Tag: Jesuit Education

The inspiring message of hope from last week’s Mission in Motion was put to the test in recent days as tragic events around the globe demand our attention and response. A humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the devastating impact of Hurricane Ida on communities along the Gulf Coast point to the urgent need for action in response to human suffering. These crises also illustrate how vulnerable people and communities endure disproportionate harm and are least able to withstand the effects of environmental degradation and war. 

Events in Afghanistan and the Gulf Coast can return our attention to a cornerstone commitment of a Jesuit education. The Spirit of Georgetown calls all of us to be people for others and to live out a faith that does justice. An education that does not challenge and inspire action to support vulnerable people in times of need and address the structural conditions that create such need is not consistent with the Jesuit values that animate our work at Georgetown. In their recent proclamation of Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs), the Jesuits worldwide have made Walking with the Excluded an explicit orientation of all Jesuit and Jesuit-animated activities. According to the UAPs, walking with the excluded means: 

“To walk with the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice. Sent as companions in a mission of reconciliation and justice, we resolve to walk with individuals and communities that are vulnerable, excluded, marginalized, and humanly impoverished…The path we seek to follow with the poor is one that promotes social justice and the change of economic, political, and social structures that generate injustice. … We confirm our commitment to care for migrants, displaced persons, refugees, and victims of war and human trafficking.” 

But how to go about this personal accompaniment when the injustices on display this week may seem distant from our daily experience? In order to live out this mission of reconciliation and justice, Georgetown has provided useful information for anyone who wants to respond to the refugee and asylum crisis arising from the conflict in Afghanistan and the destruction caused by Hurricane Ida. 

The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS) has long worked in solidarity with Afghan women and has created protectafghanwomen.org. Through the site, you can donate to help the evacuation of at-risk Afghan women, call your representatives to urge further action, and spread the word about the conditions in Afghanistan for women, civil society, and human rights leaders. Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service (CSJ) has provided information on its website about how to support Afghan allies through Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service and the Jesuit Refugee Service. And the GU Veterans Association has provided information about how to support Afghan refugees. 

In the wake of Hurricane Ida’s destruction, many people in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast have been left with no power and few resources. To find out how you can support disaster relief efforts during this time, please visit this Disaster Response page by the CSJ.   

Responding generously, creatively, and courageously to social, environmental, and economic injustices is a characteristic of Jesuit education. You can see this demonstrated in how Spring Hill College, a Jesuit institution in Mobile, Alabama, responded by providing temporary housing for students at Loyola University New Orleans, a peer Jesuit institution directly impacted by Hurricane Ida. Actions like these are necessary to sustain hope. 

Mission in Motion often highlights SCS degree and non-degree programs that advance Georgetown’s mission and values by offering professional educational opportunities that respond to pressing social and economic needs. Given the School’s experience in developing technology-mediated certificate education, SCS is uniquely positioned to leverage university resources and community partnerships to create these kinds of socially responsive programs. This way of proceeding as an educational entity at Georgetown is an important way that SCS contributes to the common good, deepening the commitment in the University’s mission statement to educate “women and men to be reflective lifelong learners, to be responsible and active participants in civic life and to live generously in service to others.” 

SCS, in partnership with Georgetown’s Center for Child & Human Development, Medstar Georgetown University Hospital Department of Psychiatry, and the Center of Excellence for Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation, recently launched certificate programs intended to address the mental health needs of infants, children, and their caregivers, and families. 

There are three new non-credit professional certificates: 

• The Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Family Leadership certificate
• The Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation certificate; and 
• The Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health certificate

The intended audience for these certificates indicates in a powerful way how a Georgetown program, working in collaboration with subject matter experts and community resource providers, has the potential to serve critical needs while building capacity in a community to sustain more lasting change. By targeting professional clinicians, consultants, and community health workers in the field of infant mental health, these programs are working in a holistic manner by focusing on the ecosystem of care for infants and young children. The programs also reflect a pressing need surfaced during the global pandemic to create healthier, more resilient communities that can provide care and attention for children and their families, especially the most vulnerable. 

Jeffrey Warner, Senior Director of Professional Development & Certificates at SCS, articulated the mission commitment of the infant and early childhood mental health certificates when he said: 

“This program embodies the spirit of Georgetown University as an opportunity to learn to support more effective caregiving of all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or class. Our University’s Jesuit tradition of cura personalis is emphasized throughout the curriculum as it encourages care and individualized attention to the needs of children and their families, distinct respect for their circumstances and concerns, and an appropriate appreciation for their particular gifts and insights.” 

These new certificate programs reflect the valuable ways that SCS lives out the University’s Jesuit values in partnership with others at Georgetown and beyond. 

You can read more about these exciting new certificate programs on the SCS homepage: “Georgetown Launches New Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate Programs.” Learn more about all of the professional certificate programs offered by SCS. 

Since the start of the global pandemic, Mission in Motion has provided resources, information, and reflections about how the School of Continuing Studies, rooted in the Spirit of Georgetown, is addressing the needs of our diverse community. For more than a year, the blog has shared inspiring examples of work at SCS grounded in a commitment to educate the whole person. SCS students, staff, faculty, and alumni have sustained the bonds of community despite being dispersed across the country and the globe. SCS and larger Georgetown efforts to promote racial justice that aspire to our University value of Community in Diversity have been a major focus of these weekly reflections. Along the way, the blog has hopefully helped readers understand what is distinctive about an approach to professional and continuing education animated by the Jesuit tradition. 

This week, I call attention to a course opportunity this fall that incorporates the University’s Jesuit values in a holistic way. Since 2016, “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” has been offered as a free elective open to any degree-seeking student at SCS. The course, which Mission in Motion highlighted last year, is a unique option in the SCS curriculum in that it is truly interdisciplinary by bringing together students from across the academic degree programs. The course is also unique in that it is community-based learning, organized around opportunities for students to address the direct needs of vulnerable persons through service opportunities facilitated by Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service.  

The course has been renamed “The Reflective Professional: Journeying Toward Mission-Driven Leadership” to signal how critically important reflection and leadership are in the development of professional students. The pandemic has demonstrated how necessary it is to form SCS graduates who are prepared to take on the economic and social justice challenges facing their communities in the U.S. and around the world. Inspired by the Jesuit tradition, an important motivation is an understanding that generous action in the world flows from habits of reflective self-awareness and self-discovery. This is an invaluable opportunity for students to pause and discern their values and how they want to apply these values in the workplace. The course, which is organized around the foundational concepts and applications of Jesuit education and spirituality, features professionally relevant topics like: 

• Frameworks for professional reflection
• Theories of leadership, including spiritual leadership
• Discernment as a strategy for professional decision-making 
• Exploration of Georgetown’s mission and values 
• Models for inter-faith collaboration 
• Contemporary social justice issues, like immigration reform and the climate crisis 

The class is open to and welcomes students from all faith traditions or no faith tradition and presents an important opportunity to engage with mission-driven leaders at Georgetown and beyond. An alum of the course described the transformative experience of hearing directly from such a diverse set of guest presenters: “The speakers who moved me the most had journeyed deeply inside their humanity and then touched mine.” 

Degree-seeking students who are interested in “The Reflective Professional: Journeying Toward Mission-Driven Leadership” (LSHV 480, CRN: 40526) should reach out to me, Jamie Kralovec, course instructor and SCS Associate Director for Mission Integration (pjk34@georgetown.edu).

In my mission integration role at SCS, I am often invited by faculty members across professional disciplines to amplify the University’s mission by presenting some material related to the Spirit of Georgetown in a way that is tailored to the course’s unique learning objectives. This week, I dropped into Ethics in Urban Planning and offered a Jesuit-inspired framework for knowledge, skills, and values in the area of ethical leadership. It was an engaging session that flowed in three movements: the foundational concepts of ethical leadership, an applied case study demonstrating these principles, and suggestions for personal practices that might develop ethical leadership capacity. Grounded in the Jesuits’ spirituality and philosophy of education but offered in a way that is inclusive of spiritual diversity, the concluding segment of the session provoked critical reflection about how spirituality might relate to ethical leadership. 

There are many ways into this conversation about how Jesuit spirituality and education relates to ethics and to leadership. I rely on ideas presented by Chris Lowney, a leadership expert in the Jesuit tradition, whose book, Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World, offers an Ignatian style of leadership that embraces self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism. 

Lowney contests traditional understandings of leadership theory grounded in competency models of what leaders need to acquire in terms of technical skills in order to be effective. While technical skills are important, the Jesuit tradition of leadership emphasizes interior self-development and the development of what many would call “soft skills” like emotional attentiveness, self-reflection, an attitude of gratitude, and a determination to care for others. This perspective on leadership emphasizes that: 

• everyone has the opportunity to lead (not only those at the top of the organizational chart); 
• leadership springs from interior self-knowledge (not just from actions); 
• leadership is a way of living and not just single tasks; and 
• leadership is an ongoing process of discovery of self and self with others.

An important takeaway of this model is that the exercise of ethical leadership depends upon taking regular time for quiet reflection in a way that facilitates greater self-awareness. Contrary to assumptions, regular silence in the form of meditation or prayer do not foster inaction and passivity in the face of pressing responsibilities but actually encourage more generous and ethical action in the world. Leaders grounded in self-awareness, cultivated by practices like the examen, are more likely to make meaningful contributions to social justice and the common good. And consistent with the Spirit of Georgetown value of Contemplation in Action, busy professionals, like the students at SCS, need this time for contemplation even more. 

One hope of a Jesuit education is that students come to realize more and more that their educations are not for themselves alone but also for others. Ethical leadership in the Jesuit tradition makes clear that one’s development as an ethical leader is not just about avoiding mistakes or bad decisions but about growing in habits of discernment about how one is called to use one’s gifts and talents in service of others, especially the most vulnerable members of society. I invite you to take this summer to reflect on these questions as they relate to your growth as an ethical leader: 

• What are the gifts and talents that you bring to leadership? 

• What are the values that matter most to you and why? In other words, what do you consider to be your “North Star” guiding principles for leading in the world? 

• How are you working to translate these values into action? How are you bringing your leadership values to your work at home, in the community, at the workplace, and in the larger world?

Early in the pandemic, Mission in Motion reflected on popular articles that examined the qualities of Jesuit education that contribute to the formation of ethical and reflective leaders working in every sector of society.  The Jesuit approach to education tends to produce effective leaders because of the framework’s embrace of self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism, according to Jesuit leadership expert Chris Lowney. Jesuit educated leaders are often considered “servant leaders,” or those who work against the traditional model of power accumulation and focus instead on the development and wellness of the people and communities in which they exercise leadership.  There has been a growing discussion about this relationship between leadership and Jesuit spirituality and pedagogy, leading to global efforts like the Jesuits’ recently created Program for Discerning Leadership.

This week we call attention to the work of Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership (ITL), a first-of-its-kind institute that develops and sustains worldwide communities of leaders and coaches. Housed at the School of Continuing Studies, ITL’s approach to this work is anchored in the values of the Spirit of Georgetown and demonstrates Jesuit leadership principles in action.

ITL offers a range of certificates, programs, workshops, and special events dedicated to awakening, engaging, and supporting the leadership required in today’s world to create a more sustainable and compassionate future. A quick glance at ITL programs illustrates how clearly mission and values guide the Institute. With programs in Facilitation; Health & Wellness Coaching; Leadership Coaching; Organizational Consulting & Change Leadership; and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, ITL is providing students with experiential learning opportunities geared toward helping leaders understand the context of a complex and challenged world.

The Executive Certificate in Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion is a prime example of how ITL is helping address issues of social justice through its transformative education. A recent SCS web story, “Program Promotes Equity and Belonging in the Workplace,” captures the spirit of the program and the way that it moves beyond a narrow conception of competency in DEI. More than preparing leaders to offer “stand-alone solutions” to the persisting challenges of realizing inclusion in workplaces, the program attends to both the larger structural dynamics impacting DEI as well as the self-knowledge needed to lead in this area. Program instructor Maria Kelts describes the approach in this way:

“The course is experiential in nature and is built on the foundation of understanding oneself through the identities one holds and acknowledging oneself as a change agent. Knowing how you walk through the world allows you to more effectively analyze, diagnose, and address DEI issues in the workplace and beyond.”

Aligned with a Jesuit stance on leadership development, ITL makes interior development and the contribution of spirituality a focus of its programming. This commitment to the interior lives of leaders, which is one of many leadership principles that animate ITL’s approach, aligns well with the Educating the Whole Person value at the heart of the Spirit of Georgetown. By including interiority in the curriculum, ITL reinforces a powerful lesson that generous doing or action in the world ultimately flows from a generous sense of self or being. In the midst of increased social and political polarization, a focus on the inner work of social transformation is critical.

If you want to learn more, please visit:

• The ITL homepage on the SCS site
• The ITL blog
• This SCS web story: “Program Promotes Equity and Belonging in the Workplace”

This week kicked off the 2021 AJCU Justice in Jesuit Higher Education Conference, a virtual gathering hosted by Georgetown and taking place throughout the month of June that will focus on racial justice, immigration justice, environmental justice, faith and justice, and women’s leadership and justice in light of the Jesuits’ four Universal Apostolic Preferences. Mission in Motion recently reflected on how this conference fits into the larger context of the history of social justice education in Jesuit colleges and universities. The opening sessions of the first week affirmed this longstanding tradition and also invited participants to update the resources of Catholic and Jesuit education to meet the pressing challenges of today. Two of the conference’s opening session presenters captured the spirit of this challenge with their open-ended questions:

• Robert Kelly, Ph.D., Vice President and Special Assistant to the President of Loyola University Maryland, asked: “This time calls us to look at ourselves and our institutions and our students to see ways in which we’ve evolved, and need to evolve moving forward. What does that evolution look like?”

• Fr. Arturo Sosa, S.J., Superior General of the Society of Jesus, asked: “The pandemic has struck us all, it has knocked us all down. Which of our plans will change? How can we better accompany the young as they build a future of hope?”

So many first week images stand out from the presentations and the live Zoom questions and responses, but one particular image surfaced for me most prominently. “Deferred maintenance” is a concept that Robert Kelly used to compare the situation of addressing pressing, no-longer-avoidable physical infrastructure needs on an aging campus with addressing persisting issues of injustice, particularly around racial equity and inclusion, that cannot be delayed any longer.

The task for all involved in Jesuit higher education is to confront the reality of racism and other pressing issues of social injustice present on campuses by engaging, according to Margaret Freije, Ph.D., Provost and Dean of College of the Holy Cross, both contemplatively and critically in this work. Taking meaningful action in response to these challenges from out of a stance of deep discernment is a hallmark of Jesuit spirituality and education. A more hope-filled future, one that is demanded by students, staff, and faculty who do not always feel welcome on Jesuit campuses including LGBTQ+, first generation students, and people of color, demands a perspective that brings together the contemplative and the critical.

Another image that resonated this week was cura propria, or personal care and wellness, an addition to the familiar Jesuit lexicon of cura personalis and cura apostolica. Debra Mooney, Ph.D., Vice President for Mission and Identity at Xavier University, introduced this newly minted Ignatian virtue in the context of the ongoing psychological pandemic. Citing the alarmingly high rates of mental health struggles on campuses, Mooney offered that Jesuit educators and students of Jesuit schools need to take care of ourselves – body, mind, and spirit – if we are to address the questions of injustice that haunt us today. Mooney then pointed to the resources of Ignatian spirituality, particularly the Examen as a healthy habit of identifying gratitude, as a way to maintain personal care and wellness in times that will continually challenge our personal and collective resolve.

Fr. Tom Smolich, S.J., International Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, offered an extended reflection on the speech of prior Jesuit Superior General Adolfo Nicolas about the challenges posed by two –isms: aggressive secularism and fundamentalism. Jesuit schools need to discern how to make service of faith an integral component of their commitment to justice. This means taking seriously the critical questions of faith that are presented by the Catholic, Jesuit intellectual tradition. Doing so and encouraging campus communities to embrace Jesuit mission requires discernment, said Smolich, or “decision-making about the mission where the perspectives of each person and the values of the institution are brought together to find the way forward, guided by the Spirit.”

There was so much more to explore in this week’s events. Gratefully, this year’s conference materials will be preserved as digital resources, including recorded poster presentations from across the Jesuit network of schools. You can still sign up for two more weeks of events by visiting the registration page.

Recently, Mission in Motion focused on the Hoya Professional 30 as a cherished annual milestone in the life of the School of Continuing Studies. Tropaia, a yearly ceremony that honors the outstanding contributions and accomplishments of members of the SCS community, is another ceremonial mark on the calendar that invites us to celebrate together and reflect on the deeper purpose of a Georgetown education (you can view a recording of the event).

Typically hosted in historic Gaston Hall, the pandemic made this year’s Tropaia Ceremony a virtual event. But SCS Dean Kelly Otter, noting that this virtual setting is not what we traditionally envision for the celebration, lifted up how an online ceremony helps us appreciate the extraordinary ways that students, faculty, and staff have cultivated habits of leadership, excellence, and mutual support during the pandemic.

Reverend Ebony Grisom, Interim Director of Protestant Christian Ministry, provided a sacred introduction to the proceedings. Rev. Grisom affirmed that, despite the challenges of this past academic year, there is joy in the journey. She called upon the many diverse ways that our community names God and reminded us that we all share deeply in the mission that animates the Spirit of Georgetown. Our students, faculty, and staff, Rev. Grisom remarked, show consistent commitment to serve their diverse communities with compassion and respect, goodness, justice, and love. This prayerful context expanded a sense of gratitude about how the night’s honorees have exemplified the leadership that the world needs now more than ever before.

One of the signature honors presented at Tropaia is the Spirit of Georgetown Award, which is given to a graduating student, alumna, or alumnus who exemplifies Georgetown’s Jesuit values of people in service to others, commitment to justice and the common good, intellectual openness, and leadership. This is a highlight in the work of mission integration at SCS because it brings together a faculty and staff committee to more deeply reflect on our Jesuit values and how the award nominees have made Georgetown’s mission a part of who they are and who they have become as a result of their SCS education.

This year’s award went to Jocelyn Law-Yone, or Chef JoJo, who is a 2018 graduate of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies. Chef JoJo emigrated to the United States from Burma in 1970 and has made her life about welcoming others by bringing people together over food, friendship, and hospitality. After two decades of teaching English and AP Art History, she opened a Burmese restaurant in Washington, D.C., and has won top awards in the restaurant industry. More than serving food, JoJo’s restaurant Thamee has gained attention for its intentional commitments to racial and social justice. You can read more about her work in these articles in The Washington Post, Zagat, and DC Eater.

Former Jesuit Superior General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach once said that “the real measure of our Jesuit universities lies in who our students become.” Given that so many of our SCS students are adult learners well into their personal and professional lives, I would slightly amend this criterion to “who our students are becoming” because all of us, especially adults, are always engaged in dynamic processes of ongoing growth and development. This year’s Tropaia highlighted the many ways that SCS students, faculty, and staff are contributing their gifts to realize personal and social transformation needed to meet the demands of today.