The AJCU Assembly brought together delegations of faculty, staff, and administration from across the network, including a group from Georgetown.
One of the lasting joys of working for Georgetown is the opportunity to connect with colleagues across a national and global network of Jesuit schools. The U.S. network of colleges and universities, organized by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU), comes together in regular intervals to convene, network, reflect, and commit to action steps as a larger community of practice. It is important that individual schools, however unique and distinctive as single units, grow in awareness about the ways that all Jesuit institutions share a common mission.
This week, Loyola University of Chicago hosted the Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation Assembly and welcomed delegations from the AJCU schools. This conference engages the areas of faith, justice, and reconciliation using the lens of the Jesuits’ Universal Apostolic Preferences, particularly the priority of creating a hope-filled future. A new feature of this year’s assembly, which typically takes place every three years, is that six thematic commissions presented their findings. These commissions, which included “The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm: Responding to Students and their Hungers” on which I served, spent over a year responding to a charge issued by the AJCU.
Each commission created some tangible outputs from their work, including position papers, online resources, and prompts for continuing reflection. Other commissions included Jesuit Prison Education, environmental sustainability and Pope Francis’ Laudato Si, Citizenship & Democracy, Student Spiritual Growth & Mental Health, and Justice & Reconciliation. Each commission was presented at the assembly along with plenary speakers and workshops and posters. The topics covered all reflect the big challenges facing higher education at a perilous moment in history. Declining faith in democratic institutions, a crisis of mental health, the persisting legacy of injustice as a result of enslavement by Jesuit schools and oppression of Indigenous peoples, a warming planet, and a need for a reimagined way of presenting a Jesuit style of teaching all speak to the urgency of this moment.
Imam Yahya Hendi, Director for Muslim Life at Georgetown, leads the Assembly in morning prayer. Each day of the Assembly featured a prayer practice from a different religious tradition.
A key message threaded throughout the week was that there is hope in our colleges and universities because of the depth of resources arising from the Ignatian traditions of education and spirituality. Jesuit institutions are challenged to present a hope-filled future as a realistic vision. Realizing this vision requires sharing Ignatian resources that can counter the temptation to despair. In particular, Ignatian discernment, healthy Ignatian detachment, and Ignatian moral, spiritual, and intellectual imagination all offer opportunities for hope and meaningful change.
At a time of growing social exclusion and rising fear of migrants and refugees, for example, Fr. Marcel Uwineza, S.J., President of Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, invited the AJCU to consider hospitality and love as names for God. In another keynote, Anna Bonta Moreland, a theologian at Villanova University, paired the crises among young adult learners of choice paralysis, a lack of leisure, and the epidemic of loneliness with the Ignatian strategies of discernment, Cura Personalis, and detachment. Young adults, counseled Moreland, can resist the tendency toward self-rejection through practices of self-care that build up the whole person.
There is no doubt that Jesuit higher education is being called upon to meet some of the most pressing challenges of the day. This week’s Assembly proved the strength of this larger network of colleges and universities and indeed offered hope for the future.
The Mission in Motion blog tells the real-time stories of how Georgetown SCS students, faculty, staff, and alumni live out the Jesuit mission and values of the university by putting these values in action in ways that serve justice and the common good. This week, we interview Dion Thompson-Davoli, a May 2024 graduate of the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning program. Dion was recently featured in a Washington Post story, “He Ran on All* 1,838 Streets in D.C. This is What He Saw,” because of an incredible achievement: He ran down every single street in Washington, D.C., (over 1,400 miles worth of running!) in the last two years.
What makes this running adventure so compelling as an example of mission commitment is that Dion allowed himself to reflect deeply about the urban realities of Washington, D.C., as he undertook this arduous project and encountered people and places in such an intense way.
In addition to academic commitment, Dion stood out at SCS for his attention to building community and sharing the University’s mission and values, serving, for example, as the SCS standard bearer during the procession into the 2024 Baccalaureate Mass at Commencement.
In the interview, Dion shares more about his motivations for taking on the multi-year adventure, what he learned, and how his experience shapes his understanding of urban planning, and what, if anything, was spiritually significant about his travels.
This week’s post is an interview with recent SCS graduate Dion Thompson-Davoli, who was featured in the Washington Post for running down every street in Washington, D.C., over the last two years.
Tell us about what led you to take on this project. As a recent Georgetown graduate with so much else happening in your life, why did you embark on this lengthy adventure?
Towards the end, when I was running in neighborhoods five or even 10 miles from my home, the project became a huge time commitment. At first, though, it was just a way for me to stay locked into a fitness routine while juggling a pretty challenging work and school schedule. I would go out to jog as normal and try to mix up what streets I was running down, figuring that diversifying the places I went would make me look forward to it more and keep my mind off the mundanity that makes running a difficult thing to stick with. Once I systematized it and started to think that hitting every street in the city might be an achievable goal, I started to spend more time planning routes and biking or taking the Metro around the city to start and end in different places. So the time commitment really ramped up as I got deeper into it, but at the same time so did my feeling that it was actually possible to finish. Those two things really offset each other to keep me plugging at it.
Dion graduated in May 2024. During his time at Georgetown, Dion achieved academic excellence in the Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning program and contributed to his communities by exemplifying the University’s mission and values.
I imagine being an urban planner influenced how you experienced your journey throughout this diverse city. How did running shape your view of Washington as a city divided by race and class?
It’s an interesting question. I didn’t really go around telling a lot of people about the challenge, but when I did they would frequently say things like, “You’re taking a big risk, running in some of those neighborhoods” or “I hope you don’t get jumped.” Which, you know, was often phrased insensitively, but is kind of fair. People I chatted with in D.C.’s more violent areas told me similar things. It’s a very unequal city, one with a lot of concentrated poverty and violent crime. Most people who have the means to stay out of the less well-off areas tend to do so, and not without reason.
Still, I gained some valuable perspective along the way (and never felt unsafe, fortunately). People in my peer group tend to have a caricatured mental image of poorer neighborhoods that’s totally out of step with the day-to-day life in them. Despite what some teenagers once joked to me once while I was out running off Alabama Avenue, there aren’t just bullets whizzing down the streets. My experience of D.C.’s troubled neighborhoods was mostly of elderly homeowners waving from porches, high fives from kids out playing in front yards, and people just living normal lives in their communities.
I will say, though, that the wealth inequality between neighborhoods in the city is really shocking when you cross between them as often as I did while I was working on this. As a planner, I actually think it’s kind of a good thing that those disparities exist so close together—one problem I see with the way we live in the U.S. today is that most of our communities are really segmented by class and wealthier folks can wall themselves off from even seeing poverty much of the time. Cities like D.C. are some of the few places that’s less true. This isn’t a policy prescription or anything, but I really do think that people who are exposed to one another across those dividing lines are better able to come together and work on common challenges. The continued existence of grinding poverty in a country as blessed with wealth and dynamism as ours shouldshock us.
What do all neighborhoods share in common; and what makes them different?
Besides the socioeconomic issues, I have to say D.C. is lucky to be almost entirely composed of beautiful, diverse neighborhoods. There’s historic reasons for that—including the legacy of not having had much in the way of 20th century heavy manufacturing, and avoiding the worst excesses of the freeway building era—and we also have varied topography, great local architecture, and an overall well-maintained public realm.
We also benefit locally from being at the center of American governance. There’s an embassy everywhere you turn, even in a lot of the neighborhoods. Historic monuments and public art, too. People vie for attention here with ostentatiously beautiful buildings and homes. The National Mall is a jewel, especially for joggers and walkers. All of this stuff comes together to make it a great city to run in.
Dion recorded this incredible feat using a running app that documented all of his running trips throughout the city.
When I look at the map of the miles you logged, I am reminded of St. Ignatius walking nearly 400 miles as part of his pilgrimage journey in Spain. Did you engage in this running as a pilgrimage of sorts? Was there anything spiritual or sacred to you about taking this on as a practice?
I’ve always been inspired by the Ignatian tradition, and jogging certainly brings me closer to God. It’s a time where I really feel embodied, where I consider the experience of being alive in this physical, fragile form. Physicality is one of the great gifts that each of us has been given, no matter how we experience it. Jogging is also very solitary, so I think combining those two things makes it feel very spiritual to me. It’s a great time to do an Examen, or just feel apart from the everyday grind.
This week’s post is a reflection on the Juneteenth holiday and the spiritual resources necessary to sustain the long struggle for freedom and equality. Explore Georgetown’s Juneteenth resources.
Earlier this year, Mission in Motionshared a particularly Ignatian approach to the spiritual work of anti-racism through the 6-week retreat co-facilitated by Georgetown and Holy Trinity Catholic Church entitled “Setting Captives Free: Racism and God’s Liberating Grace.” With next week’s Juneteenth celebrations on the horizon, I would like to offer encouragement to consider how the ongoing struggle for true freedom and justice for all includes a spiritual component. Highlighting this dimension of the work of racial justice is rooted in Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and mission and the Spirit of Georgetown, particularly our expressed values commitment to being a “Community in Diversity.”
In reflecting on the personal meaning of Juneteenth, Georgetown undergraduate Bilquisu Abdullah emphasizes how this occasion helps her connect with the pride of her identity: “For me, this year Juneteenth is about nurturing the joy I find in my Black identity. That means doing the things I enjoy most with my BIPOC peers and recentering the conversation of Black liberation in a positive way.”
Ella Washington, Professor of the Practice in the McDonough School of Business, echoes this affirmation of joy when she says:
“Whether by attending a Juneteenth celebration or supporting a Black-owned business, I look for opportunities to define what the holiday represents to me and Black people across the U.S. I also consider joy to be the greatest form of resistance, especially as a Black woman. Finding opportunities of joy and jubilance with my family and friends is a way to live into the dream of my ancestors and into the spirit of honoring Juneteenth.”
Together, these testimonies reinforce how Juneteenth is a critically important annual milestone to celebrate the joy and jubilation of freedom. But the holiday also presents a spiritual opportunity to reflect on how individuals and social structures continue to challenge this journey to greater freedom.
In a recent article in the Jesuit Higher Education Journal, Marquette University Director of the Faber Center for Ignatian Spirituality Michael Dante reflects on a “A Spiritual Direction Approach Aimed at Creating Belonging.” Dante maintains that meaningful confrontation with racism and white privilege means understanding these dynamics at the “spiritual level.” In order to realize this dimension, Jesuit campuses need to develop spiritual programs that help community members “see and live out of the understanding that all people are created in the image and likeness of God.” Members of the majority community whose perspectives and identities dominate need to get in touch, Dante argues, with how their vision often excludes the experiences of others who are “marginalized, excluded, and invisible.”
Thankfully Ignatian spiritual direction and retreats, like the Setting Captives Free program, offer participants the opportunity to undergo their own “inner journey around blindness” to become more aware and more conscious of why many BIPOC members of the university community do not always feel like they belong. Pope Francis has described these dynamics, referring to racism as a “virus that quickly mutates and, instead of disappearing, goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting.”
While Juneteenth is certainly a time for celebration of the struggle for freedom and equality, it is also an important time at Georgetown to re-commit to this long-haul work of racial justice. Spiritual resources can accompany that journey.
The week’s post explores the Jesuit educational commitment to public service by highlighting the efforts of SCS Faculty Director Carol Blymire to support federal Parkinson’s legislation that recently passed the U.S. Congress.
In recent weeks, Commencement celebrations have highlighted graduating students in the Georgetown community whose achievements and personal stories exemplify the University’s Jesuit values. The annual graduation exercises serve as a helpful moment of reflection for the entire community about the deeper meaning and purpose of a Georgetown education. Faculty play an essential role in this mission-driven endeavor through their valued contributions of teaching, research, and service. The invitation to faculty to use their intellectual and professional gifts in service of the world’s great needs is a distinguishing hallmark of the mission of Jesuit higher education.
This week I would like to highlight the work of Carol Blymire, Faculty Director of the Master’s in Public Relations & Corporate Communications program. Carol has been assisting the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Parkinson’s community for over 20 years, utilizing her professional skills and training to help promote causes dear to the Parkinson’s community. The most recent effort of this kind was legislative advocacy for The National Plan to End Parkinson’s Act, which successfully passed the U.S. Congress in May 2024. The bill advances national efforts to treat, prevent, and cure Parkinson’s through federal research funding.
Carol describes her professional contribution to this monumental achievement in this way:
“Working with advocates to tell their stories to Members of Congress, using persuasive comms skills honed over decades in my career, and calling on folks in my network far and wide to get this across the finish line were some of the most important tools in my PR toolkit for this effort.”
What is noteworthy about this observation is the degree to which it affirms the SCS style of mission-driven professional education for adult learners seeking to positively impact their communities. Professional learners are being educated to gain new skills and perspectives, but also to develop strategies for effectively leveraging their own considerable experience and knowledge in service of new tasks demanded by their industries. Professional skills learned at SCS, through the work of faculty leaders like Carol Blymire, help students achieve what Jesuit Superior General Arturo Sosa calls “public service as a personal commitment.”
“Becoming world citizens would be one of the outcomes to be achieved from studying or working in an educational institution of the Society of Jesus. It is one of the constituting dimensions of the individual, which we seek to foment and support during the educational process. It is also necessary in order to lay down the conditions to be able to listen to the call to provide a public service as a personal commitment. Being called upon to make a direct commitment in politics involves placing oneself at the service of reconciliation and justice, and is both complex and necessary.”
It is heartening that SCS students have faculty models across the programs who put into practice in their own professional areas of work what they share in their classrooms. SCS faculty are helping their students listen to the call to be of greater service in a world that greatly needs them.
The vital importance of environmental sustainability at Georgetown is reflected in the most recent addition to the Spirit of Georgetown, the value of “Care for Our Common Home.” This value emerges from the deep teaching and moral tradition of Catholic Social Thought, articulated in urgent ways by Pope Francis and his teaching documents “Laudato Si” and “Laudato Deum.” Attentiveness to the degradation of the natural environment and taking active steps to remediate this harm is shared across major religious and philosophical traditions as well as among people of good will. The growth of new programs like Earth Commons and a more robust Office of Sustainability also reinforce the University’s deep commitment to healing the Earth.
April is Earth Month and Georgetown’s Office of Sustainability has celebrated it with many activities and programs. SCS participated in Earth Month by organizing a day of service with Anacostia Riverkeeper, a local nonprofit dedicated to “protect and restore the Anacostia River for all who live, work, and play in its watershed, and to advocate for a clean river for all its communities.” This week’s post is an interview with Keenan Courtland, SCS Program Director for the Business & Management degree programs. Keenan took the initiative to help organize this opportunity for the SCS community and reflects on the day and what it means for how SCS lives out its mission and values.
This week’s post is an interview with SCS staff person Keenan Courtland (green shirt), who organized an Earth Day service event with Anacostia Riverkeeper. From left: Emmalie Ferazzi; Shayna Mustee, Program Manager; Keenan Courtland, Program Director; Nikhil Moondra (G’24). (courtesy Anacostia Riverkeeper)
Tell us a bit about the SCS Earth Day activity that you helped organize. What motivated this event?
Having grown up in this region, I’ve maintained an interest in improving the health of our parks and waterways. When I joined the Real Estate program here at SCS, it was a clear connection to want to do something related to improving the spaces that we look to impact with our work. I’ve known the team at Anacostia Riverkeeper (ARK) for several years, and I value their commitment to improving our local waterways and the support they provide to volunteer groups. This event, the Clean Waterways Cleanup, has removed over 141,000 pounds of trash from the Anacostia River Watershed in the past decade, through regular cleanups at strategic locations throughout the city.
This effort affirms “Care for Our Common Home,” one of the core values of the Spirit of Georgetown. How do you understand this particular value and how does it relate to all of our work at SCS?
It is more urgent than ever to act to reverse the adverse effects that pollution has had on our ecosystem. In recent years, D.C.’s rivers have seen a noticeable improvement, which is encouraging when it’s difficult to see how our daily actions can impact the bigger picture. At SCS, we have so many innovative students and faculty leading innovative projects that impact the environment that we often lose sight of how each of us can make an impact with our everyday actions. Our collective efforts to use compostable products, reusable water bottles, and public transit alternatives all demonstrate a shared responsibility towards ensuring a healthy environment for current and future Hoyas.
SCS contributed to “Clean Waterways Cleanup,” an initiative of Anacostia Riverkeeper. (courtesy Anacostia Riverkeeper)
As you reflect on this experience, how would you like to maintain the momentum around environmental sustainability and service at SCS?
There is something invigorating about physically impacting your community and leaving something better than you found it. ARK hosts a variety of clean-up events that can accommodate people with a wide-range of abilities who are interested in environmental sustainability. As for maintaining the momentum around this work, I would like to organize regular, diverse activities that focus on identifying opportunities to impact the greater D.C., Maryland, and Virginia ecosystem. Waiting until next April is not enough for us to harness the collective power we have here at SCS; we must identify ways to impact our community and build regular intention to this vital work. My hope is that by next year we will have students and faculty from across all SCS programs sharing in this exciting, connective work.
Each year, Georgetown SCS honors outstanding students, faculty, staff, and alumni at the annual Tropaia Awards in Gaston Hall. This is a treasured occasion to publicly celebrate the ways that SCS community members bring the Spirit of Georgetown, the Jesuit mission and values that animate this entire learning community, to life in their study and work. The SCS Spirit of Georgetown award is selected by a committee of faculty and staff through a rigorous process of reviewing peer nominations.
This year’s winner is Mary Delaney Fox, a graduating student in the Master’s in Public Relations & Corporate Communications program. Mary’s story is about the transformation that is possible when we translate loss into new life. Born at Georgetown hospital, she would not be here today if someone had not been an organ donor for her mother, who survived a life-threatening condition because of the gift that she received. Profoundly impacted by this experience, she has committed her professional career to Infinite Legacy. A nonprofit organization, Infinite Legacy works with 68 hospitals and eight transplant centers to decrease the number of people waiting for a life-saving transplant, and educates people about the critical importance of registering to be a donor. Mary has used her bilingual skills to educate underserved communities about the importance of staying healthy and leaving a lasting legacy by registering to become an organ donor. Mary’s interview, which falls in Donate Life Month, is an opportunity to share more with the SCS community about the life-saving possibilities of organ donation.
This week’s post is an interview with Mary Delaney Fox, a graduating student who has been transformed by her family’s story and has made her academic and professional career about promoting organ donation.
Tell us a bit about your story. What led you to Georgetown SCS and where is your journey heading a few years after your graduation?
Before I was born, a generous organ donor donated a kidney to my mother which saved my mother’s life and allowed me to exist.
My mother waited eight long years to receive her kidney transplant and my parents prayed every night that my mother’s life be saved. They prayed not only for my mother’s life to be saved, but they also prayed for our donor hero and our donor’s family.
My mother’s kidney transplant restored her health, saved her life, and enabled her to marry the love of her life and have two children. My parents named me Mary, in honor of praying to Mary for eight years and to honor my mother’s journey which was saved by a generous organ donor. My mother’s life-saving surgery took place at Georgetown. Shortly after my mother’s life was saved at Georgetown, I was born at Georgetown.
Since then, Georgetown has always held a special place in my heart, because of the kindness of our organ donor and the talents of the medical team at Georgetown that saved my mother’s life. Years later, the exceptionally talented Georgetown medical team took care of my mom with her pregnancy and then I was later born at Georgetown. I knew in my heart I would always return to Georgetown University, the place that saved my mother’s life and where I was later born and honor the Georgetown name by giving back.
Growing up knowing you are a miracle baby and are alive today thanks to someone else’s generosity and kindness changes you. It absolutely changed the trajectory of my life.
In fact, I have spent the last 15 years of my career in Communications and Community Outreach working at Infinite Legacy and supporting Donate Life America by serving on the Donate Life America Advisory Council and Chair of the Donate Life America Ambassadors Committee helping to educate the Washington, D.C., community on the importance of organ donation and sharing how you can be a hero and save someone’s life one day. Recently, I was awarded two Pinnacle Awards by Donate Life America, the highest industry honors, recognizing my Communications and Community Outreach efforts in promoting organ donation awareness.
At my nonprofit, I work with underserved and multicultural communities, which are the most in need of life-saving organ transplants. As a native Spanish speaker, it is especially important for me to work with Spanish communities on the importance of staying healthy and the significant legacy you can leave by registering to be an organ donor.
I am blessed to work with 200+ Donate Life Ambassadors who all have a direct connection to donation, whether it be they received a second chance at life with a lifesaving organ transplant or with donor families, who in their last act of charity of love, their donor hero gave the gift of life to others. Our Donate Life Ambassadors are instrumental in our mission as we work to promote organ donation awareness and education. I work with miracles every day and it fuels my passion and dedication to this mission-driven and life-saving work.
Receiving my graduate degree at Georgetown has solidified my passion for Public Relations and Communications. I am confident using my power of purpose will continue to help organizations and communities celebrate the gift of connection with passionate storytelling.
What does the Spirit of Georgetown mean to you?
The Spirit of Georgetown means identifying your passion which will lead to your purpose and the gifts you are meant to share with the world.
For me, the Spirit of Georgetown means combining the Georgetown values and incredible knowledge learned from the amazing professors and faculty and leaning into your calling. You were meant to bring greatness to the world and the Spirit of Georgetown empowers you to be your best self and show up with purpose in everything you do.
In this week’s Mission in Motion, Georgetown SCS graduating student Mary Delaney Fox shares about how her family has sustained and inspired her journey at the University.
As you reflect back on your time at SCS, what advice or inspiration would you like to share with the soon-to-be graduates?
I will dedicate my Outstanding Public Relations & Corporate Communications Award and Spirit of Georgetown Award to my mom saying, “I did it Mommy! This award is for you.” It will also be the greatest Father’s Day gift I can give my dad who was instrumental in keeping me going while juggling multiple high priority responsibilities in my graduate school life. I kept my promise to both of my parents. Most importantly, I kept my promise to myself.
My life-changing journey at Georgetown would not have been possible without the incredible support of my family: my brother, Timothy; loving husband, Philip; and my two beautiful children, Laney and Alex. Together as a family, we worked to support mommy going to Georgetown and my young children were immersed in seeing the value of hard work and dedication.
All of my professors have recognized my strength, academic achievements, and professional accomplishments and truly supported me during my Georgetown graduate journey. I have found a supportive family at Georgetown and know my professors and graduate colleagues will be lifelong friends and mentors for life.
Graduating from Georgetown University is the culmination of the hardest and most rewarding experience of my life. I want other graduate students to see that they can do it, too, even when they are going through an incredibly stressful season in their life. Dreams do come true when you believe in yourself—even when the odds seem impossible.
When life gets hard, you are stronger than you think. There is hope, even when all hope feels lost. Anything is possible when you have the courage to follow your dreams. Keep going.
Anything else to share?
Special thank you to all of my professors who have mentored me, supported me, and poured so much knowledge and wisdom into me. My Georgetown University graduate journey has taught me how strong and resilient I am and highlighted the gifts and talents I am meant to use to help make the world a better place.
My story would not exist if it was not for our family’s generous organ donor. A profound thank you to our family’s donor hero. Organ donation does not just save the patient in need, it also saves families and, in my case, changes the course of history and allowed me to be born. I exist today because of the miracle of organ donation. I am a living testament to the miracle of organ donation. Organ donation saves lives! Visit www.registerme.org to learn more about organ donation and register to be a hero and save lives.
In her book, “Coaching with Careers and AI in Mind: Grounding a Hopeful and Resourceful Fit for a Digital World,” Adina Terry offers much needed insights about how to prepare job seekers for success in the turbulent digital age. Some, like the World Economic Forum, refer to our current epoch as the Fourth Industrial Revolution characterized by the advance of cyber-physical systems and artificial intelligence. In so many ways, the world of work has dramatically changed and preparation for these economic realities require a reimagining about how to provide career counseling.
The career counseling literature stresses the need for flexibility, adaptability, and lifelong learning in navigating the demands of work at a time of digital innovation and disruption. Much of what job seekers need is related to the development of technical skills and expertise necessary to fulfill the ever-changing demands of jobs that meet current economic and social needs. But more than technical practices, interior dispositions and capacities to tap into one’s deeper sense of meaning and purpose are necessary to align one’s skills to available work opportunities. In this way, career support needs to be about the “Whole Person,” a values-based commitment made explicit in the Spirit of Georgetown.
Thankfully, SCS offers a set of resources to support students on their professional journeys, including career coaching from a certified career counselor. These curated resources are in addition to program-specific professional preparation and advising that take place within classes and in applied networking opportunities that occur outside of the curriculum. I believe that spiritual accompaniment resources should also be considered part of the overall well of support for career development. Students should consider their pastoral engagements with the suite of Georgetown’s multi-faith chaplains and staff, which occur in individual consultations and group settings like workshops, fellowship, and retreats, an important part of their career preparation.
Engagements with spiritual guides can help students discern their “calling,” which scholars in an article in the journal The Counseling Psychologist entitled, “Purpose and Meaning in Career Development Applications,” describe as “linking what clients do at work to a broader impact” that “can enhance a sense that they are living out a calling and promotes purpose and meaning in their careers.” The key to this understanding of “calling” is that individual flourishing does not take place in isolation but depends on connecting one’s own well-being to the well-being of the entire community. Calling is truly a shared project. Calling is not discovered in a single “aha moment,” but discerned over the longer term. How, you might be asking, can one’s calling in work be discerned over the longer term of a career that needs to withstand the dynamic forces of an economic system in flux?
Discernment is one of the essential practices at the root of the Jesuit tradition of spirituality and leadership. This approach necessitates that the seeker regularly grows in sensory awareness of their inner movements. These habits of self-awareness, cultivated through the Ignatian examen of consciousness, lead the individual to notice their emotions, feelings, affections, desires, attractions, and repulsions. The reflective stage of the examen invites the seeker to make meaning of these inner experiences. Am I being inclined by my inner movements to experience more connection and alignment with my true self and my authentic identity before my ultimate source of meaning (e.g., God, Ultimate Mystery, etc.)? Or am I noticing a troublesome disconnect between what I deeply desire for myself and how I actually feel? This journey of discernment requires regular attention to these subtle interior changes and this process should be supported by a trained spiritual guide.
William Spohn, in his article “The Chosen Path” in America Magazine, presents the transformative possibilities of utilizing an Ignatian framework in making career decisions. Spohn names this potential for transformation through Ignatian spirituality as the opportunity to “discover our personal calling by aligning our gifts and aspirations with what we see as the deepest needs of our world.” We must remember that discerning one’s vocation is a continuous exercise and it is not generic, but a unique journey experienced as a “call to individuals tailored both to their talents and the community’s needs.” By bringing one’s deeper desires into the career discernment process, the individual taps into possibilities for self-growth and community service that extend beyond their technical skills and training. I hope that all involved in the career support ecosystem consider the multidimensional and holistic dimensions of assisting students on the journey to meaningful work.
The Mission in Motion platform is intended to deeply explore each of the values of the Spirit of Georgetown by telling the stories about how these Jesuit principles come to life at SCS. Embodying a Community in Diversity is one of these core values and has received renewed attention in recent years, especially as the COVID pandemic laid bare the underlying realities of racial and economic inequity in our society and around the globe. Taking up a commitment to supporting and sustaining an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming community that honors difference is a moral and religious imperative with roots across traditions and cultures. Georgetown’s embrace of this has uniquely Ignatian dimensions, which was examined in this recent post “Toward a Meaningful Diversity: Ignatian Resources for Realizing an Inclusive Community.”
Georgetown’s Office of Student Equity & Inclusion recently opened a new hub on the Hilltop. You can learn more about it in this video
Three recent initiatives and events at Georgetown demonstrate the University’s ongoing journey toward realizing a more and more inclusive community. I would like to highlight each of these in the context of Georgetown’s mission commitment and values. First, the Office of Student Equity & Inclusion (OSEI) opened a new location on the Hilltop that serves as a hub for diversity, equity, and inclusion work. The space, which will be home to the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access, the Community Scholars Program, the Disability Cultural Center, the LGBTQ Resource Center, and the Women’s Center, is designed in ways that invite greater inclusivity, collaboration, and intersectional connection. Dr. Adanna J. Johnson, associate vice president for student equity and inclusion who leads OSEI, grounded this milestone in mission values: “We need to ensure that Georgetown’s approach is truly integrated across the campus because it is central to the success of all students and is clear in our Jesuit mission and values; this new space is in alignment with that mission!”
Second, this week marked the inaugural cohort of the SCS Certificate in Strategic Thinking & Leadership. This leadership academy stands out for many reasons, but one distinctive element is the thread woven throughout the five modules about the critical importance of leading inclusive organizations. One of the modules, “Succeeding with an Inclusive and Aligned Culture,” taught by Sharon Newport and Jessica Srikantia Field, explicitly takes up the topic of transformational leadership from the standpoint of DEI principles. In my module, “Becoming a Discerning Leader,” I invited students to consider the contribution of Ignatian spirituality to the ideas and practices of inclusive leadership with a particular emphasis on how emotional awareness can help inclusive leaders become more aware of their blind spots. While each of the faculty members offered a unique perspective on the professional development and methodology necessary to realize this more inclusive community, all of the presentators offered insights from their lived career experiences that added up to some valuable shared understandings. This certificate is a promising effort to cultivate leadership skills and habits that are needed in the world.
SCS Diversity, Equity, Belonging, and Inclusion Council along with the Master of Professional Studies in Higher Education Administration recently hosted a panel about challenges to DEI in higher education.
Third, the SCS Diversity, Equity, Belonging, and Inclusion Council (DEBIC) along with the Master of Professional Studies in Higher Education Administration (HEA) program hosted an event, “Journeying Toward More Belonging in Higher Education: Assessing and Responding to DEI Challenges in Culture and Policy.” The influential and insightful panel of experts included two HEA faculty members, Dr. Judith Perez-Caro and Dr. Kimberly Underwood, as well as Rosemary Kilkenny, Georgetown’s Vice President for Institutional Diversity & Equity and Chief Diversity Officer. The hour-long discussion focused on the current challenges to DEI integration in higher education and strategies for addressing these challenges on campuses. One emphasis that stood out from the discussion is that colleges and universities should anchor their DEI commitments in mission.
The journey toward inclusion requires ongoing commitment. It is helpful now and again to pause and grow in awareness about promising efforts that are helping the Georgetown community more fully realize its mission to become a Community in Diversity.
This week’s post considers how strategic thinking and leadership can be enhanced by bringing in the ideas and practices of spirituality. The inaugural SCS “Strategic Thinking & Leadership Academy” will emphasize these connections.
What comes to mind when you hear the term, spiritual leadership? For many, I suspect, this brings up associations with institutionalized religion and following the codes and creeds of a particular tradition’s dogmas and rules. There is a particular association for many people with spirituality as something that is private and potentially not appropriate for discussion in public situations, including the workplace.
Scholars of spirituality tend to make a distinction between “religion” on the one hand and “spirituality” on the other. The former tends to be related to the institutionalized manifestations of a particular tradition’s efforts to be organized formally. The latter tends to be considered the more experiential and interiorized personal phenomena of being in an intentional relationship with God, or the Transcendent Other, through a set of practices. Spirituality scholar Sandra Schneiders, for example, describes spirituality as “the experience of conscious involvement in the project of life integration through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives.”
In recent years, the contribution of spirituality to leadership development has received more and more attention. The interest in this combination is arising not only from spiritually minded practitioners and ministry leaders but directly from the world of secular professional practice. Without going into too much detail, the basis of this interest has to do with what individual spiritual practices, cultivated by employees and members of groups on their own, have to positively offer to the health and vitality of organizations. Spirituality then becomes a well of resources for cultivating strong ethical leadership skills that can help organized groups of all kinds better realize their missions and their bottom lines.
In this spirit, Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies is running an inaugural “Strategic Thinking & Leadership Academy” this March. This comprehensive, intensive 3-day program is designed to “empower aspiring leaders in government, industry, education, and nonprofits with the skills and knowledge needed to make informed decisions, implement strategies, and lead effectively in today’s environment.” What is especially exciting about this academy is that it brings together faculty whose own professional experience and perspectives on strategic thinking and leadership add up to a truly interdisciplinary academic experience, with a particular emphasis on the need to build truly inclusive organizational cultures. I am delighted to offer one of the modules, “Becoming a Discerning Leader,” which will introduce program participants to the critical importance of developing interior practices that help leaders notice their emotions with clarity and acknowledge their blind spots. Discerning Leadership is a purposeful reference to the wealth of resources for professional practitioners that are made available by Jesuit values and the traditions of Ignatian Spirituality.
One such ongoing example of work at SCS that brings together the richness of the ideas and practices of Ignatian Spirituality and the critical work of personal group leadership development is the facilitated use of the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High. Now on its third edition, the book presents a series of practical suggestions for how to skillfully and gracefully navigate conversations that involve opposing opinions, strong emotions, and high stakes. In short, the book argues that such Crucial Conversations, which often end up in seemingly intractable workplace conflicts, can be better managed with more effective dialogue skills, greater emotional awareness, and a willingness to pause during heated situations and calmly assess both the surface-level and underlying interpersonal dynamics. Administrative units at SCS are encouraged to use the book and explore how these practices might shape healthier, more productive, and more mission-driven accomplishment of organizational goals.
There is a false choice in leadership development praxis between purely scientific or purely spiritual strategies. Using the lens of Ignatian Spirituality to more richly explore the potential connections within Crucial Conversations for the work of SCS faculty and staff leaders brings together these worldviews. The book need not be experienced as an entirely secular framework, even if the authors are not explicit about the contributions of spirituality to the discussion. Chapter 5, “Master My Stories: How to Stay in Dialogue When You’re Angry, Scared, or Hurt,” for example, presents some compelling opportunities for integration with the Ignatian tradition.
At one point, the authors emphasize the importance of emotional literacy and awareness: “When you take the time to precisely articulate what you’re feeling, you begin to put a little bit of daylight between you and the emotion. This distance lets you move from being hostage to the emotion to being an observer of it” (87). This idea relates well to the Ignatian Examen, a daily practice that encourages self-awareness and discovery by reverentially reviewing one’s emotional experiences, both those that are consoling and those that are desolating, for signs of how one is being called to more loving and generous leadership and service. Noticing and naming the emotions we experience is one step toward healthy indifference and detachment from harmful emotions that get in the way of better discerned action.
Another Ignatian connection in the book is the emphasis on practicality in terms of how actions of leaders cannot depend on excessive self-reflection: “Why would you stop and retrace your Path to Action in the first place? Certainly, if you’re constantly stopping what you’re doing and looking for your underlying motive and thoughts, you won’t even be able to put on your shoes without thinking about it for who knows how long. You’ll die of analysis paralysis” (85). This point relates directly to the Jesuit value of Contemplation in Action, which stresses the pragmatics of daily life and seeks to cultivate habits of discernment that can be exercised in moments that call for decisive action. A retreat removed from daily life is simply not possible on a daily basis so discerning leaders need to practice the habits of healthy discernment in order to make decisions within reasonable time frames.
There are many more instances in the book in which a spiritual lens might deepen the conversation about how to become a strategic thinker and discerning leader who is capable and skilled during a Crucial Conversation. This exercise in connecting these seemingly secular ideas with the roots and heritage of our Jesuit values is another manifestation of the unique ways that Georgetown SCS inspirits the University’s mission in how it delivers applied professional education to a continuum of learners at various places in their careers.
This week’s post encourages SCS community members to ride the new Capitol Campus Loop provided by the Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle.
The French Jesuit and social theorist Michel de Certeau was particularly interested in reclaiming the poetics of urban life by embracing the everyday practices of the city that help shape a community of people in a physical place. His concern was that top-down planning efforts and the highly abstract architectural forms of the city would work against the textures of spontaneous human interactions that make up the organic city. In his essay “Walking in the City,” Certeau encourages the everyday practices of urban life like walking: “The ordinary practitioners of the city live ‘down below,’ below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walk – an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it. These practitioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen.”
This somewhat mystical and very poetic understanding of the city and its practices can inspire our own encounter with the city. As an urban planner, I highly value the way that I can get to know places and people in the city by walking the city and making time and space for unplanned interactions and observations. Too often, our lives are driven by the demands of rushing to our next meeting. But it is necessary, once in a while, to simply relish in the humanity that makes up an urban community. It is with this theoretical understanding in mind that I encourage everyone at SCS to ride the bus!
Georgetown’s growing physical presence in Washington, D.C., principally at the developing Capitol Campus, is connected via a set of highly dependable Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle (GUTS) bus routes. These routes were already critically important to helping members of the University community access campus locations efficiently and safely. And now that the Capitol Campus is becoming more and more of a reality, the GUTS network of routes will become even more important. Georgetown recently announced a special dedicated Capitol Campus Loop, which connects rides with local neighborhoods and major points of interest, including Union Station and Trader Joe’s.
This expanding University-wide network of access and connection to the various geographic homes of Georgetown in the city is about more than transportation logistics. As a regular GUTS commuter during my time at SCS, I can share that this experience of riding the bus over the years has led to actual sustained friendships and new insights about the city and the University. Every time I ride the GUTS bus between the Hilltop Campus and the SCS Campus, I learn something new about either the city or the University. In my rides across town, I’ve learned about centers and offices at Georgetown I’m not aware of where bus riders are commuting to. I’ve also observed the physical and human city during these voyages, enjoying the beautiful vistas and views of the skyline and the Potomac River but also growing in greater awareness of the reality of urban challenges, like the current crisis of homelessness and a considerable population of unhoused people present along these routes. Each trip is a new learning experience, and I look forward to what I might encounter and experience such that it might inform my own actions in the city.
Pope Francis, shown here when he was an archbishop riding public transportation in Argentina, describes the environmental and social benefits of riding the bus.
In his landmark environmental sustainability teaching encyclical, Laudato Si, Pope Francis describes the “ecology of daily life,” which very much resonates with Certeau’s understanding of the everyday practices of the city. Pope Francis describes the need for quality public transportation that makes integration easier between the different parts of the city. Riding the bus is an environmentally sustainable practice that reduces car trips and even contributes to greater kinship and solidarity among people. Having ridden the buses of Buenos Aires as an archbishop, Pope Francis knows from direct experience that encountering humanity in rich ways is possible on the bus.
I hope that members of the SCS community will consider riding the GUTS network during their time at the University. This is more than a transport system as I believe it is a vital way to grow deeper connections between the various places and people of our campus communities.
