Tag: Jesuit Education

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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.

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Thanks to SCS Staff, Spirit of Georgetown Comes Alive for Future Hoyas

SCS staff greet admitted students and introduce them to the Spirit of Georgetown

When SCS opened its doors to admitted students in late spring for a series of special events, future Hoyas experienced the distinctiveness of a Georgetown education. Upon entering 640 Massachusetts Avenue, a team of friendly staff welcomed prospective students with signature Hoya hospitality. Some were probably not expecting the nature of their welcome to the downtown campus. Just outside of the main auditorium, staff enthusiastically introduced the “Spirit of Georgetown,” the nine values that Georgetown aspires to animate in its community. These values, grounded in the university’s Jesuit heritage, like People for Others, Cura Personalis, and Community in Diversity, come alive for students, staff, and faculty in unique ways across the university.

Admitted students spin the wheel of Jesuit values!

The SCS staff team, who came together in order to plan outreach and events that more deeply engage the student community, helped admitted students appreciate how to make these values their own by posting notes to publically displayed poster boards. By the end of the night, these boards were filled with a colorful arrangement of personal testimonies reflecting the inclusive and invitational way that Georgetown integrates its mission. To spark the imagination of future students, staff shared their own perspectives on the meaning of the Jesuit values along with printed statements from the student members of the Hoya Professional 30, an annual cohort of students selected in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments inside and outside of the classroom.

SCS students and alumni reflect on their Georgetown experience

Framed as “Start Your Student Story,” the introduction to Georgetown’s distinctive values-based education continued that evening during a panel discussion. Led by Global Hospitality Leadership Faculty Director Dr. Erinn Tucker, students and alumni from across the SCS degree programs reflected on how Georgetown inspired them to pursue holistic personal transformation in the course of study.  While individual alumni perspectives reflected the differences of professional discipline and personal experience, the alumni all expressed a similar idea: education at Georgetown SCS is about more than taking classes, earning grades, and growing as a professional. As a Jesuit institution of higher education, Georgetown is committed to purposeful and transformational learning that inspires students to seek justice, pursue the common good, and grow as whole persons attentive to their intellectual, spiritual, and emotional lives. Panelists described how their foundational course in Ethics, professionally-relevant Capstone project, program-organized community gatherings, service projects, and friendships all shaped a deeper experience of professional and continuing education. This well-rounded approach to the student experience was on full display during a joyful and spirited networking reception that followed the panel.

Admitted students enjoy each other’s company at a post-panel reception

All of us at Georgetown are invited to make our Jesuit heritage a meaningful part of our work. So what do the Jesuit values in the Spirit of Georgetown mean to you?

What does the Spirit of Georgetown mean to you?

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Panel on Global Citizenship Addresses Shared Humanity, Mission of Jesuit Universities

Experts convene for SCS panel discussion: “Global Citizenship in Higher Education”

Earlier this year SCS convened an expert panel to explore how higher education professionals have a responsibility to promote global mindedness and prepare future global citizens. Titled “Global Citizenship in Higher Education,” the panel looked in depth at pressing issues that impact the ability of universities to effectively extend their mission to the global community. In particular, turbulent politics, nationalistic rhetoric, and the tightening of national borders all challenge the promise of educating students to become global citizens. The panel included global education leaders from Georgetown, including SCS Dean Dr. Kelly Otter, Dr. Stephanie Kim, Faculty Director for the Master’s in Higher Education Administration, and Amol Dani, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Georgetown’s Main Campus. Additional experts, Dr. John Lucas, President and Chief Executive Officer for International Student Exchange Programs, and Dr. Alfred Boll, Branch Chief for EducationUSA of the U.S. Department of State, provided educational perspectives from outside of Georgetown.

The discussion addressed some of the ways in which encouraging the formation of globally active citizens is a unique and defining feature of Jesuit educational institutions. Dean Otter called direct attention to this connection with Jesuit values in her remarks about how SCS approaches global education. Otter focused on four areas: global humanity, global society, global economy, and global workforces and the need for integration of these categories. Otter noted that effectively serving global education goals requires an awareness and sensitivity to the diversity of local contexts in which students learn. This awareness, which stems from a Jesuit worldview, invites educators to be conscious of their own biases, and inevitably leads to more complexity in the delivery of globally focused education programs. Otter welcomed the complexity as a responsibility of Jesuit education: “We need to listen, we need to observe, and we need to be willing to take on the challenges of those students, those faculty, those communities, those complex issues in various parts of the world.” SCS has committed to such locally sensitive global awareness, evident in a range of global programs and in a student body that is almost 13 percent international, representing approximately 90 countries.

The conversation became truly global in the post-panel reception thanks to this traveling band from Spain

The Jesuits as a global order have articulated a vision of global citizenship that links closely to some of the ideas that emerged in the panel. In a July 2018 meeting in Spain to inaugurate a new international body, the International Association of Jesuit Universities, Jesuit Superior General Arturo Sosa described the Jesuit university as a “source of reconciled life.” Sosa went on to describe global citizenship as a core component of Jesuit education, leading students to greater understanding of human diversity and commitment to the service of others:

Educating people for world citizenship involves recognizing diversity as a constitutive dimension of a full human life. This means experiencing cultural diversity as an opportunity for the enrichment of human beings … [Global citizenship] is one of the constituting dimensions of the individual, which we seek to foment and support during the educational process. It is also necessary in order to lay down the conditions to be able to listen to the call to provide a public service as a personal commitment.

Fr. Arturo Sosa, Superior General of the Jesuits

Sosa reinforced the Jesuits’ centuries-old commitment to global education, which Georgetown manifests in its own globally-engaged tradition of education. This long-standing commitment now entertains new challenges in light of the complexities of modern life. In the midst of a technologically-enabled digital revolution around the world, how do we remain focused on the local and global mission of Jesuit universities? As the panel conversation made clear, this question will continue to animate the work of SCS.

For more information about Georgetown’s commitment to global education, see the brochure “Georgetown University: Academic Excellence in Service to the World.”

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Head and Heart Moved to Action: Reflections on a Critical Immersion to the U.S.-Mexico Border

For the inaugural post of Mission in Motion, a blog dedicated to reflections about efforts to animate Jesuit values at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, Jamie Kralovec, Associate Director for Mission Integration, offers a reflection about his experience on the U.S.-Mexico border through Georgetown’s Magis Kino Immersion.

“I will do anything to get back to my children.”

Photo of the Georgetown group walking along the Mexican side of the wall across from Nogales, Arizona

Hearing Ariel’s words firsthand forever changed my understanding of the issues surrounding migration on the border between the United States and Mexico. Ariel lived for years in the U.S. without legal documentation, before being apprehended by law enforcement, sentenced to 1.5 years in a federal detention facility, and then deported to Mexico, a country where she has no family or friends. She left behind two children in the U.S. and a career in health care as a Certified Nursing Assistant. Ariel shared her story with me and a group of other Georgetown faculty and staff at Casa Nazareth, a shelter in Nogales, Mexico run by the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) that provides safety, healing, and micro-enterprise opportunities for migrant women. We were in Mexico and southern Arizona in January 2019 through Georgetown’s Magis Kino Border Immersion, an intensive experiential trip with three goals: 1) grow and learn together about the reality of migration issues on the U.S. – Mexico border; 2) consider the implications of this reality for our individual and collective spheres of influence; and 3) reflect together on our roles and responsibilities as faculty and staff at Georgetown relative to the issue of migration.

Each woman at Casa Nazareth had a unique story, but all have been broken in some way by the immigration system, some crossing hundreds of miles of treacherous, uninhabitable desert in the hope of securing a better life. In painful and uncomfortable moments seated around an intimate circle, I ceased to be a distant and passive observer of a complicated policy issue. The unpleasant emotions I was feeling during Ariel’s retelling: sadness, anger, and shame, helped lead me into a deeper, more personal engagement with the persons and events of the immersion experience. With resilience and vulnerability, Ariel invited me into an intimate encounter with her as a person with a story that compels a personal response. As a father of three young children, I suddenly found myself grappling with the personally unimaginable: a life separated from my wife and children by a structure that imposes legal and physical barriers to family unification. This movement: from detached, rational analysis to growing in reverence and relationship with persons our society relegates to the margins, embodies our mission at Georgetown as a Jesuit educational institution committed to social justice. Fr. Greg Boyle, well-known Jesuit author of Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, describes the mutuality that happens in these encounters as kinship:

Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied.

Facilitated by Georgetown’s Office of Campus Ministry and the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service, Magis Kino models Jesuit education and its interplay of experience, reflection, and action by asking participants to make a sustained commitment to justice as a result of engaging directly with the issues of migration. This approach to learning only works if groups make room for continuous reflection before, during, and after the experience. Reflection helps us make meaning of our experiences by getting in touch with the deeper sources of our sensations, allowing ourselves “to be challenged to change” in the words of former Jesuit Superior General Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach. KBI’s approach to immersion trips, designed so that participants humanize, accompany, and complicate their experiences, helped spur our group’s deep reflections at the end of each day. In keeping with its commitment to complicate the issues, KBI also introduced us to a diversity of stakeholders, including law enforcement, the court system, and property owners and ranchers along the border. 

Fr. Peter Neeley of the Kino Border Initiative sharing “holy relics,” objects left behind by migrants along a trail frequently used by migrants near Arivaca, Arizona

One of the trip’s most poignant and physically demanding experiences was a two-hour guided walk of a portion of the migrant trail in Arivaca, Arizona. Jesuit Fr. Peter Neeley led the hike and encouraged us not to reproduce, but to visualize the immigrant experience. It was here that Fr. Neeley presented us with goods he has collected over time left behind by migrants on their arduous journeys. Referring to these objects as “holy relics,” Neeley invited us to grow in solidarity and love for migrants by imagining the people who had once held these objects. The baby bottle for a nursing infant stirred strong emotions and again, like Ariel‘s story, crashed my internal defensive barriers that deceive me into believing that migration does not concern me personally. It pulled me to recognize and affirm the inherent human dignity that I share with the mother and the child who had passed the trail beneath my feet. I will keep these holy relics in mind as I continue to discern the most effective ways that I am called to respond to this experience.

Georgetown faculty and staff eating with parishioners of St. Ferdinand church in Arivaca, Arizona

Pope Francis has encouraged the world to “show some concrete solidarity” with migrants and my immersion experience leads to me to consider ways to express such real solidarity. Four days in Nogales left me with many questions for which I do not pretend to have the answers. I am especially aware after this experience of my own privilege. I will never live on a daily basis with the regular fear and anxiety that migrants carry, or that of our own undocumented students at Georgetown. In spite of this privilege, I cannot proceed without acknowledging that my time in Arizona and Mexico claimed me in a significant way. While there are no perfect solutions to the multi-faceted issues of migration, the complexity does not excuse meaningful action. How might we respond to the needs of migrants and to the social justice implications as individuals and as university community? In the months that follow I will discern this question along with my colleagues at Georgetown. Mindful that individuals are called to respond in their own unique ways, I offer some suggested action steps for anyone interested in humanizing the issue of migration while recognizing its complexity and emphasizing accompaniment of people on their journey:

  • Support KBI’s critical work of education, humanitarian assistance, and advocacy with a financial donation. The organization especially needs in-kind donations of clothing, toiletries, and home goods.
The Georgetown group of faculty and staff on the Kino Border Immersion with hosts from St. Ferdinand and the Kino Border Initiative

The word Magis, rooted in the Jesuit virtue of magnanimity, invites all of us involved in educational endeavors at Georgetown to respond to the gifts of our own lives with gratitude and generosity for others. My brief time on the U.S. – Mexico border moved me to deeper sensitivity and awareness of the suffering experienced by migrants. Jesuit education inspires us at Georgetown to use all of our gifts, including our intellectual inquiry, to engage constructively with the suffering of persons on the margins. I will continue to discern my response to Ariel’s sacred story and her invitation to a deeper solidarity.

Please reach out to Jamie at pjk34@georgetown.edu with any questions or reactions to the post.