Tag: Jesuit Values

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How Are You Giving Back as the Semester Ends and Commencement Begins?

As Georgetown’s Commencement nears and the spring semester ends, this week’s post ponders the wisdom of St. Ignatius about giving back what we have so generously received. Image: taken from Ignatianspirituality.com 

Readers of this blog will recognize a familiar pattern: cycles in the academic calendar present opportunities to share wisdom from the Ignatian spiritual tradition intended to spur greater reflection at certain transitional moments in the year. My hope is that presenting the trusted and tested ideas of Ignatian spirituality will inspire the Georgetown community in the present moment with relevant practices that meet the times. The ending of spring semester and the beginning of commencement season lends itself particularly well to such Ignatian encouragements.

In the final movement of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola invites the retreatant to consider how to generously return back to God all of the gifts that the person has received. The retreatant spends the Spiritual Exercises to this point in prolonged reflection on the meaning of one’s life and vocation, a cycle that includes reckoning with one’s own sinfulness and ingratitude as well as how they have cooperated with God and used their gifts for good. This self-inventory can be challenging but it typically leads to transformative insights about how one can live with greater meaning and purpose in life and work. 

St. Ignatius invites the retreatant to discern how they intend to put into action all they have internalized in the long, quiet periods of prayer, note-taking, and weekly conversations with a spiritual director. He makes a few key points: 1) love is shown more in deeds than in words; and 2) love consists in the mutual sharing of goods. According to Marina Berzins McCoy, what Ignatius means is that “we give what we have, not out of obligation, but out of immense love for the other.” The inspiration of this idea is crystallized in the “Suscipe” Prayer of Ignatius: 

“Take lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and Thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.”

It seems to me that this message about the freely shared giving of one’s goods, from a place of mutuality, is especially appropriate for the academic milestone of graduation season. What better way to meaningfully transition in this moment of the year, for continuing students and graduating students alike, than pondering the question: How is my Georgetown education inspiring me to give back to the world? 

The Spirit of Georgetown, with values like “People for Others,” “Faith that Does Justice,” and “Contemplation in Action,” all point to the social purpose of a Jesuit education. Being educated in this five-century-long tradition means living not for one’s self alone but for and with others, especially those most in need. It is important time and again to revisit this dimension of our learning activities at the University. If we do not take this time to pause and reflect on this core question, we run the risk of missing the meaning of Georgetown’s mission and what it asks of each of us. 

Continuing students: I hope you can take a little quiet after finishing projects and completing final exams to take stock of your last semester. Before you prepare for summer and the courses that come next, I invite you to notice what experiences from the spring semester bring you the most joy? What has done the opposite, perhaps causing you to question or doubt your purpose and the journey you’re on? What gratitude do you feel? And what new choices, if any, are you considering to live more generously in service of others? 

Graduating students: congratulations! You have achieved an incredible thing by making your Georgetown dream a reality. The long hours and personal sacrifices were worth it. And now, you have a privileged opportunity to savor your time at the university and deeply reflect on what it means for your journey ahead. You are leaving the university at a time of great challenge in the world. And your communities need your sparks of creativity and skill. Surrounded by the fanfare and celebration of commencement, I hope you can ponder the small and big ways that your Georgetown degree can help you give back.

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Mourning the Death of Pope Francis on the Capitol Campus

This week’s post reflects on the passing of Pope Francis and how services held on the Capitol Campus helped the university community grieve this transformative global leader. 

The world grieved this week for Pope Francis. Tears of sadness flowed not only from Catholics but from diverse communities of goodwill across the globe. There was something transcendent about the broad and cross-cutting appeal of Pope Francis, a leader that the world needed at this period in time. We seek to live in hope that his legacy of leadership, service, and moral example will endure. Georgetown was particularly impacted by the life of Pope Francis, which the university memorialized in this webpage detailing the myriad ways that Georgetown has been inspired by his moral and spiritual leadership.

This week, in addition to services occurring on the Hilltop Campus, multiple events taking place on Capitol Campus honored Pope Francis and assisted our downtown community in grieving. Taize Prayer, which is an ecumenical style of meditative worship through song, took place on Tuesday evening in the St. Thomas More Chapel in McDonough Hall of the Georgetown University Law Center. A portion of that prayer was reserved for reflecting on the life of Pope Francis and hearing aloud a portion of his last public address. On Wednesday morning, Catholic Mass in the St. Thomas More Chapel continued honoring Pope Francis by dedicating that service to him. Special petitions and a homily about how Pope Francis brought the Gospel to life in his devotion to lifting up the most marginalized and vulnerable people, particularly migrants and refugees, focused the community’s attention on how living up to his example means standing up for these communities today. 

As an urban planner trained in Ignatian spirituality and devoted to the mission of Jesuit education, I think one of the most underappreciated legacies of Pope Francis is his commitment to sustainable urban development. Pope Francis was an insightful urbanist, which is evidenced by his writing in “Laudato Si,’” a formative teaching document about the environmental crisis created by human-induced climate change (see especially paragraphs 147-155). Pope Francis understood the major challenges facing cities around the world because he experienced them from the perspective of the poor and the people most negatively impacted by inadequate urban systems like housing, transportation, and public space. He literally rode the buses of Buenos Aires as its archbishop. As a result of his bottom-up, lived experience, Pope Francis assessed the wellness of urban communities on the basis of how they advanced justice, sustainability, and equity for those most overlooked by those in power. The most recent SCS Dean’s Report explored how the School has answered this particular call of Pope Francis in supporting sustainable urban development. 

A special mass was held on the Capitol Campus for Pope Francis. One of his many enduring legacies will be his powerful teachings about sustainable urban development. 

I hope this time of transition in the leadership of the Catholic Church provides opportunities to remember the indelible marks that Pope Francis has left on the world. May our university community discern well how we want to put into practice all that we have learned from his earthly example. 

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SCS Knowledge@Noon Highlights the Integration of Jesuit Values in Professional Certificates

A virtual training at SCS this week explored the Ignatian contributions to the development of ethical leaders. 

One of the great strengths of the SCS approach to professional education is the intentional emphasis on Georgetown’s Jesuit mission and its relevance to the tasks of lifelong learning. The connection between Ignatian values and continuous education is well-established in the biography of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The Jesuit founder experienced a transformative conversion after a life-altering battlefield injury that ultimately led him to re-chart his life’s journey in the service of his ultimate purpose: praising, reverencing, and serving God in all things. This new direction demanded different skills, capacities, and knowledge than those required by his former, pre-conversion lifestyle. St. Ignatius went back to school, quite literally, in order to fulfill his noble purpose. 

The virtual training considered how spiritual leadership has received more attention by management and leadership scholars.

In this way, St. Ignatius presents an exemplary case of continuing education in action that continues to inspire our approaches today. It is with this Ignatian inspiration in mind that I reflect on this week’s Knowledge@Noon program hosted by the professional certificates team at SCS. Branded as a presentation about “Discerning How to Be an Ethical Leader,” the training served as an entry point for participants to discover more about the professional certificate offerings at SCS, including the newly designed “Master Practitioner in Leadership” in which I serve as an instructor. I spent the hour making the case for spirituality as a key ingredient of leader development, a recommendation supported by scholarly research in management and leadership studies. I then offered Ignatian discernment and its practices as a practical bridge between theoretical support for spiritual leadership and an applied approach to integrating spirituality into leader practices. 

 Ignatian spirituality, which emphasizes how to make choices that align one’s values with one’s ultimate purpose, can enhance the study and practice of ethical leadership. 

The Ignatian spiritual tradition offers so many valuable insights to the discussion about ethical leadership. One of the main points I tried to emphasize in this virtual training is that Ignatian discernment, rooted as it is in a faith tradition, gives professional education of leaders a deeper range of resources beyond those of purely secularized approaches like emotional intelligence. My intention here is to help prospective students appreciate how Georgetown’s religious heritage as a Catholic and Jesuit university and its commitment to interreligious dialogue is unique in the marketplace of continuing education programs. 
There is so much more to say about these connections but I recommend that you inquire about professional certificates, like the Strategic Thinking and Leadership Academy and the Master Practitioner in Leadership, to learn more about how Ignatian principles manifest in SCS programming.

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A Time for Generous Connections: Staff Appreciation Day on Capitol Campus

This week’s post reflects on the recent staff appreciation day taking place on Capitol Campus with the help of some guidance offered by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. 

In a letter written in 1541 to fellow Jesuits on mission, Jesuit founder St. Ignatius of Loyola gives advice about “dealing with others.” Ignatius wrote almost 7,000 of these correspondences over his lifetime, a record that rivaled the great letter-writers of the period. What is striking to me about this five-centuries-old communication is its enduring relevance to us today. Ignatius writes: 

“Be ready to listen for long periods and until each other has had his say…We should be kind and compassionate with those who are sad or tempted, speak at length with them, and show great joy and cheerfulness, both interior and exterior, to draw them to the opposite of what they feel, for their greater edification and consolation…In business matters be generous with your time; that is, if you can, do today what you promise to do tomorrow.”

This Ignatian messaging came up for me this week during Georgetown’s Staff Appreciation Day taking place on the Capitol Campus. Mission in Motion has reflected in the past about this event and considered the mission significance of this convening of gratitude for the work of university staff. 

What stood out for me in Ignatius’s letter is his encouragement to the Jesuits under his care to be “generous with your time.” Ignatius also emphasizes speaking “at length” as well as showing “great joy and cheerfulness” and listening for “long periods.” These encouragements are hardly novel nor is Ignatius the first supervisor and manager to ever give this advice. But what makes this instruction useful for us today is that these encouragements provide insights about how we might advance Georgetown’s mission on the Capitol Campus in the years to come. 

The accelerating development of Capitol Campus (evident this week by the launch of a new website) and the anticipated opening of 111 Massachusetts Avenue (the new home for SCS and several other university units) make these particular suggestions for mission animation especially relevant. The growth of Capitol Campus, which will bring together representatives from all of Georgetown’s academic units in one location, will require long periods of listening. A vision for interdisciplinary collaboration between these different schools and units will depend on faculty and staff creating space to listen and listen well. Such collaboration will take time to develop organically, and events like the one make mutual understanding more likely. 

Realizing the ambitious vision for the Capitol Campus will depend upon some of practices that St. Ignatius encourages, like listening for long periods of time and expressing joy and compassion. 

Building a hospitable campus that welcomes both undergraduate and graduate students in a range of programs will take some of the kindness and compassion that Ignatius encourages. This week’s staff appreciation event showcased how all of Georgetown’s employees have an important role to play in building such an inclusive culture for current and future Hoya students. Staff are already being called on and will continue to be called upon to collaborate in new ways to meet the needs of the diverse student populations that will call Capitol Campus home. There will be opportunities for increased coordination amongst staff as community formation on Capitol Campus evolves and changes over time. 

Staff Appreciation Day is a welcome opportunity to pause and reflect on the many ways that university staff work together to realize Georgetown’s mission. Relying on the resources of our Ignatian heritage and tradition, including the voluminous correspondence of St. Ignatius, can support all of us in the staff community as we guide an ambitious vision for Capitol Campus. 

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Leaning into Mission, Georgetown Offers Expanded Educational Opportunities

Businessman walking on courthouse steps
This week’s post highlights Georgetown’s recent efforts to support graduating seniors, recent alumni, and current or recently separated federal civil government employees. 

In the wake of recent actions that have disrupted the status of many federal employees, Georgetown has committed to a set of resources intended to address this. By offering expanded educational opportunities for graduating seniors, recent alumni, and current or recently separated federal civil government employees (see this new website with a comprehensive overview of these programs), the university’s mission commitment to supporting “reflective lifelong learners” who are “active participants in civic life” striving to “live generously in service to others” factored prominently in this timely offering of these services and supports. 

This initiative is a collaboration amongst many at Georgetown, including the School of Continuing Studies, which is playing a prominent role. Given its legacy and strength in delivering professionally relevant and adaptive education for a changing workforce, SCS is in a good position to support this common good effort. SCS Dean Kelly Otter noted this in the press release, saying: “We remain committed to supporting those who have dedicated their careers to public service. Through this program, we are empowering federal professionals to leverage their unique knowledge, networks, and skills to navigate and thrive in today’s evolving workforce.” This asset-based approach, which builds from the existing capacity and skillfulness of federal employees, is intended to help participants reposition themselves in the marketplace and find new professional opportunities to share their gifts and talents. 

The SCS contribution to the overall package of support includes enrollment in select online certificates and tuition discounts on certain Master of Professional Studies programs as well as career guidance from Dr. Lisa Andrews, director of integrated career development. This kind of personal accompaniment of others in a relationship of guidance has direct connection with the Ignatian heritage and Jesuit-inspired practices (for example, see this past post: “Career Counseling in an Ignatian Key”).  By offering this kind of personalized support, Georgetown is encouraging this population to take meaningful time during an unexpected transition to reflect and re-affirm their deeper purpose and mission in work life. More than offering technical skills or information, this approach emphasizes the importance of the inner life as a compass or guide for discerning the next steps in one’s career. 

Georgetown’s mission comes to life every day in a variety of ways that reflects the diversity of the university’s engagements in the world. This recent response to events, which leverages the core strengths of SCS and other Georgetown schools in meeting the social and economic needs of today’s workforce, is an excellent example of our mission in motion.

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SCS Students: Looking to Quiet, Center, and Connect? Sign Up for Annual Retreat

This week’s post is an encouragement for SCS students to sign up for the annual overnight retreat taking place in March.

A hallmark of the Georgetown student experience is the opportunity to participate in retreats facilitated by the Office of Mission and Ministry. Whether these experiences take place on campus in the context of daily life or removed from the city at the University’s Calcagnini Contemplative Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Georgetown retreats put the Jesuit value “Contemplation in Action” into practice. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, believed that busy and engaged people needed forms of prayer and reflection suited to their committed and active lives of service. Short retreats bring this vision to life by giving students an opportunity to pause and take a break from the frenetic pace of life and work without losing connections with the purpose of their academic and  professional activities.

This year’s SCS student retreat animates this characteristic of Georgetown by bringing together the diverse community of learners at SCS for a shared experience of intentional rest and relaxation in a contemplative atmosphere. Framed around the theme of “Quiet, Center, and Connect,” this year’s event will build on the tradition of past annual retreats. This 2025 theme speaks especially to the need for disengagement from the ever-present demands posed by our digitally distracting modern life. The pace of current events and the temptation to follow and react to everything happening in real-time can be detrimental to our inner lives. Generous action in the world depends on our being able to locate and activate the core of our true selves, a task that is only realized with intentional spiritual practices. 

By quieting, the retreat hopes to help students push aside the intrusive noises. By centering, the retreat hopes to help students focus on what really matters. And by connecting, the retreat hopes to help students to relate to others in ways that build the bonds of unity and community in a time of polarization and fragmentation.

There are few remaining spots, so interested students should sign up today! 

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The City’s Role in Advancing University Mission

The post reflects on the city, motivated by this article in the most recent SCS Dean’s Report:

Caring for Our Common Home: Advancing Sustainability and Faith-Based Community Development

Image: L’Enfant’s Plan for the City of Washington, Source: Museum of the American Revolution

Jesuits have made cities a primary site of missionary activity since their founding in 1540. The religious order’s relationship with the urban is not an accident but represents the founder’s vision of Finding God in All Things. St. Ignatius believed urban communities were advantageous to mission because of the concentration of people and places. Cities are not only places of great opportunity but also of great need and Ignatius located the order’s early apostolic ministries in urban sites because Jesuits could help address the concerns of the poor living there.

The urban significance of the Jesuit educational mission is perhaps most evident today in the preponderance of Jesuit schools located within city boundaries. Georgetown is no exception to this and its urban location has multiple meanings as both a local metropolitan community and a global city whose civic relevance has always been tied to the university’s public service commitment to the common good of the nation and the world. But despite these deep historical roots, I have found, both as a professional urban planner and a trained Ignatian mission integrator, that there is not enough discussion and reflection about the connections between Jesuit educational mission and the city.

When you begin to consider this relationship at a deeper level, what comes to mind as a member of the Georgetown community? What role should the city play in how Georgetown and Jesuit schools like it attempt to live out their 500-year-old tradition of education and spirituality? How does engagement with the city, its people and places, factor into your experiences at Georgetown?

As SCS prepares for the next phase of the development of the Capitol Campus this year, perhaps the most significant urban investment in Georgetown’s history, I think it would be helpful to encourage more thoughtful reflection about these questions. This motivation led me to author this article in the most recent SCS Dean’s Report, “Caring for Our Common Home: Advancing Sustainability and Faith-Based Community Development.” This piece takes a detailed view of several SCS initiatives that have engaged with the mission opportunities of contemporary urban life. Both the Master’s in Real Estate and the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning have addressed the needs of faith-based organizations in ways that are consistent with Georgetown’s commitment to Care for Our Community Home and the integral ecological vision of Pope Francis. Beyond these academic efforts, the School’s urban sustainability vision is further realized through staff-led community service programs, which include a river clean-up with an urban non-profit.

Pope Francis has offered deep insights about the moral implications of fostering just, equitable, and sustainable cities. This feels like an opportune moment to catalyze more discussion, research, and action about engaging with the city as a matter of our mission. I hope the article in the Dean’s Report and the leading examples highlighted in it spark more reflection about the relationships between Georgetown’s Jesuit values and the challenges of our contemporary cities.

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Dean’s Report Emphasizes How Mission Animates the Work of SCS

This week’s post highlights the new SCS Dean’s Report and its emphasis on the role of Jesuit mission and values in the life of the School. 

An anticipated annual production, which involves a lot of careful planning and execution from a dedicated team of staff, is the release of the SCS Dean’s Report. This year’s effort, which covers 2023-2024, sheds an important light throughout the document on the central place of Georgetown’s Jesuit mission and values in how SCS engages in curriculum, partnership development, student life, and service to the world. A quick glance at this year’s article titles makes this connection to mission abundantly clear. As Dean Otter notes in her introduction to this year’s report, mission animates the entire enterprise: 

“Our School is rooted in a 500-year-old tradition of Catholic and Jesuit education that compels each and everyone of us to ask tough questions of themselves and of their professions, rethink traditional solutions, and ultimately seek something greater than themselves.”

This year’s report shows how SCS students, faculty, and staff have done these things with an orientation to realizing justice and the common good. 

The inspiration of Jesuit mission at SCS comes through several articles in an explicit and intentional way. In “Empowering Veterans from Service to Scholarship,” Miranda Mahmud describes how the example of St. Ignatius, himself a wounded warrior, guides the School’s efforts to meet the needs of military-connected students. We learn in this piece about how military-connected students bring many of the Spirit of Georgetown values to life, including being People for Others and helping realize a Community in Diversity. These students find Georgetown’s emphasis on life-calling, mission, and purpose in academic programs to resonate with their military experience. 

Another article in the report, “Georgetown Explores Ethical Uses of Artificial Intelligence,” demonstrates how Jesuit education’s humanistic origins, including a heavy emphasis on ethical reflection, are being integrated into curricula that address the most pressing contemporary challenges presented by machine learning. Lawrence Hardy shows how SCS has embraced artificial intelligence as critical subject matter and has begun offering an array of courses and other learning experiences that challenge SCS students to grapple deeply with the moral and ethical implications of these new technologies. 

In “Caring for our Common Home: Advancing Sustainability and Faith-Based Community Development,” I share a few concrete ways that SCS is helping put into practice a distinctly Ignatian urban vision modeled on the ideas of Pope Francis. Through particular efforts by the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning and Master’s in Real Estate, as well as a volunteer program coordinated by SCS staff, the School is supporting environmentally sustainable approaches to meeting global challenges, like the affordable housing crisis. These novel efforts, which include an academic partnership with area churches to support the development of affordable housing on underutilized land as well as mapping the environmental performance of faith-based organizations’ global real estate, bring to life the value of Care for Our Common Home. SCS is innovatively engaging these pressing issues with programs that are flexibly designed to meet the world’s greatest needs. 

There are many more mission-aligned accomplishments in this year’s Dean’s Report to share, but I think you should read them for yourself! I hope this annual publication helps readers better appreciate the intentional care with which the SCS community preserves and animates Georgetown’s Jesuit mission and values.

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SCS Program in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management Addressing Critical Global Need

This week’s post highlights how SCS recently launched an Executive Master’s Program in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management. The need for such a program is demonstrated by the recent wildfires in California. The Georgetown community is encouraged to assist Loyola Marymount University as it responds to this crisis. 

The recent devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area have highlighted a tragic reality that the world will continue to face devastating weather events in the coming years. Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice has directed our community to focus its relief efforts and assistance by supporting Jesuit university colleague Loyola Marymount University during this challenging time. This is a good example of how Georgetown exists in a mutually supportive global network of Jesuit Higher Education. 

The wildfires demonstrate the fragility of a warming planet and our duty to protect and preserve it. This commitment is at the core of “Care for Our Common Home,” the 10th value in The Spirit of Georgetown. Pope Francis has written passionately about the moral and spiritual crisis of environmental degradation, particularly in his landmark document Laudato Si’. The pope’s attention to this issue and the urgency of responding to the environmental crisis is shared by leaders across religious traditions.

The School of Continuing Studies has answered the call to address the crisis of ongoing environmental disasters and their impact on human populations by recently launching a new program, the Executive Master’s in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management. This 12-month program, which features residencies around the world and engagement with leading national and global emergency management organizations, prepares students to address the world’s greatest challenges as a result of climate change, political forces, or economic hardship. The program’s hands-on learning approach reinforces that human solutions are needed to address human problems. A recent SCS e-story, “Emergency Managers Facing ‘Continuous Response’ to Chronic Disasters,” gives even more detail about the real-world human impact of these programs. 

In announcing the program, SCS Dean Kelly Otter emphasized how Georgetown’s mission to be “People for Others” comes through in the program’s design. Professionals educated in this Executive Master’s will end up helping communities around the globe, according to Otter: “Our Students will emerge as leaders who can drive positive change in humanitarian crisis management, equipped with both practical skills and a global perspective.” Such a values-based orientation is consistent with the School’s intentional efforts to integrate Georgetown’s Jesuit values into new program design. 

At a time of immense sadness and suffering over the loss of life in California, it can be difficult to locate evidence for hope. The emergence of the Executive Master’s in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management, and Georgetown’s commitment to addressing the environmental and humanitarian crisis posed by climate change, is one reason for hope. Consistent with the university’s mission, academic programs like this help Georgetown realize its aspiration 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.”

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A Reflective Review of 2024: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

This week’s post is a reflective Examen about 2024. 

Since Mission in Motion began nearly five years ago, the blog has posted a year-end Examen that reflects on the most mission-significant occurrences of the past year. My intention, like a classic Examen practice, is to take stock of the experiences of greatest meaning in our collective life as a university and reflect on how these events have shaped us as members of the SCS community. Such a review brings up moments of both consolation and desolation, inviting each of us to reflect on how we have been transformed by our shared experiences and how we desire to journey into the year ahead. This practice is an opportunity to name gratitude for the multitude of ways that students, faculty, and staff live out Georgetown’s mission and values. A look back at 2024 can be especially helpful as SCS prepares in 2025 to move from its current location at 640 Massachusetts Avenue to its new 111 Massachusetts Avenue home on the Capitol Campus.

2024 featured some standard Mission and Ministry programming that brought together students, faculty, and staff to experience the resources of Georgetown’s Jesuit and multi-religious heritage. A newly designed oversight retreat in March 2024, “Journeying the Good life,” encouraged students to more deeply consider what daily practices help them flourish and live out their deeper purpose in life (see “SCS Retreat Invites Students into Reflection on the Meaning and Practices of the Good Life”).  Staff benefited from a new workshop about managing conflict through effective dialogue skills and greater emotional awareness (see “Becoming Spiritually Grounded Strategic Thinkers and Discerning Leaders”). Some of the learning from this new staff-focused program was incorporated into the inaugural “Strategic Thinking & Leadership Academy” offered by SCS as a non-degree certificate. 

This was a year in which SCS helped contribute to national events. In July, the Association of Jesuit Colleges & Universities (AJCU) held its tri-annual assembly on faith, justice, and reconciliation at Loyola University Chicago. SCS work on Ignatian pedagogical strategy for online course development that resonates with adult learners was featured in a national AJCU commission dedicated to Ignatian Pedagogy (see “AJCU Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation Assembly Brings Together University Colleagues at a Critical Time”). The presidential election provided another opportunity for mission resources to help the university community pause and process a mix of emotions (see “Civic Examen Helps Georgetown Community Reflect on the Emotions of Election Season”). 

2024 was another year when the blog featured the diverse voices of SCS students, faculty, and staff as presented in a range of interviews. Dion Thompson-Davoli, a May 2024 graduate of the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning, reflected on his historic achievement: running down every single street in Washington, D.C. (see “Recent SCS Graduate Accomplishes Major Feat, Running Down Every Street of Washington, D.C., and Discovering More About Himself and the City Along the Way”). Another graduating student, Mary Delaney Fox, won the Spirit of Georgetown award at the SCS Tropaia ceremony and shared about her transformative efforts to promote organ donation (see “2024 SCS Spirit of Georgetown Winner Reflects on Gifts of Life, Family, and Georgetown”). And Haroot Hakopian, SCS assistant dean of student affairs, was highlighted in a Georgetown Faces profile about the many ways he brings a spirit of belonging and inclusion to the work of the summer programs (see “Shining a Storytelling a Spotlight on a Key Member of the SCS Summer Team”). 

More attention was paid on this platform to the evolution of a Capitol Campus and the initial plans for developing a more coherent culture and community among the different units and schools, including SCS, that will bring this campus to life. A dedicated overnight retreat in Fall 2024 for graduate, professional, and law students, with a special focus on students on the Capitol Campus, previewed more efforts to create reflective spaces for this mix of students (see “Fall 2024 Graduate, Law, and Professional Student Retreat Emphasizes Listening to the Voice Within”). Two new spirituality programs for the Capitol Campus brought together students, staff, and faculty to experience this new university reality through the lens of Ignatian spirituality (see “Walking Examen of the Capitol Campus Contributes to Jesuit Heritage Month”) and multi-faith dialogue (see “New Mission and Ministry Program on the Capitol Campus Explores ‘Practicing Pluralism’”). Also, the inaugural Mass of the Holy Spirit for the entire Capitol Campus, which is always celebrated on the Hilltop campus, established a solid foundation for the future of communal worship in this area of the city (see “Capitol Campus Mass of the Holy Spirit Encourages Openness to the New (and Old)”). 

2024 was a momentous year for Georgetown SCS for all of these reasons and more. As we journey into the next year, I invite everyone to take some time to reflect. What are the moments that stand out the most from this year? What experiences brought you the most joy and closest to your truest self? What led to the opposite, draining you of energy and your deeper purpose? How are you being called to renewal and recommitment in the coming year?