This week’s Mission in Motion highlights Georgetown’s Jesuit Heritage Month, which includes a special Instagram Live with SCS alum Karim Trueblood.
Every year, Georgetown explores the enduring contribution of the University’s Jesuit heritage and values through an entire month of programming. You can check out the diverse array of activities occurring across Georgetown that invite participants into a deeper consideration of what the five centuries of tradition of Jesuit spirituality and education mean today. Jesuit Heritage Month can be especially helpful for community members who do not know much about Georgetown’s Jesuit characteristics and desire to learn more.
Mission in Motion attempts to narrate the myriad ways that SCS lives out Jesuit values across the school community. This blog is intentional about practically telling the story of mission and values at SCS by emphasizing how this work is approached inclusively and invitationally, encouraging everyone in the community to take part in activating the core principles of the Spirit of Georgetown. The emphasis is on the “motion” of the mission, signaling that mission and values are critical because they inform how we act more generously and justly in the world. The religious diversity of SCS is celebrated in these posts and Jesuit values are offered as a resource for deeper learning and service for everyone, especially in the context of the diversity of lived experience and religious identity.
SCS uniquely manifests the Spirit of Georgetown in curricular innovations, like instructional design processes that intentionally incorporate Jesuit values into online and on-ground courses. All of the Master of Professional Studies programs include a core class in Ethics that explores professional decision-making from diverse philosophical vantage points, with special attention on the contribution of Ignatian discernment and Jesuit values. And a dedicated community-based learning course, “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice,” allows degree-seeking students to deeply explore the implications of incorporating Jesuit-inspired reflection practices, like the examen of consciousness, for professional life.
With the uniqueness of the SCS way of living out Georgetown’s Jesuit values in mind, it is very exciting that Georgetown’s Jesuit Heritage Month will include a special SCS event. On November 17 at 3:00 p.m. ET on the School’s Instagram, I will sit down and talk with Karim Trueblood, SCS alum of the Class of 2019. Mission in Motion has featured Karim on the blog and explored her distinct ways that she made Jesuit values part of her curricular and co-curricular experience at SCS.
I am very excited about the Instagram live conversation because Karim’s story of personal discovery is an inspiration for anyone who wants to live out the University’s mission and values but may not know where to start. A graduate of the Master of Professional Studies in Emergency & Disaster Management, Karim models so well how every person has their own special sacred story and no one’s story is exactly like anyone else’s. The most compelling stories are so often filled with surprises and unexpected turns. Karim will help us understand how Georgetown SCS fits into her ongoing pilgrimage of life and work. Tune in and learn more about how Karim is helping set the world on fire!
This week’s post highlights an event hosted at SCS and convened by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life: “What Is the Good Life Now? Work, Relationships, Faith, and Wholeness Today.” You can watch a recording of the event and reflect on the deep questions that were considered. Photo courtesy of the Initiative’s website.
Readers of this SCS Mission in Motion blog should be well aware that Georgetown does not shy away from asking big questions about the meaning of life. What distinguishes Georgetown’s approach is how these big questions are asked in a way that is not only about the conceptual and theoretical dimensions. Georgetown strives to encourage “the meaning of life” discussion and deliberation in a manner that stimulates practical responses and positive changes in the way that we individually and collectively live together in society. At SCS, our mission commitment is directly related to the transformation of professional and continuing education students who arrive at various points in the life cycle of their careers.
In light of the significant flux and social, economic, political, cultural, and religious disruptions of the last few years, there seem to be fewer bigger questions than this: “What is the good life now?” And this question was asked this week when SCS hosted Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life for its first in-person event at 640 Massachusetts Avenue in over three years. SCS has gratefully partnered with the Initiative in the past on these special events, which are offered as part of Salt and Light Gatherings for young faith-motivated leaders in the Washington, D.C., area who desire to explore the links between faith, moral traditions (especially the resources from Catholic social thought), and their own lives and work. The event took place in three phases: a welcoming happy hour, a panel discussion, and a reception that followed building on the conversation.
The event brought together young professionals in the D.C. area at the SCS Campus. Conversation and community-building preceded and followed the panel conversation.
I found the framing questions for the event to be thought-provoking and useful for generating deeper personal and communal reflection, so I want to share them here:
What does “the good life” look like for young leaders in Washington and the United States today? What contributes to the good life? What threatens it?
How can young people find meaning, participation, balance, and wholeness while dealing with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges, political polarization, debates over human life and dignity, and economic, environmental, and racial justice issues?
How can faith and Catholic social thought inform and guide our choices, actions, and how we live our lives?
In the SCS auditorium as well as a live-streamed broadcast, panelists pondered philosophy, religion, politics, economics, technology, and social media.
The talented panel brought together faith-motivated leaders with different perspectives and life experience, including a Notre Dame philosophy professor, a Boston College psychology professor, an author and policy advocacy director, and a young professional who has worked on immigration issues. You can watch a recording and relive the lively discussion. You can also consult a helpful list of additional resources prepared for the event.
I listened in on the conversation and noted a creative tension as a theme: the need for balance between working out one’s own philosophy of life and needing to rely on the wisdom, support, care, and teachings of others in developing this personal vision. To respect a philosophical heritage that is over 2,000 years old does not mean that one’s definition of living a good life has to conform precisely to someone else’s. Instead, determining the meaning of a good life has to take into account all of the unique factors of one’s lived experience and social influences. It is not wise nor possible to enforce a single definition of what living the good life means. But we can benefit from sustained reflection on the meaning of the exemplar actions, teachings, writings, and thinking of the wisdom that we have inherited through the ages.
So much of the conversation came back to the fundamental need to develop healthy habits of interiority and discernment. Readers of the blog will recognize these as consistent themes expressed about the way to live out the Spirit of Georgetown. No one else can claim your own interior experience. Cultivating a deep inner life, regardless of the “what” that you profess to believe about the biggest, most ultimate questions, is a solid starting point for journeying in the direction of your good life.
Last week, Mission in Motion reflected on the critical contributions of Georgetown’s staff community that bring to life the University’s mission on a daily basis and often do this work behind-the-scenes. This week, we sat down with SCS Assistant Dean Lynnecia Eley to learn more about her role at SCS, how she has grown professionally and personally during her decade of service at Georgetown, and what advice she gives to new students. Lynnecia is a mission-driven higher education professional and she consistently invites her colleagues and the students she supports to a deeper level of commitment grounded in the Spirit of Georgetown.
This week’s Mission in Motion is an interview with SCS Assistant Dean Lynnecia Eley, who shares about her journey at Georgetown and what motivates her work at SCS.
1. You’re an Assistant Dean for the Analytics, Technology, and Security Programs. Tell us more about this role and what your responsibilities entail.
As the Assistant Dean for the Analytics, Technology, and Security Programs at SCS, I often find myself in a catch-all between coaching advisors or managing expectations of students and faculty, while also being an enforcer of academic policies. Specifically, my role includes assisting in planning and implementing curriculum in cooperation with program faculty directors, and also managing a team of academic advisors that counsel students in academic matters and student recruitment. At times you may also find me directly counseling students on personal or disciplinary matters and working closely with other colleagues to develop strategies for marketing, communications, enrollment, and monitoring program financial budgets.
At least that’s most of what my job description says…
While all true in relation to responsibilities, I view my role a little differently at times. Assistant deans can wear many hats and balancing them all can sometimes be a challenge between being in service to our teams and students and also being the “closer or fixer” when another voice is needed. Neither of which is specifically bad or difficult, but it is a balance nonetheless. I’m a caring and supportive individual by nature, so I thrive in space that allows me to be both a cheerleader or coach and a judge on tough matters. As assistant dean at SCS, I’m able to bring a little of my inner self to my daily work activities.
2. You have been at Georgetown SCS for nearly 10 years. Say more about your journey at the University and what you have learned about yourself along the way.
It’s been a long journey, but one that has been met with many meaningful experiences that stand out. There is so much rich history at Georgetown and honestly before working here all I really knew was its history of faith and basketball. I started at Georgetown SCS in the Summer & Special Programs department after two years of taking career risks and trying out jobs that didn’t connect with me as a person. It didn’t take long for me to begin feeling right at home and making connections with so many people.
Nearly 10 years is a long time, and throughout those years I’ve met people that became close friends, some of which have helped me become the person I am today. I remember struggling a bit in my early years, battling being myself versus being who I thought others needed me to be or “wanted” me to be. I remember a staff/faculty member, Wanda Cumberlander, asking me, “When are you going to come out of that box they have put you in?” You see, she saw so much more in me that I was almost afraid to let out. I used to take for granted how much being myself was needed for me to evolve personally and professionally.
What I have learned most along the way is how to show up authentically and how putting myself forward is part of showing up and being successful. Authenticity is at the core of being effective and sustainable because being authentic pulls from personal strengths and core values. I learned authentic self-promotion. It’s having the conviction that I have something of special and unique value to offer and the willingness to show up to serve and thrive within the process.
3. As someone who prioritizes good advising relationships with students, can you share with us some of the advice that you give to new students about being successful?
My best piece of advice to new students comes in the form of a question: “If you had to grow your own food, would you wait until you are hungry to plant a few seeds?” Rather you are entering graduate school immediately after undergrad or a seasoned career changer, relationship building is key to being successful. You cannot wait until you have graduated to begin planting seeds that can affect or change the rest of your life. Relationship building and career networking begins with your first class meeting.
When we intentionally plant seeds we have to nurture them and wait for them to grow. Accelerating the process is just not humanly possible. So while a student, especially in a setting like SCS where programs are industry-specific and you are amongst other adult-learners, start building an integrated network of contacts early. This is more than exchanging business cards or the occasional like on LinkedIn; in essence I advise building intentional and quality relationships over a mass quantity of “people you know.”
Some of the tips I’ve shared are to get to know your instructors and their areas of expertise, volunteer and/or join professional organizations, or even adopt a mentor (instructor, program alum, or current classmate) that can prove great payoff in the future.
4. Reflecting on Georgetown’s mission and values, what about the Spirit of Georgetown most matters to you as a person and professional? What are some ways that you bring the University’s mission to life in your work and daily life?
Georgetown’s mission is to educate a diverse community with holistic values rooted in faith and traditions, but what matters most to me personally and professionally is the commitment to educating the whole person. The University integrates “real life” into academic experiences where students, staff, and faculty are able to connect and share about influences and interests that make them unique. My belief is that when you find something you really enjoy doing, you also find a way to help others while doing it and the feeling it provides gives a sense of purpose or fulfillment.
Outside of the University I’m a huge cheerleader for others in coaching and teaching them how to show up as their best selves with confidence and go after the freedoms that allow them to do whatever it is that they love. At work, I’m the same with my team. I’m very intentional and careful about affirming their qualities, while also coaching and teaching them to be great student advisors. The effect they have as advisors, being of service to so many students, in turn creates a circle of personal and professional growth.
As a professional school, SCS is committed to transforming the lives and careers of lifelong learners and does this, according to the School’s mission, in order to “improve employability and develop workforces; and to contribute to building a civic-minded, well-informed, and globally aware society.” On the eve of the Labor Day holiday, it is fitting that we reflect on the nature of work and how such reflection can inspire our actions as members of the SCS community. How can we infuse the preparation of lifelong learners for professional practices that reflect the mission and values of the Spirit of Georgetown? How can we as diverse professional members of this community strive to live out an understanding of the “work” of society in a way that justly honors workers and fosters greater equity and the common good?
Labor Day, intended as a holiday that honors the American labor movement, has the potential to give rise to deeper reflection about the contributions of laborers of all kinds in the work of the nation. The themes of work and the proper place of work in our lives are taken up by the teachings of diverse religious and spiritual traditions. Pope Francis, for example, has written extensively in recent documents about the need for political, economic, and social structures that support the dignity of all workers, most especially those marginalized or oppressed by these systems. In his teaching document Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis calls for the realization of “integral human development” through the creation of economic systems and practices that value community production above exploitative models of economic growth that simultaneously harm the environment and workers.
These ideas from Pope Francis echo a long tradition of Catholic Social Teaching and its seven principles, which includes “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers.” This principle maintains that:
“The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected – the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.”
At Georgetown, advancing the dignity of work is evident in a number of University initiatives, including the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor whose purpose is to develop creative strategies and innovative public policy to improve workers’ lives. And at SCS, programs across the School consider pressing ethical questions about labor within the curriculum. For example, the Master’s in Supply Chain Management has been exploring how supply chain issues and inflation have adversely impacted the charity sector (“Helping Charities Defend Against Inflation’s Double Punch”).
As a values-based professional education institution, it is important that we regularly consider the dignity of labor and the rights of workers. My hope is that this Labor Day provides time and space to pause and reflect on just principles of work and how we as Hoyas can join in contributing to a society and a world that brings these principles to life.
This is an exciting time of year at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies. With the summer calendar coming to a close, our attentions turn to the beginning of the fall semester. While the academic programs at SCS tend to start for students on a rolling basis throughout the year, the inauguration of the fall semester has a special calendar significance at SCS. With new student, staff, and faculty orientations soon underway, this is a good opportunity to offer a brief introduction to our University’s distinctive mission and values and how they will influence your Georgetown experience.
This week’s post introduces the Spirit of Georgetown to new members of the SCS community.
There is a longer story here than a short blog post allows (If you’re a student and really curious about the deeper answer to this question, you might consider taking a special free elective offered at SCS called “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice.” Similar seminar opportunities are available for faculty and staff).
Here are four important ways that the University’s Jesuit mission and values will come to life in your time at Georgetown.
SCS is committed to sharing the Spirit of Georgetown, the 10 values distilled from five centuries of the Jesuit tradition of education, in an inclusive and invitational way that respects a plurality of religious and philosophical perspectives. This is why the University’s Office of Mission and Ministry houses a large multi-faith team of chaplains and staff that are available to spiritually accompany students, faculty, and staff across the campuses. The mission of Georgetown comes alive in a unique way for each individual person and no one will have the exact same experience as someone else.
Academic excellence is core to realizing Georgetown’s mission. This means that our rigorous and high-quality style of professional education is not by accident but an outgrowth of a living tradition that strives for the highest standards of teaching and learning as a way of reverencing the divine. At SCS, you’ll likely notice this commitment in the innovative and creative uses of technology to enhance the learning process.
A signature value of Jesuit education is a commitment to being People for Others. In this way, all learning, teaching, and working has a potential connection to supporting social justice and the common good. You will see this manifested in community service outside the classroom, course projects that focus on the needs of marginalized persons and groups, opportunities for social impact entrepreneurship, and the University’s public advocacy for justice.
Finally, you might find that “Cura Personalis,” or the value of Care for the Whole Person, is more than a superficial buzzword – it’s a deep-seated commitment to paying attention to all facets of the human person. Being a student at SCS is more than acquiring technical knowledge or skills; it is about attending to the emotional, spiritual, social, and physical aspects of developing as a well-rounded professional. A mission-committed faculty and staff are key to making this aspiration a reality. As a student, you can take advantage of this commitment through retreats, meditation, and other co-curricular experiences that animate Georgetown’s striving to form graduates who are generous life-long learners in the service of others.
The start of a new semester is always filled with a mix of emotions. Whether you’re feeling mostly excited or mostly nervous (or a mix of both) about this new experience, I hope you find some comfort in the mission-based resources that are here to accompany you along the way.
In working toward its mission to “deliver a world-class, values-based education to a diverse array of communities and individuals throughout their academic and professional careers,” Georgetown SCS offers a range of degree and non-degree learning experiences. Professional Bootcamps are dynamic six- to 12-week programs filled with knowledge, skills, and critical and strategic thinking intended to help boost the career prospects of professional learners. And other SCS programs, Professional Bootcamps strive to integrate Georgetown values into their intensive courses.
One such example of intentional integration of mission and values is the featured bootcamp course “Thinking to Thrive,” designed to help students make better decisions. Taught by Stewart Brown, a management consultant with over 40 years of experience as a planner on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels in both government and civilian commercial enterprises, “Thinking to Thrive” operates from the assumption that a new set of leadership skills is needed for junior managers and senior executives in the 21st century. The course prepares emerging professional leaders to become “flexible, adaptable, multidisciplinary problem-solvers and change makers” through an exploration of how biases and fallacies cause errors in judgment and choice. Along the way, students assess a range of models for decision processes and tools, articulating each framework’s strengths as well as its limitations.
“Thinking to Thrive” features a dedicated module on the role of ethics in decision-making. And like the ethics curricula in other SCS courses, this module introduces students to the resources and toolkits of ethical choice-making in the Jesuit tradition of discernment. This session is set up as a rich space for open-ended conversation as students engage difficult questions about how to bring to life ethical principles in ethically challenging work settings and situations. As a professional education program focused on the needs of adult learners, the objective of this module is not reflection for its own sake. Instead, students are challenged to make direct connections to their own professional development by articulating the ethical meaning of their own professional experiences.
One of the course materials in this module that explicitly connects the discussion of ethics in decision-making to the Spirit of Georgetown is an article by Kirk Hanson, senior fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Hanson offers five themes that differentiate the distinctiveness of learning ethics for managers and executives in a Jesuit school:
The development of the moral and spiritual character of the manager;
The responsibility to use one’s managerial skills for the benefit of ‘others’;
A concern for the welfare of employees in the manager’s organization;
A focus on the social impact of business and organizational decisions; and
A special concern for the poor and marginalized frequently left out of the economy.
By the end of the session on ethics in “Thinking to Thrive,” students have spent intentional time engaging with the Jesuit tradition of education. The discussion always surfaces new insights about the relevance of the Jesuit framework of ethical decision-making. A course that presents models of critical and reflective thinking as a necessary skill set for today’s aspiring managers and executives helps SCS bring its mission and values to life by meeting the interdisciplinary challenges of the 21st century.
With the fall semester approaching as summer courses enter into their final phase, faculty are reviewing and preparing their syllabi for next semester. One of the exciting parts of teaching at SCS is the ongoing opportunity to evaluate teaching strategies and make changes for the better. Teaching professionally applicable content and skills at SCS, which are dependent on ever-evolving trends in society and the marketplace, demands this kind of regular review. Through student feedback and other means, faculty are encouraged to continuously refine their pedagogical methods in pursuit of Academic Excellence, one of the core values in the Spirit of Georgetown. Regular evaluation that informs reflective action is also an essential component of Jesuit Pedagogy, a framework for teaching and learning inspired by the dynamics of Ignatian spirituality.
This week’s post examines “Interreligious Understanding,” one of the Spirit of Georgetown values, by reflecting on a recent podcast on the topic put together by the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship.
SCS has made considerable efforts in recent years to support its faculty with guidance and resources about how to incorporate the University’s defining mission and values into online and on-ground courses. The SCS “Strategies to Integrate Georgetown Values into Online and On-Campus Courses” takes each of the Spirit of Georgetown values and offers ideas about how to operationalize these values into practical learning activities. The value of “Interreligious Understanding,” which we hold dear at Georgetown given our long-standing commitment to honoring a pluralism of religious and spiritual traditions, deserves a closer look. In my experience, many faculty are uncertain about how to make this particular value animated in coursework or might be inclined to avoid it altogether because of the potential for conflict or misunderstanding about a sensitive topic like religious difference.
Recently, Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) took up this teaching challenge by hosting a podcast, “Religious and Spiritual Diversity in the Classroom.” In a packed 30 minutes of insightful conversation, religious leaders at Georgetown representing Jewish, Muslim, and Dharmic communities offered insights about the concerns that arise for students when religious identity is marginalized or ignored. There are several important takeaways from the conversation that I would like to highlight as best practices for faculty who want to discern how to activate religious diversity as a valuable component of the learning process.
Rabbi Rachel Gartner (most recently Director for Jewish Life), Imam Yahya Hendi (Director for Muslim Life), Brahmachari Sharan (Director for Dharmic Life), and David Ebenbach (Professor of the Practice at CNDLS and the Center for Jewish Civilization) point to the need for faculty to express humility and a willingness to listen and learn about religious traditions with which they are unfamiliar.
First, false assumptions about religious traditions can be perpetuated unless the classroom fosters an open-ended atmosphere in which individual students are invited to educate the class about their religious or spiritual identities. Having book knowledge about a cultural or religious tradition is not the same thing as having felt knowledge based on a relationship of trust with someone belonging to that specific tradition. While sharing openly about religious identity might not be comfortable for everyone, it is good practice to provide the opportunity (either in a group setting or individually) for students to express this part of themselves during a class.
Second, learning is inhibited when students feel like aspects of their religious identity are not properly respected or valued. This often comes up when seemingly harmless comments are made about religious practices related to wardrobe and eating. Faculty can encourage respectful engagement about such cultural differences by establishing a set of shared community agreements at the start of the course and then regularly reinforcing their importance during moments of conflict that come up along the way.
Finally, learning is an opportunity for growth. In today’s increasingly globalized workplaces, there is an ever-greater need for interreligious literacy and understanding. By actively listening to the experiences of religiously and spiritually motivated students, especially those belonging to non-dominant traditions, classrooms can become a place where religious difference is more than merely tolerated. These learning experiences have the potential to be transformative for all involved.
This week’s Mission in Motion reflects on a recent podcast by Georgetown’s Institute for Transformational Leadership. Listen to the podcast.
Of the many deeply mission-aligned programs at SCS, the Institute for Transformational Leadership (ITL) is one of the most obvious. Mission in Motionhas previously reflected on the deep connections between Georgetown’s mission and values and the work of ITL. Recently, ITL, through its podcast, hosted an important discussion about the relationship between body intelligence and transformational leadership. ITL academic director Bill Pullen interviewed Marcia Feola, a master certified coach and faculty member in ITL.
What resonated strongly is an opportunity in the conversation to make more explicit the relationship between leadership coaching and a diversity of religious and spiritual wisdom teachings about the body. Bill and Marcia use the language of “whole person” to describe an approach to embodied leadership development, which links up nicely with the commitment in the Spirit of Georgetown to “Educating the Whole Person.” This value encourages all of our endeavors at Georgetown SCS to integrate the holistic development of the human person’s many facets – intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual – in the learning experience.
The podcast helped me appreciate how much good leaders need to attend to knowledge of their own bodies in the work of exercising transformational leadership with and for others. It is common to speak of the need for emotional intelligence, a reflective self-awareness of how affective sensations influence one’s thoughts and behavior. But body intelligence is no less important. And this focus on the body is manifested in different religious and spiritual traditions.
Ignatian spirituality, which gives rise to the Spirit of Georgetown, emphasizes the body as a location for encountering God. St. Ignatius of Loyola, in the Spiritual Exercises, invites the retreatant to experience the mystery and love of the Divine by encountering God in one’s own body and in the body of Christ. God’s desire to be in relationship with human beings does not occur in the abstract but through the fleshy, incarnational reality of the human body. The Australian Jesuits offer further insights about this connection between the body and the Spiritual Exercises in this piece: “Ignatian Spirituality and the Wisdom of the Body.”
Other faith traditions also speak to the central importance of the body in the quest for spiritual insight and knowledge. The Jewish tradition describes the need for healthy living with particular emphasis on caring for the body. So many of the teachings and laws of the Hebrew Bible focus on care for the physical self. The Islamic tradition similarly draws attention to this connection between a sound body and a healthy spiritual life. For Muslims, the human body is a gift from God and humans are responsible for being good stewards of this gift.
Practicing care for the body happens in many ways. A mindfulness meditation practice, like the one offered in the SCS Daily Digital Meditations (sign up here), typically begins with a body scan exercise that relaxes the body and makes one more present and aware of their physical sensations. The body communicates its status with all sorts of sensations, but making sense of these signals requires paying mindful attention to them. Reflective awareness of our emotions, another key feature of mindful meditation, depends on our achieving some sort of grounded centeredness in our physical bodies. In these SCS mindfulness meditations, one enters into greater emotional awareness through conscious breathing exercises. The body, the mind, and the spirit all co-exist in an interdependent and interrelated relationship.
I encourage you to listen to the ITL podcast on body intelligence and reflect on how you might grow in deeper awareness of how your body affects – in both positive and negative ways – how you lead in the world.
In the last few weeks, I have struggled to find sensible words to use in response to the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York. I know that I am not alone in this feeling. Words feel unsatisfactory to the task of making sense of these hate-filled massacres. The pattern of mass violence is all too predictable in our national life: unimaginable death has been routinized and, as a consequence, a temptation sets in to become numb to the carnage and inert about making positive changes in the way we live as a collective.
In this week’s post, Mission in Motion considers hope in the midst of the misery of recent mass shootings and other armed violence. The recent Class of 2020 Baccalaureate Mass, with reflections from President DeGioia and a homily by Fr. Greg Schenden, S.J., centered on the theme of hope. You can watch the mass here.
So it might come as a shock to some that the resource that I’m going to these days is hope. Let me be clear at the beginning: I am not talking about a facile, saccharine, naïve hope that is based in wishful and unrealistic thinking. No, I am talking about the kind of critical hope that arises out of Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit tradition and the other religious traditions that have their home at this university. In the midst of this continuing cycle of despair and desolation about the now routinized cycles of senseless loss, I think that a bold and daring hope is what grounds me and can serve as a shared resource for all of us in these difficult days. Because hope is a virtue that extends beyond individual thoughts and actions and calls on everyone to share together in the work of healing, mercy, and justice.
Hope is especially important to name as it relates to our task as a university community in responding to the crisis of armed violence in the United States. The educational mission of Georgetown, grounded as it is in Catholic Social Teaching, reminds us that a just society balances rights, on the one hand, with responsibilities, on the other. We are responsible for one another and have a special obligation to the most vulnerable in our society. Our learning, teaching, and service at Georgetown invites us to evaluate how we are called to participate in the healing and restoration of the brokenness in our society and culture. How can we apply our learning and our professional gifts and talents to build a society that makes its members, especially its most marginalized, feel safe and welcomed?
The actions needed in a time like this are both small and large. In our daily lives and interactions, how can we instill the virtues of tenderness and compassion? How can we extend grace, forgiveness, and seemingly minor acts of charity in the day-to-day? How can we be more sensitive about the language we employ and consider how it is received by others? And in the larger work of structural change: how can we contribute to changes in law and policy that can help reduce the overall incidence of armed violence? What gifts, talents, and resources of our own can we add in a shared struggle for peace and justice in our country and throughout the world?
All of this talk of hope, as unexpected as it might seem these days, comes on the heels of two weekends of Commencement celebration at Georgetown. Dr. Shaun Harper invited the 2022 graduates of SCS to live into the continuation of hope as an antidote to the social ills that plague us. And this past weekend, both President DeGioia and Fr. Greg Schenden, S.J., Director of Campus Ministry, in the Baccalaureate Mass for the Class of 2020, called out the theme of hope from the Jesuit tradition of spirituality. President DeGioia, reflecting on a reading from St. Paul, invited the assembly to be witnesses to hope and consolation through all of the loss, pain, sadness, difficulty, and disruption. And Fr. Schenden, referring to the writing of the Jesuit historian Fr. John O’Malley, reminded the audience that our mission at Georgetown is to form people for others who serve as ministers of consolation. In a wounded and weary world, this is the kind of hope that we so desperately need.
Last week, Georgetown SCS celebrated the Class of 2022 with multiple ceremonies. The annual Tropaia awards took place in Gaston Hall on May 18 and the traditional Commencement exercises occurred on Healy Lawn on May 20. This was the first time since 2019 that both of these formal proceedings were realized in-person.
The collective joy and relief of returning to one another, a theme first picked in Mission in Motion at the Mass of the Holy Spring that began the 2021–2022 Academic Year, were palpably present during these events. And while the SCS community continues to adapt to the changing conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Commencement sets into motion a renewed way of proceeding at Georgetown.
There were many insights, ideas, experiences, and notable occurrences to highlight during the week of Commencement. Tropaia featured award-winning students and faculty members across the School’s degree programs, including this year’s SCS Spirit of Georgetown award winner Lorena Chinos (see Lorena’s Mission in Motion interview here). Faculty directors noted the adversity and challenge that these community members overcame in realizing their academic goals while serving their communities. The theme of service and commitment to others was also loudly expressed during the Commencement ceremony.
Shaun Harper, Ph.D., a globally recognized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) thought leader and practitioner, inspired the assembly of those gathered in person and online by noting the collective resilience displayed by the Class of 2022. But more than offering platitudes and empty encouragements, Dr. Harper challenged the graduates and everyone assembled to continue the work of justice, service, and compassion for one another. Dr. Harper offered an insightful take on the double meanings of continuation and discontinuation. (In case you missed it, his remarks begin at the 1:15:25 mark.) On one hand, he encouraged graduates to continue their habits of study and life-long learning and deep service of their families, friends, community, and society. In this way, graduation is not an end but a continuation.
The 2022 SCS Tropaia awards took place in Gaston Hall. Lorena Chirinos, a 2022 graduate, received the School’s Spirit of Georgetown Award and is seen pictured with SCS Vice Dean, Shenita Ray, and SCS Associate Director for Mission Integration, Jamie Kralovec.
But on the other hand, Dr. Harper presented a considerable challenge. Moving ahead in one’s profession and life, formed by a Georgetown SCS education, means standing up for principles and values and working individually and collectively to discontinue those practices and policies that separate and divide our communities. He pushed the graduates to realize more completely a just and inclusive society, one that begins in the home but then extends to every sector of the society. And while there continue to be reasons for discouragement and desolation about the world’s state of affairs, Dr. Harper ultimately delivered a hopeful message: There is hope, he maintained, in the continuation.
Georgetown President John DeGioia also picked up on this theme of hope in his concluding remarks. He referenced the concept of “sentire,” or felt knowledge, which President DeGioia presented during his Sacred Lecture as part of Georgetown’s celebration of the Ignatian Year. Rooting his remarks in the Ignatian and Jesuit spiritual tradition, President DeGioia expressed the hopeful possibilities that result from being educated at Georgetown. Knowledge itself and the continual pursuit of it can spark new discovery, new possibilities, and new solutions to the challenges that we face.
We all have a shared stake at Georgetown, whether as current students, staff, faculty, or alumni, in working together to realize a more just future. My hope is that this week of celebration serves as a continuing reminder of the deeper purpose of our educational tasks at the University and a resource for continuing to navigate the disruptions that challenge us.
