetown.
What does it feel like to begin something new? When you start a new experience for the first time, what are you paying attention to? What grabs your awareness? How do you transition from the beginning to the next stages of a new thing?
These are the kinds of questions that all students at SCS ask when a new semester starts. Whether you’re a continuing student steadily or quickly making progress in your degree or non-degree program, or just starting out at the School, every student grapples with big questions in the first few days and weeks of a new semester. So often, in my experience, new students are navigating a mix of emotions related to a range of the student experience. There might be nerves about logistics and work-life balance, such as: How can I make this academic program fit into my daily life? Others might be uncertain about their course selections and eager to better understand what their faculty members are like. And other concerns might be about the social aspect of the learning experience: Will I fit in here? Do I belong?
One of my favorite lines from the author T.S. Eliot is that “We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.” The lesson that we can take from Eliot, I believe, is that a new semester is as good a time as any to consider the deeper meaning of our time at Georgetown. The crunch of early semester business might not seem like an opportune time for deeper reflection, but I believe that the first weeks of a new experience provide the best opportunity to get in touch with the bigger picture of our lives as we navigate the details of the day-to-day.
Luckily at Georgetown, we have a set of resources and tools for students to do the work of meaning-making about their learning experiences. The Spirit of Georgetown, 10 values distilled from five centuries of Jesuit history and educational innovation, facilitate this kind of deeper exploration.
So as the dust settles on the first few weeks of the semester, the SCS Mission and Ministry team offers a new welcome message to help students consider the deeper meaning of their student experience.
We hope students will receive the message at a fruitful time in the life of the semester, perhaps at a time that students are more eager to pursue some of their bigger questions than they were in week one. Some of these questions might be: How is my coursework informing my reflection about what kind of professional I want to become? What are my unique gifts and talents and how can I apply them in class assignments and extra-curricular opportunities? What is there about being a Georgetown student that goes beyond what happens in my classes?
SCS students are supported through various programs and events to seek greater meaning, purpose, and belonging. Retreats are great (like this upcoming Graduate and Professional Student retreat) for this kind of structured reflection. And there are other ways that SCS accompanies the spiritual life of its students. New experiences, like starting a graduate program after years in the workforce or transitioning into an entirely new career path, can be filled with uncertainty and worry. But these experiences can also serve as invaluable opportunities to discern how we are called to seek something greater in our daily lives.
This week’s post is about the upcoming Graduate and Professional Student Retreat, “Rest, Recharge, Renew,” taking place October 15-16. SCS students should sign up here
Some might assume that graduate and professional students, unlike traditional full-time undergraduates, do not desire dedicated time and space for spiritual growth and community-building outside of their class time. This thinking assumes that adult learners in graduate and professional programs are already “formed” in their spiritual lives and are too busy for anything outside of classroom tasks. The theory might be that these adults carry so many other obligations of family, work, and social life that crowd out any interest in activities considered non-essential. To some degree, these assumptions have validity. It is true that most adult students have to be particularly discerning about how they choose to spend their school time in the midst of so much else. And it is also true in terms of human development that many graduate and professional students have already cultivated a well-developed sense of their personal, spiritual, and career identities by the time they arrive at Georgetown.
While it is true adult learners have different needs than other students in the life cycle, it is not the case that graduate and professional students do not need dedicated mission and ministry programs. In fact, the style of reflection, prayer, meditation, and community-building inspired by Jesuit spirituality (in particular, the Examen approach to consciousness awareness) offers particular benefits to adult learners. Adults learn best from their experience and desire to be in spaces with other adults who want to learn from their experiences, which we might call the “texts” of their own lives. Jesuit spirituality begins in this place by starting with a person’s lived experience and then entering into reflection and ultimately action on how to become an even more generous and giving person in the world. Respecting the context of these adult learners is the best way to design programs intended to build spiritual community.
SCS has made such reflective activities a key part of student experience. An annual student retreat in the spring semester has provided students with an opportunity to build relationships with other SCS students and grow in awareness of the need for quiet, reflective time and space in the middle of a demanding academic program. SCS will offer this dedicated retreat just for its students again in Spring 2023.
This fall presents a new cross-campus opportunity for cultivating reflective habits among SCS and all of the other graduate and professional students at Georgetown. From October 15 to 16, an overnight retreat “Rest, Recharge, Renew,” is being made available for all graduate and professional students at the University. Georgetown Law Center’s Campus Ministry is taking the lead on the retreat but other partners at the University, including SCS, are supporting delivery of the retreat. The intention of the retreat is simple – to give graduate and professional students an opportunity to take a break from school and reflect, relax, and build relationships with other students across Georgetown. Taking place at Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the retreat setting offers some welcomed time away from the business of daily life.
Inter-campus encounters can be rare at a big university but these opportunities are precious for developing a shared sense of community at Georgetown. I encourage SCS students to consider signing up for the retreat as spaces are limited!
Last week, Mission in Motion reflected on the critical contributions of Georgetown’s staff community that bring to life the University’s mission on a daily basis and often do this work behind-the-scenes. This week, we sat down with SCS Assistant Dean Lynnecia Eley to learn more about her role at SCS, how she has grown professionally and personally during her decade of service at Georgetown, and what advice she gives to new students. Lynnecia is a mission-driven higher education professional and she consistently invites her colleagues and the students she supports to a deeper level of commitment grounded in the Spirit of Georgetown.
This week’s Mission in Motion is an interview with SCS Assistant Dean Lynnecia Eley, who shares about her journey at Georgetown and what motivates her work at SCS.
1. You’re an Assistant Dean for the Analytics, Technology, and Security Programs. Tell us more about this role and what your responsibilities entail.
As the Assistant Dean for the Analytics, Technology, and Security Programs at SCS, I often find myself in a catch-all between coaching advisors or managing expectations of students and faculty, while also being an enforcer of academic policies. Specifically, my role includes assisting in planning and implementing curriculum in cooperation with program faculty directors, and also managing a team of academic advisors that counsel students in academic matters and student recruitment. At times you may also find me directly counseling students on personal or disciplinary matters and working closely with other colleagues to develop strategies for marketing, communications, enrollment, and monitoring program financial budgets.
At least that’s most of what my job description says…
While all true in relation to responsibilities, I view my role a little differently at times. Assistant deans can wear many hats and balancing them all can sometimes be a challenge between being in service to our teams and students and also being the “closer or fixer” when another voice is needed. Neither of which is specifically bad or difficult, but it is a balance nonetheless. I’m a caring and supportive individual by nature, so I thrive in space that allows me to be both a cheerleader or coach and a judge on tough matters. As assistant dean at SCS, I’m able to bring a little of my inner self to my daily work activities.
2. You have been at Georgetown SCS for nearly 10 years. Say more about your journey at the University and what you have learned about yourself along the way.
It’s been a long journey, but one that has been met with many meaningful experiences that stand out. There is so much rich history at Georgetown and honestly before working here all I really knew was its history of faith and basketball. I started at Georgetown SCS in the Summer & Special Programs department after two years of taking career risks and trying out jobs that didn’t connect with me as a person. It didn’t take long for me to begin feeling right at home and making connections with so many people.
Nearly 10 years is a long time, and throughout those years I’ve met people that became close friends, some of which have helped me become the person I am today. I remember struggling a bit in my early years, battling being myself versus being who I thought others needed me to be or “wanted” me to be. I remember a staff/faculty member, Wanda Cumberlander, asking me, “When are you going to come out of that box they have put you in?” You see, she saw so much more in me that I was almost afraid to let out. I used to take for granted how much being myself was needed for me to evolve personally and professionally.
What I have learned most along the way is how to show up authentically and how putting myself forward is part of showing up and being successful. Authenticity is at the core of being effective and sustainable because being authentic pulls from personal strengths and core values. I learned authentic self-promotion. It’s having the conviction that I have something of special and unique value to offer and the willingness to show up to serve and thrive within the process.
3. As someone who prioritizes good advising relationships with students, can you share with us some of the advice that you give to new students about being successful?
My best piece of advice to new students comes in the form of a question: “If you had to grow your own food, would you wait until you are hungry to plant a few seeds?” Rather you are entering graduate school immediately after undergrad or a seasoned career changer, relationship building is key to being successful. You cannot wait until you have graduated to begin planting seeds that can affect or change the rest of your life. Relationship building and career networking begins with your first class meeting.
When we intentionally plant seeds we have to nurture them and wait for them to grow. Accelerating the process is just not humanly possible. So while a student, especially in a setting like SCS where programs are industry-specific and you are amongst other adult-learners, start building an integrated network of contacts early. This is more than exchanging business cards or the occasional like on LinkedIn; in essence I advise building intentional and quality relationships over a mass quantity of “people you know.”
Some of the tips I’ve shared are to get to know your instructors and their areas of expertise, volunteer and/or join professional organizations, or even adopt a mentor (instructor, program alum, or current classmate) that can prove great payoff in the future.
4. Reflecting on Georgetown’s mission and values, what about the Spirit of Georgetown most matters to you as a person and professional? What are some ways that you bring the University’s mission to life in your work and daily life?
Georgetown’s mission is to educate a diverse community with holistic values rooted in faith and traditions, but what matters most to me personally and professionally is the commitment to educating the whole person. The University integrates “real life” into academic experiences where students, staff, and faculty are able to connect and share about influences and interests that make them unique. My belief is that when you find something you really enjoy doing, you also find a way to help others while doing it and the feeling it provides gives a sense of purpose or fulfillment.
Outside of the University I’m a huge cheerleader for others in coaching and teaching them how to show up as their best selves with confidence and go after the freedoms that allow them to do whatever it is that they love. At work, I’m the same with my team. I’m very intentional and careful about affirming their qualities, while also coaching and teaching them to be great student advisors. The effect they have as advisors, being of service to so many students, in turn creates a circle of personal and professional growth.
Cura personalis is one of the most popular and widely cited values in the Spirit of Georgetown. And this makes sense because this particular value points to the need for individualized attention and care in all relationships at the University, especially among teachers and students and between employees and managers. Caring for the whole person in this way, attending to the individual’s gifts and talents as well as their challenges and limitations, requires that we get to know each other at more than a surface level. By encountering each other’s unique stories and lived experiences, we begin a relationship of work or study from a place of meaningful context. The relationship is more meaningful when both parties involved are willing to listen attentively to each other’s needs out of a place of deeper personal recognition.
This week’s post is a reflection on Georgetown Staff Appreciation Day, relating the values of care for the person (cura personalis) and care for the work (cura apostolica). Pictured: SCS staff members enjoying the picnic lunch.
This week, Georgetown hosted a Staff Appreciation Day on the Hilltop campus and many members of the SCS team attended this festive event. With food, dancing, and the opportunity to enjoy each other’s company on a beautiful day in the late summer, the three-hour celebration was a welcome but rare occasion of bringing together the staff community from across Georgetown. The experience also invites deeper reflection about how the staff at SCS and across the University uniquely bring to life the Spirit of Georgetown in their daily work. To assist with this deeper reflection, I’d like to connect cura personalis to the value of cura apostolica, or care of the work.
Relating cura personalis to cura apostolica helps us appreciate in a more significant way how the staff at SCS and across Georgetown are instrumental to the realization of the University’s mission. Each member of the staff serves a unique role in the organization, manifesting a diversity of professional expertise and skill in all the daily tasks that need to be realized in order for Georgetown to function well. So much of this activity occurs outside of the view of students and faculty. Staff members care for the universal work of Georgetown’s mission with their particular contributions. Regardless of one’s specific job responsibility, however, staff members do more than just make the organization function and operate efficiently. They bring the mission to life in vital ways.
By paying attention both to the person and to the work for which they are responsible, the Spirit of Georgetown relates individual personal attention and collective purpose and mission. Care for the whole person is valuable for its own sake. But as an institution of higher education rooted in the Jesuit tradition, purposeful care and attention toward the individual ultimately serves the larger purpose of our educational goals. The Jesuits around the globe have noted that these two values are sometimes in tension but can fruitfully come together when co-workers collaborate “towards the service of the mission” but also recognize that they themselves are a “form of mission.” More than serving the mission, staff are themselves the mission. As Stephanie Russell puts it in an article entitled “Cura Apostolica Revisited:”
“Cura apostolica is the complement to cura personalis, but it is not an institutional counterweight that tempers our warm and fuzzy inclinations to provide personal care (that is, the Ignatian version of good cop, bad cop). Rather, through cura apostolica, the same intimate knowledge and compassion found in cura personalis is extended, beyond any single person, to encompass our shared personhood and mission. … We matter to each other; we matter together for the common good.”
Staff Appreciation Day was a reminder of how much individual staff members, however behind-the-scenes their work might be, serve our communal mission. Appreciating the staff in this way can sharpen an awareness about how the Georgetown educational experience is a shared endeavor.
As a professional school, SCS is committed to transforming the lives and careers of lifelong learners and does this, according to the School’s mission, in order to “improve employability and develop workforces; and to contribute to building a civic-minded, well-informed, and globally aware society.” On the eve of the Labor Day holiday, it is fitting that we reflect on the nature of work and how such reflection can inspire our actions as members of the SCS community. How can we infuse the preparation of lifelong learners for professional practices that reflect the mission and values of the Spirit of Georgetown? How can we as diverse professional members of this community strive to live out an understanding of the “work” of society in a way that justly honors workers and fosters greater equity and the common good?
Labor Day, intended as a holiday that honors the American labor movement, has the potential to give rise to deeper reflection about the contributions of laborers of all kinds in the work of the nation. The themes of work and the proper place of work in our lives are taken up by the teachings of diverse religious and spiritual traditions. Pope Francis, for example, has written extensively in recent documents about the need for political, economic, and social structures that support the dignity of all workers, most especially those marginalized or oppressed by these systems. In his teaching document Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis calls for the realization of “integral human development” through the creation of economic systems and practices that value community production above exploitative models of economic growth that simultaneously harm the environment and workers.
These ideas from Pope Francis echo a long tradition of Catholic Social Teaching and its seven principles, which includes “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers.” This principle maintains that:
“The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected – the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.”
At Georgetown, advancing the dignity of work is evident in a number of University initiatives, including the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor whose purpose is to develop creative strategies and innovative public policy to improve workers’ lives. And at SCS, programs across the School consider pressing ethical questions about labor within the curriculum. For example, the Master’s in Supply Chain Management has been exploring how supply chain issues and inflation have adversely impacted the charity sector (“Helping Charities Defend Against Inflation’s Double Punch”).
As a values-based professional education institution, it is important that we regularly consider the dignity of labor and the rights of workers. My hope is that this Labor Day provides time and space to pause and reflect on just principles of work and how we as Hoyas can join in contributing to a society and a world that brings these principles to life.
