Tag: Jesuit Values

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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? 

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New Mission and Ministry Program on the Capitol Campus Explores “Practicing Pluralism”

Rabbi Rachel Gartner, seen here at last year’s SCS Student Retreat, helped co-facilitate a new staff series offered this fall by Mission and Ministry on the Capitol Campus, entitled “Practicing Pluralism”

Recently, Mission and Motion has devoted increased attention to the evolution and growth of Georgetown’s Capitol Campus, a unified anchor of academic programs seeking to leverage the experiential learning opportunities of proximity to the U.S. Capitol. Over the next years, the consolidation of different Georgetown schools and units on the campus will mean increased opportunities for collaboration and coordination. 

To foster more cross-unit community building, Mission and Ministry offered a staff-focused program this fall, entitled “Practicing Pluralism.” Co-facilitated by myself and Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Spiritual Care and Co-Director of the In Your Shoes™ Research and Practice Center, the four-part series was organized to address these questions: 

  • How can I maintain my authenticity as a person and the values that matter most to me while serving others whose viewpoints and perspectives conflict with mine?
  • What does it actually mean to realize a Community in Diversity?
  • How to acknowledge our real differences while striving for meaningful unity that respects our identities?
  • How can I remain centered and focused when I hear things that are very difficult for me to hear, particularly when leading others through hard conversation? 

The series, offered for staff on the Capitol Campus, was an intentional effort to more deeply explore the meanings and applications of being a “Community in Diversity,” one of the core values of The Spirit of Georgetown. It was also presented as an opportunity to build more relationships between staff members from across the campus, such as from the McCourt School of Public Policy and SCS, to name a few 

With a particular emphasis on the Ignatian and Jewish traditions, “Practicing Pluralism” began with the foundational commitments in religious traditions that affirm the case for pluralism. The Jewish tradition of reading texts in pairs and engaging in critical interpretative engagement with Torah affirm the need for pluralistic perspectives and views on the same source material and shared traditions. The Ignatian tradition, animated by the Post-Vatican II spirit of the Catholic Church, has made pluralism a guiding principle of Jesuit institutions. At a 2022 conference, organized by Georgetown’s Berkley Center, Jesuit Superior General Arturo Sosa affirmed the modern Jesuit embrace of pluralism when he said: “I prefer to speak of cultures in the plural in order to highlight one of humanity’s greatest riches: cultural diversity. Cultural diversity offers one of the most wonderful ways to participate in the creation is born in God and his Word.” The series invited participants to consider these foundations but also to assess their own trusted sources for positively engaging with pluralism. 

“Practicing Pluralism” was deliberately designed not as a seminar with a large reading load, but as a space for discussion and practice. All involved were invited to consider what is both energizing and challenging about a commitment to embodying pluralism in our work. Some skills introduced include practicing receptivity by resetting the table and asking questions that follow the meaning. Other practice-oriented suggestions included ways to create safety in situations of conflict by reinstating good intentions (this is a skill emphasized in “Crucial Conversations,” a book that this Mission and Ministry has used to help units in SCS work constructively through difficult conversations). 

This inaugural offering presents much promise for the future of the series’ stated goal to help build community on the Capitol Campus. All of us at Georgetown are encouraged to reflect individually and collectively about the gifts and talents we bring to realizing a true Community in Diversity. 

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Former Georgetown President, Fr. Leo O’Donovan, S.J., Reflects on “Coming Home”

This week’s post reflects on the Sacred Lecture given by Fr. Leo O’Donovan, S.J., during Jesuit Heritage Month. 

A signature event of November’s Jesuit Heritage Month at Georgetown took place this week in the Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart. Organized as a Sacred Lecture (which Mission in Motion has written about before), the event featured former Georgetown President, Fr. Leo O’Donovan, S.J., reflecting at length about “Coming Home.” The intention of the lecture was to promote deeper consideration about the various meanings of the word “home,” which can be opened up with questions like: “Is ‘home’ the place we can always return to? How does the Gospel call us to respond to ‘the homeless’? Is ‘home’ an appropriate image for heaven? And what practical effect does our understanding of home have on how we live our daily lives?” In an hour’s time, Fr. O’Donovan gave the audience plenty to think about in response to these questions. 

The lecture provoked some deeper pondering about how “home” can be understood both as a particular place in time with material reality as well as a more cosmically-significant reference. Fr. O’Donovan had in mind the person of Jesus who was incarnated, in one sense, into the material history of human existence at a particular place in time but also, on the other hand, is a living, present reality according to Christian Theology in the wider cosmos. In this way, God is both very particular and very much totally complete in a way that no finite person, place, or thing can be. This might seem like a very philosophical observation, but I think that the duality of “home” as particular and universal has much relevance for us at Georgetown. 

A panoramic view of Dahlgren Chapel during this week’s Sacred Lecture. Dahlgren is the spiritual home of the University’s Catholic community. 

Recently, Mission and Motion has increased explicit reflection about the meaning of the Capitol Campus’s evolution  in downtown D.C. I found myself making some concrete connections between the various meanings of “home” presented in the Sacred Lecture and our understanding of the Capitol Campus as a growing “home” for Georgetown. Fr. O’Donovan talked about how beauty can be uncovered in the “always new, always surprising.” In so many ways, the Capitol Campus, a project very much still in progess, reflects this potential. So much is new and so much is and will be surprising about this experience. But the Capitol Campus is also already a home to so many: both the existing academic units that inhabit the spaces of the Downtown East neighborhood, but also the student residents who occupy the rooms of the 55H dormitory. This literal home will grow to become more of a home to more students as the Capitol Campus enlarges. 

As we reflect on the meaning of the Georgetown “home,” we are invited to consider the many ways that the University is a home. In the religious sense, Georgetown is a Catholic, Jesuit home for all faiths. In the disciplinary sense, Georgetown is a home for a wide array of humanistic, professional, and graduate programs. In the geographic sense, Georgetown is a global home for many different campuses, institutes, and experiential learning opportunities. And in the urban sense, Georgetown is a “home” within the home of Washington, D.C., a physical reality becoming more and more evident as the Capitol Campus emerges in new buildings and facility renovations. In these ways, there are both particular manifestations of Georgetown as a physical home but also ways that Georgetown is a more universal home in light of our mission. 

Fr. O’ Donovan shared that “home” is at one level the places where we most learn to be ourselves. This process is only realized if we give our time in a “home” to patience and fidelity to our truest selves. As we end this week and prepare for the months ahead, I invite you to consider where you are finding your “home” these days. How might you be called to grow in self-awareness and self-actualization about who you most authentically are in the places you call home?  

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Civic Examen Helps Georgetown Community Reflect on the Emotions of Election Season

This week’s post reflects on the range of emotions caused by election season. In the Ignatian tradition, the examen is an indispensable spiritual resource for navigating and discerning the movements and directions of our feelings. 

As the nation’s political capital, Washington, D.C. is uniquely focused on politics and policy. There are certainly other parts of the country where the daily chatter about the latest in political news is loud but no place comes close to the high volume in D.C. With voters besieged by television, streaming, and internet advertisements, with news coverage dominated by commentary about national, state, and local elections, and with polls continuously offering assessments of candidate races, it seems that conversation about the coming election is everywhere. At Georgetown, a university with a stated commitment to realizing justice and the common good, leveraging its D.C. location to support a range of curricular and co-curricular programs related to politics and policy, discourse, discussion, and activity related to election season is omnipresent. 

While there are many in our community who follow political events as part of their work and study and relish in this, many others find themselves overwhelmed by the frenetic pace–not only of political news but also the saturation of political chatter in seemingly every space of our lives. As Pope Francis reminds not only global Catholics but people of good will around the world, political participation is a virtue and a means to realizing the common good. Even if the frequency and volume at election season can feel like too much, it is important to remember that the democratic process demands active engagement. However fatigued we might become by them (especially as they seemingly start earlier and earlier every cycle), political elections are a healthy and necessary part of exercising our civic responsibilities. 

Just because elections are important, and our participation in them carries moral obligations, does not mean that we should not express our stress and overwhelmed feelings during election season. I have noticed in my work just how much the elections on November 5 are bearing down on members of our community. At times like this, we are reminded that reflection resources are critically important whenever we find ourselves needing to take a critical distance from whatever is pressing in on our daily lives. Thankfully, Georgetown is in a position to offer spaces and resources to its community that encourage us to pause, reflect, discern, and then return back to the pressing actions of our personal and professional activities at election time. 

Last week, as part of a university-wide menu of Election Care programs, I offered “A Civic Examen: Spiritual Grounding in the Ignatian Tradition at Election Time.” Modeled on the adapted examen created by the national organization, Ignatian Solidarity Network, this civic examen brought together the university community desiring a reflective and quiet space to journey together the tumult of feelings at election time. Ignatian spirituality, animated by a practical desire to help busy and civically-engaged people discern the inner movements of God in the midst of engaged lives for the purpose of more loving and mission-energized actions in the world, is well-suited to this kind of reflection. And the Ignatian charism, oriented as it is by a commitment to discerning personal and collective actions that serve the needs of the oppressed and marginalized, has a lot to say about why political activity is necessary. 

I would like to offer a few of the reflective prompts from the civic examen. I hope these open-ended invitations from the Ignatian Solidarity Network to deeper prayer and meditation open up the inner space needed to slow down the loudest and most challenging feelings that you are experiencing on the eve of election time: 

  • Consider the current realities of our country – for what and for whom are you most grateful? 
  • As you reflect on the United States and your participation in it, what energizes you or brings you closer to God? What distracts you or makes you feel farther away from God? 
  • What communities, groups, or aspects of creation in the United States need healing and reconciliation? 
  • Consider one or two of the strongest desires or feelings evoked by your prayer and reflection about the United States and your civic participation in it and bring these directly to God. 
  • Regardless of the outcomes of next week’s elections, how will you promote the common good in your personal actions? 
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Another Election Season Resource: The Ignatian Presupposition

This week’s post explores the Ignatian “presupposition” of good intentions as an additional resource for the challenging debates and disagreements that arise during election season. 

In recent weeks, Mission in Motion has considered the many ways that Georgetown’s mission, values, and spiritual traditions can be animated during this political season. At the root of this encouragement is a recognition that active participation in civic life is a core virtue and part of the University’s ethos as a Jesuit university located in the nation’s capital. Contributing to the common good through public service is a defining feature of Georgetown’s educational legacy. But active participation in civic life also comes with significant costs. 

In this nation and throughout the world there is a persistent challenge in how to maintain and nurture the basic mechanisms of democratic practices and norms. To fully invest in the project of civic democracy is to recognize that active engagement requires some essential virtues related to managing conflict that arises in the course of vigorous debate and disagreement. How to disagree without being disagreeable? How to enter into policy decisions and political choices that do not go the way you wanted them to go without losing faith in the process or faith in fellow human beings? How to locate hope during times of crisis and hopelessness? 

All of these questions require meaningful reflection and some sustained introspection. Thankfully, the Jesuit traditions of education and organizational strategy provide some resources for this task. In particular, St. Ignatius of Loyola’s insistence on a generous interpretation of another’s words and actions, referred to as the “presupposition,” can be an asset for this ongoing project. The “presupposition” derives from Annotation 22 in the Spiritual Exercises, the Ignatian manual of prayer that has been practiced for 500 years: 

“We ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it. Further, if we cannot interpret it favorably one should ask the other how the other means it. If that meaning is wrong, one should correct the person with love: and if that is not enough, one should search out every appropriate means through which, by understanding the statement in a good way, it may be saved.”

A recent article on the website of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities about work happening at Loyola University Chicago on political disagreement using the “presupposition” resource helps make the connection. In “Seeking the Common Good with Ignatian Civil Discourse at Loyola Chicago,” we learn about the “leaps of faith” that are necessary in order to engage in meaningful dialogue that embraces civic virtues, like the right to participate in the public square equally and ensuring that human dignity is preserved in the process. The article is reflective about what needs to change for us if we are to engage in this spirit of “presupposition.” Some suggestions include reframing how we define winning in the civic participation process, how we strive for compromise that charts mutually acceptable possibilities in a pluralistic society, and remembering “how” we engage in the process is often more important than “what” we say.

It would be a mistake to confuse this approach with simply accepting ideas and policies one disagrees with in a passive way without any contestation or challenge. But this reframing of the “presupposition” invites us to reconsider our own humanity and the humanity of others whenever we challenge particular ideas or structural realities in need of reform. The Ignatian tradition can help all of us sustain our continued activity in the public square with hopefully more generosity and mutual understanding. 

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Staff Appreciation Day Builds Community, Highlights the Diverse Talents of Georgetown’s Workforce

This week’s post reflects on Staff Appreciation Day at Georgetown, an occasion to grow in gratitude for how our staff members animate Georgetown’s mission and realize a “Community in Diversity.” 

Mission in Motion has regularly highlighted the many ways that staff members contribute to realizing Georgetown’s mission. Previous interviews on the blog have explored the unique talents of our staff community and how these gifts are brought to bear in support of our shared educational endeavors. I hope that readers come away with a clear sense about how such a complex global organization like Georgetown needs a talented and diverse team of employees in order for the university to flourish. 

This year’s Staff Appreciation Day hosted on the Hilltop Campus (a Capitol Campus event will take place in the spring) was an experience of gratitude for the committed members of our community who make Georgetown run. As the largest private employer in Washington, D.C., Georgetown has an enormous influence on the economic fortunes of this region. I was especially struck this year by the turnout, impressed by the size of our workforce, and amazed about how these essential roles, however diverse in their functions and locations across the university, come together to form a coherent whole. In the language of Georgetown’s mission and values, Staff Appreciation Day really puts a finer point on our being a “Community in Diversity.” 

This rich diversity was evident in so many ways. Different offices and sub-communities among the staff, like the Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), had tables and offered resources and impromptu conversations. The spread of food was nutritious and delicious and helped spark fellowship and camaraderie. There was music and even dancing! Despite the threat of rain, the mood was friendly and celebratory. I walked away with a gift from the raffle (a nice Georgetown mug!) and some lasting memories about connecting with both new and old colleagues. I was delighted by the number of conversations that led to a commitment to set up a meeting to find more time to meet and connect. 

I hope that this annual occasion helps the larger university community grow in awareness and gratitude about how staff members working in front and behind the scenes help animate Georgetown’s mission and values. I also hope that this festive gathering encourages staff members to continue seeking out the spontaneous sparks of affection that are possible when we come together as one.

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Mass of the Holy Spirit on the Hilltop Invites Community to Rediscover Our Shared Purpose as Academic Year Begins

May be an image of 3 people, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and text
This year’s Mass of the Holy Spirit, an annual tradition at Jesuit institutions that dates back five centuries, emphasized the spiritual gifts needed to flourish as an academic community. 

The annual tradition of the Mass of the Holy Spirit, a practice celebrated across the global network of Jesuit institutions since the religious order first founded schools five centuries ago, presents a welcome opportunity to consider the meaning of a Georgetown education. Each year, the Mass presents both the same and new reflections at the dawning of a new academic year. The readings from Scripture all point to the need for greater reliance on the Holy Spirit as a giver of spiritual gifts that we most need to realize our mission. Of special importance at an institution of higher learning are the gifts related to knowledge, inquiry, communication, and discernment. While a traditional Catholic religious ritual, I think emphasizing the universe of spiritual gifts needed to sustain the academic enterprise of Georgetown can resonate with people of all faith traditions and those with no tradition at all. 

The homilist for this year, Fr. Bill Campbell, S.J., the new Superior of Georgetown’s Jesuit Community, focused his reflections on the historical analogy between the founding of the Society of Jesus (or the Jesuits) by college students attending the University of Paris in the 16th Century and our contemporary experience at Georgetown. The similarities in these situations are striking: Both Paris and Washington, D.C., have prominent rivers that their prominent universities abut; both the founding Jesuits and today’s Georgetown students come from homes around the world; and both of these student populations knew how to have a good time after working hard in their courses. 

The urban experience of these educations presented many opportunities for both reverie and reverence, a reminder to us today that our experience at Georgetown is enlivened by our embeddedness in a global capital city. 

But Fr. Campbell’s main point was not just about the urban similarities in this comparison. He ended his reflection about the early Jesuits by noting that we still remember the names of the seven early companions (Faber, Xavier, Laynez, Ignatius, Rodriguez, Salmeron, and Bobadilla) because they wrote history with their lives. By professing in faith their vows to a new religious order, at a time of great challenge and resistance to such a formation, these Jesuits chose to use their higher education in the service of a noble purpose that still benefits the world today. 

The question to us in 2024 at Georgetown: How will we use our Georgetown experience in service of a larger, more noble purpose than our own personal aims or professional goals? To what do we owe our faith in the transformative possibilities of a university education rooted in the Jesuit tradition of academic excellence?  

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Reflecting on Georgetown’s Mission as a Resource for the New Academic Year

This week’s post is a reflection about the nervousness of starting a new academic year. Can we turn our jitters into joys by leaning more into the resources of Georgetown’s mission? 

A new academic year brings with it so much anticipation. These feelings are experienced in both similar and different ways by our students, faculty, and staff.  Many new students are likely asking: Do I belong at Georgetown? Can I effectively balance my academic, professional, and family commitments? What decisions will I make during my time at the University that will have a lasting impact on my future? Our staff members are likely asking: How can I best serve these incoming students? What challenges in the student experience should I be prepared for? How do we handle both the sameness of a new semester and its unpredictability? And our faculty are likely asking: How can I innovate and refine my craft of teaching in a way that registers with my students? How will I engage sensitive discussions that will inevitably arise about the U.S. presidential election and conflicts in the Middle East? What will inspire me when the semester feels long and the work is tiring? 

All of these are questions that I have either heard from others or asked of myself as a student, staff, and faculty member. I think that the recurrence of these kinds of questions is a healthy sign for an academic institution like Georgetown with a lasting mission and set of values that are intended to guide our way. In his article in America Magazine, “The Classroom as Holy Ground,” former Georgetown Vice President for Mission & Ministry, Fr. Kevin O’Brien, S.J., describes the nervousness at the root of this regular experience of working in education: 

“Every semester begins the same way. I walk to the door of the classroom and catch my breath. Like an actor walking on stage, the nervousness of a teacher on the first day—or any day—is natural. It is the same now that I am teaching college as it was when I taught high school before joining the Jesuits. The more I teach, however, the more I realize that it is not just nervousness I feel on the first day. Along with the anxiety is awe, because I am beginning to appreciate how the classroom is holy ground, a place where I can encounter God.” 

In this way, the pre-semester nerves of a new academic year tell us that something deeper, more meaningful than surface-level worry is happening when our attentions turn to the start of fall classes. If we give ourselves the time and space, we can actually convert these anticipatory feelings into some soul-searching and self-discovery that can animate our personal and professional growth at Georgetown. Our jitters can become our joys. I believe that our mission and our Jesuit and multi-faith traditions can inform this journey for all students, faculty, and staff as they begin anew this fall. 

Here are three suggestions arising from Georgetown’s religious heritage that you might consider as a new academic year gets underway:

  1. Pay Attention to Your Feelings: There is something very important about spending a little time each day pausing, slowing down, and growing in awareness of your inner experience of the day’s activities. The Ignatian tradition offers a spiritual practice, the Examen, to help with this need to slow down and process the many emotions that we experience on a daily basis. By regularly attending to the flow and movement of our feelings, we become more able to recognize patterns, both consoling and desolating, and then make better choices about how to flourish and live into our gifts and talents and pursue our mission and purpose in life. Try attending a Digital Daily Meditation (sign up here) if you would like to practice these kinds of pause moments during your semester. 
  1. Engage Your Georgetown Experience with All of Your Senses: The Spirit of Georgetown invites us to educate Whole Persons who become Contemplatives in Action. To realize this ambitious vision of personal formation, we must allow ourselves to enter into every learning experience by using not only our heads but also our hearts and our hands. The transformative potential of a Jesuit education is only possible when we use all of our mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological, and physical faculties in the knowledge process. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, would strongly encourage you to daydream, use your imagination, and savor your sensory experiences. 
  1. Find a Mentor or Guide To Accompany Your Journey: The spiritual life should not be a solitary venture. Instead, the inner journey of the self should be joined with resources in a community, including the steady guidance of trained spiritual teachers and directors. St. Ignatius counseled that retreatants be paired with these trusted guides who could help direct a path to deep inner knowing and experience of the Divine. Today, we might say that any kind of mentor figure, whether a leadership coach, advisor, counselor, chaplain, or spiritual director, can play this role. Regardless of the type, I encourage you to find someone to accompany you and journey alongside your Georgetown experience. 

I hope the coming weeks reveal new possibilities for you. As your fall semester journey begins, whether this is your first semester at Georgetown or your twentieth, I wish you peace on the next steps. 

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Shining a Storytelling Spotlight on a Key Member of the SCS Summer Team

Stylized portrait of Haroot in a Georgetown shirt sitting in a chair
This week’s post is a promotion of the recent Georgetown Faces profile of Haroot Hakopian, SCS assistant dean for student affairs. 

Mission in Motion has regularly reflected on how Ignatian spirituality has a narrative or storytelling style. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and creator of the Spiritual Exercises, believed that entering deeply into prayer and meditation requires the full use of the imagination. In order to do this, one making a retreat or praying in an Ignatian way is invited to imagine the characters in particular Gospel stories and then to insert oneself into those scenes. The perspective of the characters is multi-dimensional as Ignatius considers how different observers—self, others, and God—might be viewing the same event or situation. This movement to consider multiple lenses of perspective is ultimately intended to increase the individual’s depth of gratitude for the dynamic diversity of all created things. Understanding our spiritual condition and where we are being drawn to greater interior freedom, love, and generosity means better understanding the stories we tell about ourselves, each other, and God. 

I am reminded of these imaginative principles of Ignatian spirituality when I appreciate Georgetown Faces, stories about the unsung heroes, beloved figures, and dedicated Hoyas who make Georgetown special. The entire purpose of this series is to tell the story about Georgetown through the stories of the people that make up this large and dynamic institution. We come to better understand what matters to this university by learning through interviews, photographs, and descriptive text what matters to the diverse faculty and staff that animate Georgetown’s mission and values. I think this is a really captivating way to realize one of St. Ignatius’ famous adages: Love is shown more in deeds than in words. 

The most recent Faces profile shines the light on Haroot Hakopian, SCS assistant dean of student affairs, who began his Georgetown career as the academic and curriculum director of the Summer College Immersion Program (SCIP), a deeply mission-aligned SCS program that this platform has reflected about many times. The profile on Haroot focuses on the ways that he brings to life the Spirit of Georgetown in his engagements with a large and diverse group of summer high school students. In particular, Haroot names how the Jesuit value of cura personalis (care of the whole person) is a key ingredient in helping SCIP students, who are first-generation college seekers, navigate their own stories of identity and how these stories relate to the process of college admissions. 

As we approach the end of the summer semester, I invite you to read Haroot’s story and reflect not only on his contribution but that of the entire summer team at SCS. 

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July 31 Feast Day of St. Ignatius Offers Annual Opportunity to Reflect on Meaning of Adult Learning

This week’s post is a promotion of the upcoming feast day of St. Ignatius, which is being celebrated by Georgetown at a 12:10 p.m. ET mass in Dahlgren Quad followed by a reception. Event details are here. 

The Catholic ritual of feast days helps to remember, honor, and celebrate persons who have been important in building up the community of faith. The diversity of holy people honored by feast days is a sign of the Catholic Church’s global reality and invites deeper gratitude about how a long historical tradition has endured and evolved in ways that nurture and encourage people of faith. It is with this appreciation that we approach a sacred milestone for every Jesuit institution in the world: the July 31 feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola. At Georgetown, community members can participate in the feast day by attending a 12:10 p.m. ET mass in Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart followed by a light reception in Dahlgren Quad. It is important to note that this celebration is open to all at the University. 

Mission in Motion regularly reflects not only on the significance of the Ignatian feast day but also on many personae of Ignatius and the various ways that anyone in the Georgetown community, regardless of their religious tradition or relationship to spirituality, can find something inspiring and relevant in the life of this Sixteenth Century figure. At SCS, there are obvious ways that St. Ignatius relates to the unique dynamics of our learning community and our particular mission and values as Georgetown’s vibrant home of professional and continuing education. I would like to highlight one feature of the Ignatian biography, the Jesuit patron as an adult learner, and offer some relevant connections with the learners who comprise the SCS student population today. 

According to the most recent SCS Dean’s Report, SCS students range from 19 to 79 with an average age of 32. This means that most of the more than 9,000 registered degree and non-degree students that call SCS home are adults. Such a demographic reality makes sense given the School’s emphases on employability, workforce development, and the diversity of lifelong learners. Teaching adults requires a specific kind of pedagogical attention that differs in important ways from younger students. The adjustment that SCS faculty make to effectively guide their adult learners can be supported by certain resources in the Ignatian traditions of spirituality and education. Adult learning is one of the less appreciated subjects in Jesuit higher education and I believe that SCS contributes to the national and global Jesuit discussion in important ways. 

First, adults tend to prioritize their own experience as a text for learning. With so much life lived, especially professionally, SCS adult students arrive at their classrooms with much to share with their teachers and fellow students. In this way, faculty are especially encouraged to make space in class activities and learning strategies that give adult learners the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of their considerable life experience. And like St. Ignatius, a significant proportion of SCS students have military-connected experience, which adds even more dimensionality to classroom discussion. 

Second, adults tend to need special permission for reflection. Leading busy lives of work and family obligations means that reflection time, including prayer and meditation, often gets pushed to a backburner. But certain resources in the Ignatian spiritual tradition, like the Examen, give adults an opportunity to spend a short amount of time (five to 10 minutes) pausing and slowing down. The intense practicality of Ignatian spirituality, its ability to be implemented in the course of a busy day, appeals to adults in a special way. I think that adults are especially inclined to welcome class activities and teaching approaches that emphasize slowing down and reflecting as part of the course experience. In leading retreats and in teaching courses, I have found that many adult students express gratitude for the opportunity for silence, a gift not easily afforded to them because of many other commitments. 

Third, contrary to assumptions, adults are not fully formed just because they have lots of life experience, including considerable time in a career. In this way, adult learners benefit greatly from Ignatian discernment and ongoing reflection about how to realize one’s meaning and purpose vocationally. Discerning vocation does not only happen before finding one’s first job placement. Rather, vocational discernment, an ongoing reflection about how my gifts and talents are aligned to my professional choices, is a lifelong practice. Ignatian resources are especially helpful for adults seeking to transform the knowledge, skills, and values of a Georgetown SCS program into an even more meaningful professional journey.

As you can tell, adult learning and the Jesuit traditions that St. Ignatius developed have so much relevance for our SCS community. I hope this feast day presents an opportunity to gratefully enjoy our Ignatian heritage and its enduring meaning for our community.