Tag: Jesuit Education

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What Are We Learning from Students about Effective, Mission-Driven Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

A hallmark of Jesuit education is a commitment to a style of teaching, known as Ignatian Pedagogy, which emphasizes the personalization of learning, the social context in which learning occurs, and the ultimate goals of education: serving each other and the common good. The paradigm of Ignatian Pedagogy, which flows from Jesuit spirituality and features a dynamic inter-play of the five stages of Context-Experience-Reflection-Action-Evaluation, is not a rigid one-size fits all manual for teaching but rather a spur to deeper consideration of students as whole persons in the learning process. The paradigm’s often overlooked fifth stage, evaluation, offers all of us at Georgetown an opportunity to comprehensively reflect on what we have learned from our teaching and working during the last two months so that we might proceed with a better understanding for how to more effectively journey together as we meet the challenges before us.

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Taken from “Ignatian Pedagogy: An Abridged Version,” Ignatian Pedagogy is five inter-related stages and ends with evaluation. How are we evaluating the experience of teaching and learning in the pandemic?

This year’s Teaching Learning and Innovation Summer Institute (TLISI) conference, an annual conference hosted by the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship after spring semester ends, provided rich opportunities to more deeply evaluate what we learned from educating in the virtual environment from March to May. TLISI is always an engaging experience of cross-campus, peer-to-peer sharing, and SCS has contributed significantly to the conference in the past few years, offering a number of mission-related sessions (including here, here, and here). Two panels stood out at this year’s all-virtual conference: one session led by students and another session led by Georgetown’s Deans.

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This year’s TLISI conference offered several opportunities to reflect on what worked and what didn’t in our teaching, working, and learning at Georgetown in the final months of the spring semester.

Evaluation, in the context of Ignatian Pedagogy, needs to be understood as broader and deeper than simply assigning a numerical score for performance. Rather, evaluation in the Ignatian style involves taking a deep look at how teaching encouraged “fuller human growth” beyond simple “academic mastery.”  Did this learning experience foster opportunities for “further reflection” beyond simply transmitting knowledge or skills?  I was so heartened to hear a range of student voices reflecting on what worked and what didn’t in their virtual learning. These insights, some of which I summarize below, provide important reminders about how much traditional methods of teaching need to adjust to this unprecedented moment:

  • One-on-one faculty engagement with students matters now more than ever. Students reported that their sense of belonging and community deepened when faculty members reached out to check in on them. A relationship of trust between teacher and student helped learners stay connected to the content of their courses.  This one-on-one commitment also reinforced a sense of solidarity and mutuality between students and faculty during a time of crisis.
  • Faculty conducting virtual classes need to mix up their learning activities and provide space for students to actively engage the subject matter and each other. 20 or 30 minutes is probably the maximum time a student can sit through a synchronous class session without being invited to share a reflection, ask a question, or actively explore the class material. Students shared that they were more likely to stay engaged if they were drawn into active participation by faculty. The students also emphasized that flexibility is crucial as some students might not be as disposed to participate actively in class due to adverse conditions in their home learning environments.  

The panel of Georgetown deans offered similar insights as they shared lessons learned from managing their organizations during this time. While each school operates in its own unique context and faces different challenges and opportunities, the panel reflected many things held in common. The deans emphasized several shared themes about the need in this time of crisis to:

  • Deliver clear and well-coordinated communications to their students, staff, and faculty.
  • Cultivate structures of community (amongst faculty, staff, and student groups) in which the bonds of personal and communal connection can help withstand feelings of dislocation and separation through self-growth opportunities like the SCS Daily Digital Meditations.
  • Embrace change and adaptability about existing ways of doing business. This crisis actually invites new ways of proceeding that will ultimately improve the management of Georgetown’s operations.
  • Express gratitude for the gifts of our community, especially the heroic and inspiring actions that our students, staff, and faculty are taking to uphold the mission of Georgetown University.

There is still much to ponder as we evaluate the experience of closing out the spring semester by learning and working in an all-virtual context. But I am hopeful that the valuable reflections at TLISI provide a helpful foundation for deeper discernment about how we are called to meet this moment. Our unique mission and values as a university present a depth of resources for how to proceed in our learning and working at Georgetown. As Mara Brecht notes in a recent article in America Magazine, COVID-19 invites an even fuller commitment to our Jesuit mission and heritage:

” Overrun hospitals, a halted world economy and a pervasive aura of fear and anxiety turn abstractions about mission and identity into reality. In this moment, need becomes nakedly apparent: our own existential and economic needs, the need of people who are sick and suffering for compassion and care, and the desperate needs of the poor and vulnerable among us. Responding to need, in its wide range and many manifestations must become our starting point for assessing the distinctively Catholic nature of our institutions.” 

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Are We Called to Imagine the World Anew? A Reflection on Vocation

This week’s post comes from Mary J. Novak, associate director for Ignatian Formation for SCS & the Law Center, and adjunct professor of Law. Mary also serves as Chaplain-in-Residence in the Gewirz Residential Community located on the Law Center’s Capitol Hill Campus. 

Talking to students, staff, and faculty at any Jesuit institution, I will often use the word “vocation.” To some ears, this language is familiar and serves as an invitation to a deeper conversation. To others less familiar with Ignatian language, I will see the slight furrowing of the brow.

If I am quick on my feet, I will say: “You know, the Frederick Buechner definition of vocation of ‘where your deepest desires meet the world’s greatest needs and the community confirms your call,’ therein you will find your vocation.” Buechner is much more eloquent than I am, saying, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

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Standing on my terrace first thing in the morning, I look up and can often see something like this.

It is Buechner’s definition of vocation that Jamie Kralovec and I use to end the SCS student retreats (pictures of which Jamie included in his last blog post). Buechner says this (and please pardon the gendered language): 

“IT COMES FROM the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.  

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.  

By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either. 

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

In higher educational settings, we so often focus on the first part of this definition of vocation, what the student needs most to do. During this pandemic, I know I am not alone in focusing more and more on the second part of Buechner’s definition, what “the world most needs to have done” and I wonder if the order of these questions needs to change.

This pandemic reveals more fully than ever in my lifetime that our systems and society do not value all life, especially the lives of those who have been historically marginalized, the materially poor and the most physically vulnerable. The raging pandemic has revealed our systemic operative racism, ageism, classism, toxic nationalism, etc. in ways that are stark and hard to ignore. 

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When I look down from my terrace, I view CCNV, DC’s largest shelter for folks without homes.  This picture was taken in early April when the folks were moved to the tent to sleep while the shelter was cleaned.  One recent Washington Post article described CCNV as a 1,300 bed facility. The city is working to add more capacity to house persons experiencing homelessness by taking over DC hotels. Washington Post article available here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/hundreds-of-dcs-homeless-have-tested-positive-for-coronavirus-as-shelters-try-to-avoid-spread/2020/05/08/2bcfc03c-8fb4-11ea-8df0-ee33c3f5b0d6_story.html

Last month in the Financial Times, Arundhati Roy called this moment in our world history a “portal,” saying:

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”

Can we imagine our world anew? What does the world most need to have done to get there?  And only when we answer that question can we ask: what do you/I/we most need to do? This is the treasure of our Jesuit Heritage: not only can we ask these questions in this setting, but we can lean into discerning them together as community to build a better world in the common good.  

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For Our Graduates: An Invitation to Savor Your Georgetown Memories

Pope Francis recently gave an interview that I think offers much inspiration as we end this academic year. In particular, our SCS graduating students may find some needed consolation in the pope’s remarks, which concern two themes: the “now” and memory. While these ideas might seem like opposites, they come together in a deeper union if we allow ourselves to recognize just how deeply loved we truly are.

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Photo from SCS student retreat. Cherished memories like this rise to the surface when I reflect on the Class of 2020.

First, Pope Francis challenges all of us in a period of pandemic to greater solidarity, especially with those who are disproportionately at risk and suffering. He then invites us, in our “lockdown” at home, to find new creativity and imagination. Pope Francis writes:

“Take care of the now, for the sake of tomorrow. Always creatively, with a simple creativity, capable of inventing something new each day. Inside the home that’s not hard to discover, but don’t run away, don’t take refuge in escapism, which in this time is of no use to you.”

I first reacted to this encouragement with inspired energy but then wondered, as I am sure many of our graduates may also be feeling: what if I am not feeling creative or capable or imagining anew in these days of staying-at-home? What if I am not able to find a creative way to re-frame this unusual circumstance of graduating without all of the same ceremonial details of our much-anticipated rituals of commencement?

Pope Francis offers an affirming response later in the interview when, drawing upon the lessons of literature in Virgil’s Aeneid and the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky, he writes:

“We need to recover our memory because memory will come to our aid. This is not humanity’s first plague; the others have become mere anecdotes. We need to remember our roots, our tradition, which is packed full of memories…So to be in lockdown, but yearning, with that memory that yearns and begets hope – that is what will help escape our confinement.”

Here, Francis is saying that we need to draw upon the resources of our past in order to take care of the now. In keeping with so many religious and spiritual traditions, including Ignatian spirituality, Pope Francis is offering all of us an opportunity to more deeply experience the love of the transcendent by utilizing all of our senses, including our memories. What would happen if we, recognizing that the cherished annual traditions of commencement have been turned somewhat upside-down, reimagined the graduation celebration by getting in touch with some of our most cherished memories as students at Georgetown?

Graduating students: here is my special invitation to engage with your memories in the days ahead as you prepare to receive your degrees. I invite you to find a quiet space and:

  • Remember some experience of feeling gratitude during your time as a Georgetown student. Pick out one consoling memory that rises to the surface and recreate all of the details of the experience with your senses.
  • Remain in this memory for a few minutes, calling to mind why you were so grateful about this event, person, or activity.
  • Then, return to where you are seated now and call to mind all of the details of your current location. Go back and forth between these places and memories for a few minutes.
  • Conclude your prayerful remembering by expressing a desire to be able to bring that memory back into the present whenever you are in need of some hope in these days of closing the academic year, and celebrating your journey as a student at Georgetown.
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Reliving some of our consoling memories, like the SCS holiday party, can give us hope in the present. Graduating students, what are your favorite memories during your time at Georgetown?

My own reflection surfaced some rich memories that I have of the Class of 2020, including time spent on retreat with students at the Calcagnini Contemplative Center, in the classroom engaging in enthusiastic debate and discussion about how to be values-guided professionals, and in fun social settings like the annual SCS holiday party and new student welcomes. I cherish these memories and they give me so much hope about this year’s graduates.

And while the rituals of next week’s commencement might not have these same exterior qualities, I invite you in the coming days to spend some time savoring your rich memories of your Georgetown experience on the interior. Our consoling memories may not make up for what we are missing today, but my hope is that your joyful memories might give you some needed hope in the present.

Congratulations!

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What We Need Right Now: Jesuit-Educated Leaders

Times of crises demand ethical leadership. As we look around our communities, we are faced with inter-connected challenges related to this global pandemic: public health, economic stability, educational continuity, and the list continues. One challenge inevitably relates to another, requiring inter-disciplinary reflection and analysis in order to effectively solve the problems confronting us. Responses to these linked challenges invite us to gather data, bring experts to the table, struggle with complexity, and ultimately make decisions from a place of ethics, compassion, and the common good. While we hope that our local, national, and global leaders enter into their decisions in this way, we know all too well that not all leaders are formed to approach difficult decisions like this. A question that we are all then invited to ponder: what kinds of leaders are needed right now? And how do leaders become ethical, compassionate, and effective? Lest you think that such questions only apply to leaders in positions of formal authority, like governors and public health officials, these are questions that we should all be asking ourselves these days because we all have an opportunity to lead. Our tradition of Jesuit education offers some critical lessons about how ethical leaders can meet the challenges of this moment. All of us, whether faculty, staff, or students, have an opportunity in these turbulent times to demonstrate leadership in our homes, our communities, and our virtual schools and workplaces.

What does Ignatius of Loyola, a 16th Century saint, founder of Jesuit education, and patron of universities like Georgetown, possibly have to offer in terms of developing leaders who can meet the demands of the current pandemic? Jesuit education actually has a lot to say about forming the ethical leaders that we need today.

Georgetown University makes a bold commitment in its mission statement and gives a clear signal of the kinds of leaders we strive to form: Georgetown educates people to be reflective lifelong learners, to be responsible and active participants in civic life and to live generously in service to others. This bold claim is similar to the statements made by other Jesuit educational institutions who aspire to live out the core values that have defined Jesuit schools for the last 500 years: an orientation to fulfilling mission and the common good, a commitment to discernment in all that we do, a willingness to be flexible, creative, and adaptable in our work, and an enshrined inspiration to put the interests of others above our own. The hallmarks of this Jesuit tradition have been translated into theories and practices for leadership. One popular translation of Jesuit leadership theory has been offered by Chris Lowney, a former Jesuit turned JP Morgan Managing Director, whose best-selling book “Heroic Leadership” is used widely in courses and workshops at Jesuit schools and beyond. The popular book distills the wisdom of Jesuit spirituality, formation, and the history of education into four pillars of wisdom: self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism. Written for a broad audience, Lowney’s text integrates Jesuit concepts into a prescription for what makes leaders effective. “Heroic Leadership” is relevant reading not only for those interested in learning more about the Jesuits’ self-development practices but also for anyone aspiring to lead others out of compassion and not fear, a stance that is critically important these days. Lowney sums up the Jesuit approach to leadership in this way:

How did the Jesuits build the most successful religious company in history? And how do individuals become leaders today? By knowing themselves. By innovating to embrace a changing world. By loving self and others. By aiming high. Self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism. Not four techniques, but four principles forming one way of living.

Chris Lowney, Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World

You might be wondering: aren’t leaders inspired by the Jesuit tradition of education offering the same thing as other leaders formed in different ways? While it is the case that leadership capacity and good leadership can grow out of many different traditions of education and training, there is no doubt that many Jesuit-educated leaders bring distinctive values-based approaches to their leadership. Recently, William Meehan in Forbes noted in two widely circulated columns (here and here) that some of the most effective leaders that have emerged in the response to COVID-19, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, share in common that they are products of Jesuit schooling. Meehan describes how Jesuit schools tend to produce “servant leaders,” who act in the following way:

A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps develop and perform as highly as possible.

William Meehan, “Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Redux: All Educational Institutions Should Include Instilling ‘Serving Others’ in Their Mission”

Does this resonate with you and your experience of Jesuit education? Have you felt called in your study and your work to approach leadership in this way of service?

This week, I invite you to reflect on these questions: 

  • What kind of leader are you and what kind of leader do you want to become?
  • How is this current crisis shaping your reflection about who you are as a leader?
  • How might you grow as a leader who deepens in self-awareness through regular reflection?  

There are many resources you might consider as you wonder about these questions. You might develop your self-reflection practices by joining our SCS daily digital meditations each work day at 12 pm EST (sign up here), which conclude each week on Friday with an Ignatian examen, an important resource for growing in self-awareness (read more on the examen here).  Additional leadership resources from within the Jesuit tradition might assist your reflection, including this self-paced set of modules: “Ignatian Leadership: Resources for Learning, Change, and Growth.”

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Expressing Love in Action

Talking about love can make people uncomfortable. For many, love is too sentimental, too romantic, too intimate for public discussion. Love might even elicit overly strong feelings and memories, some painful and others glorious. But love, and expressing love, is at the heart of all spiritual, religious, and humanistic traditions, and it carries special significance in the spirituality of the Jesuits and their founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. The message that our world needs practical expressions of love now more than ever was delivered by me in a video recording as part of Georgetown’s “Spiritual Continuity” series. I describe expressing “love in action” as a core tenet of the Spiritual Exercises, a lengthy retreat in daily life authored by St. Ignatius that has successfully helped people for the last five centuries to grow in greater interior freedom and more generous service of others. Ignatius ends the Exercises in a “Contemplation to Attain Love” with a profound statement: love ought to show itself more in deeds than in words. This core truth has profound implications for how we should live and gives special insight to our shared responsibility in a time of global pandemic.

Jamie Kralovec, Associate Director for Mission Integration at SCS, delivered a message on expressing love in action. Check out Jamie’s video reflection, as part of Georgetown’s ongoing “Spiritual Continuity” series, by clicking the image.

For Ignatius, we are each called to love others with the same generosity with which we are loved by God. Despite our failings, limitations, and shortcomings, we are invited to give to others of what we have: our special talents, gifts, callings in life, in the same generous way that God gives to each of us. But this is not some invitation to saccharine, abstract love of romance novels. Instead, Ignatius is inviting us to love others concretely, practically, generously in the context of our relationships. Our relationships and the love that we share in them, both the relationships that give us great joy (you might think of your children, parents, siblings, spouses) and the ones that challenge us (you might think of difficult colleagues, neighbors, friends), are being seriously tested today. On the one hand, this pandemic is revealing many of the weaknesses in us as individuals and in us as a society. On the other hand, a crisis like the one we’re living through invites even greater possibilities for hope, healing, and service. I recall in the video some of the inspiring ways in which I have observed how SCS staff and faculty colleagues are expressing love in action through ongoing discernments about how to care for our students during this difficult time. I also call to mind students who are patiently and creatively arising to the educational challenge in the midst of these new circumstances.

I invite you this week to ponder how you are seeing love expressed in actions. Are there people in your life who have inspired you with greater generosity, patience, and care? Are you finding ways in your relationships to express love in new and creative ways?  If you’d like to continue this reflection on love in action in the form of an examen, join our Daily Digital Meditation at 12 pm each day of the work week (sign up here). Each Friday will be dedicated to a guided examen that reflects on our experiences of the past week.

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The Examen: A Resource for Understanding Your Feelings

As we head into another week of adjusting to this new normal, more and more commentary is focused on how to make sense of the dramatic changes we are living through each day. I was struck in the last few days by two different articles addressing the same topic: grief. These pieces gave me needed language to describe what I have been feeling in my own experience, both unconsciously and consciously, in the early days of adjusting to the reality of a global pandemic.

In an article entitled, “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief,” the Harvard Business Review interviewed David Kessler, a grief and trauma expert who has worked in hospital systems for a decade. Building on the stages of grief constructed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Kessler provides several important insights for managing our individual and collective grief about COVID-19: 1) name the feeling so you can start controlling it; 2) find balance in the things you’re thinking; 3) come into the present in order to calm yourself; and 4) show compassion because everyone expresses their grief in different ways.  A similar article in the New York Times by Lori Gottlieb captured many of these same insights in the article, “Grieving the Losses of Coronavirus.” A critical point of Kessler’s is that naming emotions helps us move through the ones that hold us back: “When you name it, you feel it, and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through.”  The naming of temporary feelings as a way to grow into greater freedom from our feelings has a clear connection to the spiritual tradition of the Jesuits, known as Ignatian spirituality, and the practice of the examen. This dynamic and flexible form of reflection is a helpful resource for staying in the present and finding balance.

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Image of Georgetown’s Calcagnini Contemplative Retreat Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia during the 2019 SCS Staff and Faculty Retreat. SCS is helping our community reflect during these times through offering a daily digital meditation.

The examen, or the examen of consciousness, is a structured form of prayerful reflection on daily experiences introduced five centuries ago by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and author of Ignatian spirituality (for more on the examen, see here). Ignatius included the examen in the text of his Spiritual Exercises, a lengthy retreat intended to guide participants to greater depths of spiritual growth and understanding so as to more generously serve others and God. For persons of faith, the examen is a regular opportunity (Ignatius encouraged practice of it twice per day) to reflect on how the experience of daily thoughts and feelings either bring us closer to God (consolation) or farther way from God (desolation). It is through noticing and becoming more aware of these movements of consolation and desolation in our interior lives that we notice patterns and develop the capacity to change our behaviors by doubling down on what brings consolation and working against patterns of desolation.  The examen is not just for Christians or for persons of faith, however, and it can be adapted to secular audiences. For a secular listener, the language of God in the examen might be substituted with “true self” or “transcendent mystery” and the language of consolation/desolation might be understood as “flow,” those experiences that bring us deeper joy and greater energy and vitality. Regardless of how one enters into the examen, the fundamental gift of this 10-15 minute reflective practice is that it helps us become more aware of gratitude in our daily experience, both moments of joy and moments of challenge that can stretch us and make us stronger.

The multiple emotions we are experiencing these days, including grief, might lead to a conclusion that it is better to ignore our many feelings than confront each of them as we experience them. The examen gives us a resource for naming our emotions and realizing that feelings are only temporary and do not last forever. What is especially helpful about the examen is that it can be tailored to particular circumstances or situations of life, like a pandemic. Susan Haarman has demonstrated that flexibility by crafting an examen for the Ignatian Solidarity Network that meets this moment in time: “Examen for Life During COVID-19.” I will present below a modified form of Haarman’s examen:

Enter into the examen by first settling into your space. Become comfortable in your surroundings and remove any distractions if you are able to. Start by noticing your breathing, allowing your minds and bodies to settle into the experience. Take a few minutes to relax and enter into these six steps.

  • 1) Acknowledge how you are feeling at this very moment. Name both the good and the challenging feelings (take 2 minutes).
  • 2) Ask for light and insight as you prepare to review the last 24 hours of your life. Take some time to settle in the presence of God, or of your true self (take 2 minutes).
  • 3) Gently review all of the major experiences of your last 24 hours. In particular, review the most significant experiences when COVID-19 had an impact on your life in the last day (take 2 minutes).
  • 4) Take a few moments to call attention to the most significant experiences of the last day that made you feel more connected to yourself and to others. Take a few moments to call attention to the experiences that made you feel less connected to yourself and others (take 3 minutes).
  • 5) Now go back to the experiences of connection and dis-connection that you reviewed in the prior step and name the emotions that surface for you when you acknowledge the most significant feeling of connection and the most significant feeling of dis-connection (take 3 minutes).
  • 6) Conclude this short examen by reflecting on how this quiet time has prepared you to face the challenges of the next day. How might you maintain more connection with yourself and others? (take 2 minutes).

If the resources of the examen appeal to you, please consider participating in the SCS Daily Digital Meditation offered Monday through Friday at 12 pm EST over Zoom (click here to participate). The final meditation of each week, on Friday, will be a guided examen for 10-15 minutes inviting participants to review their experiences of the past week. Please join us!

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Digitally Caring for the Whole Person at SCS in a Time of COVID-19

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As the routines of daily life drastically change in response to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, many people are feeling unsettled, uncertain, and, likely, afraid. The precautions being implemented at Georgetown, and institutions around the country and world, to ensure social distancing are in the best interests of health and well-being of all in our communities. But social distancing does not have to mean social isolation. In these times, how might we marshal the spiritual and mission resources of our Spirit of Georgetown Jesuit values to support one another and maintain deeper inter-personal connection as we adjust to this new reality that requires us to keep our physical distance from one another?

In an effort to maintain our Jesuit mission commitment to Care for the Whole Person, Georgetown SCS is offering some dedicated online opportunities to maintain connection in a time of social distancing:

  • Daily Digital Meditation at SCS: Each day of the work week, from Monday to Friday, at 12 pm EST, SCS will host a digital meditation for 10 to 15 minutes over Zoom. You can join the digital meditation space by clicking this link. Led by Jamie Kralovec, SCS Associate Director for Mission Integration, this 10-15 minute meditation will be a contemplative opportunity to sit in intentional silence in group solidarity with everyone who participates. This will be an inclusive form of silent meditation, blending Eastern and Western practices, and all are welcome to participate. Participants will automatically be muted upon entering the digital space but will have the option of appearing visually through the camera feature. Please send any questions about this opportunity to Jamie Kralovec (pjk34@georgetown.edu).
  • Prayer Intentions: In an effort to create space for all members of this community to express whatever intentions are on your hearts and minds during this challenging time, we are offering a way for you to submit these intentions online. Click this link to enter whatever requests that you would like the larger SCS community to take to prayer, meditation, or silent reflection (if you would prefer to remain anonymous, you can fill out the prayer request confidentially). Whatever spiritual or religious tradition you are part of, or no tradition all, expressing these requests is a way to practice deeper inter-dependence and mutuality in a time when it might feel harder to do so.
  • Other Spiritual Resources: There are many ways you might deepen your own spiritual and reflective practices in the midst of the response to this situation. We suggest reading this message from Fr. Greg Schenden, S.J., Director of Campus Ministry, who offers ways to stay connected to the chaplaincy resources of the university.

While it might not feel like it, this time of uncertainty is an opportunity for our learning community to grow a greater spirit of generosity, magnanimity, and solidarity with each other. We encourage everyone to continue to monitor the university’s response to COVID-19 by visiting this page.

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SCS Day of Service Puts Spotlight on Homelessness in the Downtown

Over the last few years, the Fall “Day of Service” at the School of Continuing Studies has become a tradition. The entire school community of faculty, staff, and students is invited to commit to a day of direct service for those in need in Washington, D.C. as a way of putting into practice our Jesuit values of being People for Others and living a Faith that Does Justice. In addition to the good that results for vulnerable persons from these service activities, the occasion of coming together as a school community in the midst of the holidays tends to be festive and enjoyable for participants. One senses a shared gratitude in the room about being together in service for others, alongside friends and family who are all awaiting the much anticipated holiday break. The hours-long convening on a Saturday is also an important moment to pause and acknowledge that the season’s joys and celebrations are not shared by everyone, particularly persons marginalized and excluded in our society who long to be included and dignified.

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SCS Day of Service in December 2019 brought together faculty, staff, and students to learn about homelessness and engage in direct service

This year’s Day of Service was especially memorable because it built on the foundation of prior years and also deepened the meaning of the experience. For the first time, the event was co-sponsored by both a student group and a campus partner organization. The Red Cross Group, an association of SCS students committed to providing compassionate care for those in need, promoted the event to fellow students and helped collect materials, like handwarmers and gloves, for preparedness kits for individuals experiencing homelessness to prevent hypothermia. Campus partner, the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service (CSJ) co-sponsored the event and provided crucial administrative and educational support. CSJ’s Jesuit Volunteer, Brianna Ledsome, who coordinates Homelessness, Outreach, Meals, and Education programs, prepared information for participants about the reality of homelessness in D.C. and led a training on street outreach during the event. CSJ’s presentation also invited the street outreach teams to reflect on the experience through a series of questions aimed at bringing the deeper personal meaning of the experience and its implications for action to the surface.  

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Day of Service participants distribute preparedness kits for persons experiencing homelessness in the neighborhood surrounding SCS

More than 50 faculty, staff, and students gathered on December 14 at the SCS campus. The day consisted of multiple activities: assembling preparedness kits from donated materials, preparing sandwiches, writing personalized letters to veterans experiencing homelessness, and distributing kits directly to persons experiencing homelessness in the neighborhood. Despite the cold and rain, most participants ventured out into the neighborhood in groups for the street outreach component of the event. In preparation for distribution, CSJ’s street outreach training provided necessary context for the distribution of kits. Participants learned, based on data from the Community Partnership for Prevention of Homelessness, about the 6,521 homeless persons in the District of Columbia on any given night who are either unsheltered, in emergency shelters, or in transitional housing facilities. Participants also learned how to engage with persons experiencing homelessness in a spirit of mutuality, reverence, and respect. The training was a sobering reminder that homelessness is a social injustice rooted in intersecting social structures like housing, health services, and the economy.

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The Day of Service included several activities, like preparing supplies for persons experiencing homelessness on the streets

Humanizing the complex issue of homelessness through direct engagement with persons experiencing homelessness while also learning about homelessness as a structural issue of social injustice honors the Jesuit tradition of education. The Jesuit values invite us not only to commit to the work of charity, addressing the immediate needs of vulnerable persons, but also to the work of justice, which requires that we bring to bear intellectual methods of social analysis to better understand how to systematically address realities of poverty and injustice. As former Jesuit Superior General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach made clear in 2000, the commitment to justice that we strive for in Jesuit institutions links personal and social, reflection and action:

Since Saint Ignatius wanted love to be expressed not only in words but also in deeds, the Congregation committed the Society to the promotion of justice as a concrete, radical but proportionate response to an unjustly suffering world. Fostering the virtue of justice in people was not enough. Only a substantive justice can bring about the kinds of structural and attitudinal changes that are needed to uproot those sinful oppressive injustices that are a scandal against humanity and God.

Kolvenbach’s challenging invitation will continue to inspire our learning community. The Day of Service will hopefully have lasting impact at SCS about how to live out, rooted in our Jesuit heritage, a dual commitment to charity and justice in our neighborhood.

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Cancer Awareness Month at SCS Shines Spotlight on Value of Cura Personalis

SCS staff put the University’s Jesuit values into practice every day in their interactions across our learning community. This post in “Mission in Motion” is offered by Nicole Thomas, social media marketing manager, who offers reflections about integrating Jesuit values in staff-led efforts to promote deeper connections at SCS between Cancer Awareness Month and Georgetown’s commitment to educating the whole person. 

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Members of the SCS staff participate in “On Wednesday We Wear Pink” as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month

As the social media marketing manager, I’m constantly thinking about ways to connect with the SCS community and the larger Georgetown community in a way that breaks down perceived barriers between groups and creates an interaction or experience that reminds individuals that they belong. Originally, I thought, “How can I engage a large group of people in a way that challenges the community to move outside of their comfort zone…but not too far from it?” As I continued to think about our community of students, faculty, and staff, my original (smaller) idea grew into an all-month event that engaged faculty, staff, and students.

For the month of October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I worked with colleagues across SCS departments, including Operations, Academic Programs, Events, and Finance to hold three events. First, “On Wednesday We Wear Pink” encouraged faculty and staff to wear pink to show support for breast cancer research. Second, we encouraged students the following week to write messages of hope and support to cancer patients. Third, we invited the community to make an explicit connection with Georgetown’s Jesuit value of cura personalis. We put up a sign outside of the library in the atrium and encouraged the community to respond in writing to the prompt, “What will you do this month to care for your health?”

Once my ideas were solidified, I had to answer one major question to my colleagues and, really, to myself: Why am I doing this? What is the purpose of trying to engage with these various communities of people in this particular way—about cancer, health and well-being, and the relationship to our university’s Jesuit values?

The first reason is because at some point in our lives, we have all been impacted by cancer. We’ve all seen the pain, trauma, (and occasionally hope), that cancer can create. We all have this common human experience of facing the mortality of those we love. This experience has the power to deeply connect us to each other and remind us of our shared humanity. In some way, we have each experienced grief and sadness and hope. We become people for others when we see everyone around us as the people they are, not just as work associates, but as people whose human experiences are valued and honored. The events we planned offered a place for us across the SCS community to connect with each other through sharing our vulnerabilities together. This goal felt important to me because, as a Georgetown employee, I can easily fall into a routine of going through the motions and forgetting the people around me are vulnerable human beings, too. I wanted to create an inviting space—a space where people felt like they could express their vulnerability in a communal environment. When you can allow yourself to be vulnerable with your peers, you create an opportunity to deepen your relationships and build trust. Georgetown University fosters these kinds of moments because of our foundational Jesuit heritage and our strong commitment to being more than just an academic institution or place of work, but a place that encourages creating spaces for fostering community that addresses human needs.

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Outside of the SCS library, a “Cura Personalis” banner encourages students to express how they plan to care for their well-being

I also wanted to create an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to remember the popular Jesuit value of cura personalis, which translates to “care for the whole person.” We, as faculty, staff, and students, all play our respective roles in this organization—roles that can be neatly defined: student, employee, faculty member, etc. Cura personalis sees the person as more than a role, however, but a person with “unique gifts, challenges, needs and possibilities.” Cura personalis is a reminder that the roles you are assigned in certain spaces do not define you; you are unique, and as a unique person, you must take care of all the unique parts that make you, you, which include your mental and physical health.

Writing on a poster board about how you will take care of your health may seem like a small exercise in self-care, but taking a moment to reflect on yourself, your needs, and your health is a gentle reminder—even in the midst of a busy day—that you are more than a transcript or a salary. Our Jesuit heritage, grounded in the value of cura personalis, encourages us to develop as whole persons. My goal with these recent events was to remind students, faculty, and staff that your unique gifts and needs have a place here at Georgetown.

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Summer College Immersion Program Expands Access to Transformative Georgetown Education

SCS staff and faculty volunteer to serve as mock college admission interviewers for SCIP students

The Summer College Immersion Program (SCIP) at the School of Continuing Studies stands out for the depth of its commitment to our mission as a Jesuit institution. SCIP is a three-week college prep program for rising high school seniors from the Cristo Rey Network, KIPP Foundation, and other similarly aligned high schools across the country that provide college and career preparation for students from underserved communities. Each year, an average of 45 high-performing rising seniors arrive at Georgetown for three weeks of intensive classroom learning, community building with peers from the across the country, and hands-on site visits and engagements in Washington, D.C.  The program is a fast-paced introduction to the college experience, shaping how high-school seniors will approach their application and eventual matriculation to some of the most selective colleges and universities in the country, including Georgetown. Of the more than 400 students who have completed the program, almost 10 percent have matriculated to Georgetown; close to 100% have gone on to attend four-year colleges and universities.

The talented Summer and Special Programs team at SCS runs SCIP, providing comprehensive advising and student support while the students are on campus. They work with dedicated faculty and staff partners throughout the University to provide an immersive experience. In an effort to incorporate the larger SCS community into the work of this impactful program, the Summer team invites staff and faculty to serve as mock interviewers so that students can practice their skills in simulated college admissions interviews. This year, ten staff and faculty members from SCS volunteered to serve in this role, generously giving their time and professional experience to help these aspiring college students. This signature annual event is an inspiring example of Georgetown honoring a commitment to being People for Others, a core Jesuit value arising from the Spirit of Georgetown.

Closing banquet honored SCIP students and their achievements during 3 intensive weeks at Georgetown

In addition to providing a rewarding opportunity to share their gifts with talented rising seniors, the mock interviews encouraged SCS staff and faculty to reflect more deeply on their own relationship with our Jesuit mission and values. Heather Zitlau, Assistant Teaching Professor in the English Language Center at SCS, who volunteered at the event, echoes the reciprocal joys of mutual partnership that occur in this kind of service opportunity:

“People enter into volunteer experiences expecting to give and to serve, of course—but I think that afterward, we often realize that we have received at least as much as we have given. My experience interviewing SCIP students was no exception; I signed up because I wholly support Georgetown’s commitment to diversity and service to others, and I wanted to support these deserving students. I trust that I did indeed help them through the mock interview experience – but they helped me, too. I arrived on the Hilltop drained after a full day of workshop facilitation and planning; I came away from the interviews inspired and encouraged by the energy and the hope exhibited by these bright, motivated, hardworking students.“

– Heather Zitlau, Assistant Teaching Professor, English Language Center

At the heart of the Summer College Immersion Program is a recognition that too many students and their families across the country cannot access the transformative power of a college education. Providing such access, while empowering students from low-income communities to see themselves as belonging at a selective university like Georgetown, demonstrates a faith that does justice, another foundational Jesuit principle in the Spirit of Georgetown. Esteban Olivares, SCS Assistant Dean for High School Programs, reinforced this idea during SCIP’s concluding banquet in Copley Lounge, when he said: “We serve students from underrepresented communities and remind them that when accepted to a university it is not an act of charity but a seat that should be claimed because it has been earned.”

For more information about SCIP and how you can support this mission-driven program at SCS, please check out the website here.