This week’s post shines a spotlight on two events of hospitality this week at SCS: the prospective student open house and a Valentine’s Day rose giveaway sponsored by GradGov.
This week, the SCS community opened its doors for the first in-person prospective student open house in more than three years. The well-attended event featured dedicated program staff and faculty sharing insights about SCS with everyone who made their way to the downtown campus. With festive music and a generous spread of food, visitors experienced first-hand the hospitality and mission commitment of the SCS community.
A recent Mission in Motion post explored the School’s biennial marketing campaign, themed this year as “Be continued.” As I walked around the open house, I noticed how prospective SCS students manifested the energy of the campaign. As they waited in line to talk to a particular faculty member or made spontaneous conversation over food with fellow prospects, these visitors to the SCS campus displayed an eagerness and an enthusiasm about their professional futures. And this future-directed energy from potential students was received warmly by friendly and informative staff and faculty. Conversations were more than interactions that transacted information. I noticed meaningful conversation occurring on multiple floors of the building.
The culture of an organization is reflected in its people. In this way, the community of SCS faculty and staff are the living embodiment of the Spirit of Georgetown. A student’s enriching experience of meaning, belonging, and purpose at SCS arises from the tremendous efforts of the faculty and staff community working in a coordinated way to deliver on the promise of a Georgetown education. The scale of this enterprise and the many parts involved is not always visible to students. But the open house revealed how the SCS staff and faculty community work together to make the mission come alive.
This poetic prayer, “Falling in Love,” is a fitting message for the care and support that students, faculty, and staff extend to one another as part of their shared work of teaching and learning.
Later in the day, the SCS community again put the mission into motion. SCS GradGov members, the elected students who represent the School on the university-wide graduate student governance body, passed out free roses in the late afternoon preceding evening classes. Everyone was invited to take some flowers as a token of appreciation. I even noticed that the students purposefully placed boxes of roses in staff office areas with a note of: Thank you for your work! I observed how fellow staff members embraced this gesture of gratitude on Valentine’s Day. The dynamic of mutuality required in a well-functioning structure of relationships between students, staff, and faculty points to the deeper meaning and purpose of a Georgetown education.
This GradGov initiative coupled with the open house on Valentine’s Day brought to mind the poetic prayer, “Falling in Love.” Often attributed to former Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe, this prayer reflects the ways that having a durable and abiding purpose in life and work, anchored in a dynamic relationship with God or whatever one names as the transcendent Other or mysterious ultimate in their life, is the motivation that sustains everything. I like to think that events taking place on this Valentine’s Day reveal the loving commitment and deeper sense of purpose that students, faculty, and staff bring to the shared endeavor of professional and continuing education at Georgetown SCS.
In this week’s Mission in Motion, Rabbi Rachel Gartner, SCS Senior Advisor for Pastoral Care, reflects on a recent retreat with students from Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative (PJI) Paralegal Program seen here at their recent graduation.
It’s just over a week since I had the distinct honor of facilitating SCS’s Prisons and Justice Initiative’s (PJI) Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizen Affairs (MORCA) Paralegal Fellows’ Retreat. Tonight, I’m sitting near my hanukkiah* and, as I write, I find myself reflecting on Hanukkah and the retreat in light of one another. I can honestly say that the remarkable fellows on that retreat taught me things that will deepen the way I experience Hanukkah – and so many other things – for the rest of my life.
I am so grateful.
Every night of Hanukkah, many Jewish households light the hanukkiah and place it in our windows, as the tradition requires. On the windowsill, the lights act as:
symbols of resilience
offerings of light
statements of both faith and pride
a testament to the miracle of Hanukkah
The miracle of Hanukkah is in part a miracle of triumph and redemption in the face of great odds. Hanukkah recalls a time when powerful rulers sought to permanently suppress Jewish traditions, teachings, and practices; to humiliate and frighten Jews into abandoning our sense of peoplehood; and to “choose” full-on assimilation. In sum, to extinguish our light.
But Hanukkah reminds us – with God’s help, the Jewish people didn’t let that happen.
The word “hanukkah” literally means “to dedicate.” On the first Hanukkah, Jews rededicated our holy Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by a tyrannical ruling class. Every Hanukkah since, Jews are meant to rededicate ourselves to bringing about a future time when the entire world is redeemed from tyrants and oppression. We recommit to the active pursuit of a time when peace, justice, righteousness, and love will reign supreme. We rededicate ourselves to bringing about a time when every single human being is free, secure, resourced, and cherished just as they are, with their full identity and full dignity fully intact. Every Hanukkah we rededicate ourselves to the holy task of bringing about a fully perfected world.
Which brings me to the retreat.
Among the many spiritual gifts I received from the fellows that day (and days since) was the reminder of the importance of not only pursuing a perfected world but of also affirming all the perfect moments in life along the way.
One fellow shared that their confidence in God’s providence came from those moments when they were able to access deep calm amidst what they described as their life’s nearly unbearably chaotic turbulence. Another named as holy the many times in life that they’d discovered patches of solid ground amidst violently shifting sands.
I know I can be so focused on getting to the promised times that I am often unable to see the moments of redemption along the way, to hear the little harmonies amidst life’s cacophony, to
see the many sparks of light amidst life’s darker times.
This Hanukkah, thanks to the fellows, I’ll see things a bit differently. This year, I’ll be rededicating myself to staying open and attuned to catching the holiness that life offers up all around us and within us every day; the holiness of resilience, of calm, of fortitude, of insight, of transformation, of growth, and of contribution. This year, I aspire to cherish the small but significant moments of redemption, even amidst today’s serious social, emotional, political, and environmental challenges. Even as we seek to transform the world into the one we wish to live in.
May the lights of the season guide our hearts and hands towards actualizing that world, bimheriah b’yammeinu – speedily in our days.
And please, consider joining us on a future retreat. You’ll be amazed at how much warmth and light a little rest and reconnection can bring!
*For the record: Menorah simply means candelabra! The eight-candled (plus one) menorah we use for Hanukkah is called a hanukkiah. If you really want to show all you know, call it a “hanukkiah,” but it’s not a problem in the least to call it a menorah! Either works.
This week’s Mission in Motion savors the scenes from the SCS student and faculty holiday party that attracted hundreds to the 640 Massachusetts Avenue campus.
Psalm of Praise
Sing for joy in summer
When earth is bright and green.
Sing with fun in winter
When snow is velveteen.
In spring sing out with gusto
For the life to soon unfold—
And sing with zest in autumn
For the woodlands colored gold.
Joan Stephen
In another first in a year of firsts since 2019, SCS hosted a student and faculty holiday party this week in the atrium of the 640 Massachusetts Avenue campus. With hundreds of revelers and a bountiful spread of food, drink, and good cheer, the party was a joyous gathering that felt even more so because of the absence of such an event in over three years. The occasion of merriment would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of the SCS Events, Communications, and Operations teams.
Joan Stephen’s “Psalm of Praise” comes to my mind and heart as I reflect on this experience. Every season of the year holds for us some special gifts. This wintertime, we anticipate closing the books on another busy fall semester just in time for a meaningful break for the Christmas and New Year holidays. Stephen invites us to “sing with fun in winter.” While I did not detect any audible singing in the atrium, I did observe the sparks of spontaneously arising affection, warmth, and excitement as students ran into faculty members they did not expect to see and staff members celebrated with one another as another successful semester comes to a close.
The spirit of praise was detectable throughout the space. A gratitude wall invited guests to name the notable gifts they wanted to publicly appreciate about their experience at Georgetown. A festive card-making station offered a welcome opportunity to amplify the spirit of holiday in a colorful and creative way. And melodious tunes and delicious small plates added to the chorus of conversation and laughter. It felt to me, one week after the SCS faculty and staff retreat, like another important milestone on the road to journeying back to each other as a community bonded together by the Georgetown journey.
The holiday party invites deeper reflection about how to enter into the joys of the season. As you approach the coming holiday break, how will you take time for rest, renewal, and gratitude?
Holidays, and especially this one, can be difficult for people. And there is a need to be gracious and understanding about the burdens that many carry in their silence at a time of year that brings to the surface much sadness and despair. But at the same time, this season can be a time to welcome the gifts of ourselves and each other. The celebrations of this season can become meaningful occasions to savor the goodness that we encounter in the people around us. The joy of this season also resides in the expectation of the coming rest.
In the spirit of the holiday break, I invite you to rest and reflect during your brief but welcome time away from study and work. I invite you to consider: How are you going to find time in the next few weeks to pause and reflect on what in your life is worthy of your greater praise? How will you mark the occasion of rest from work and school in a way that helps you savor this season? What is stirring in you as a possible course correction or transformation in your inner life or external actions as we approach the new year?
As we near the Thanksgiving holiday, it feels appropriate to reflect on the place of gratitude in our individual lives and in our collective experience at Georgetown SCS. The Jesuit tradition of spirituality, embodied in the practice of the examen, makes gratitude the centerpiece of regular reflection and prayer. Growing in awareness of the gifts of our daily lives, from small details to the major sources of thanksgiving, can shape us into ever more generous, more discerning, and more large-hearted people. To enter into reflection on our lives in a spirit of gratitude makes us more available to become the authentic people we are called to be. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, believed that gratitude was the proper response to our encounter with the divine.
It is important to note that naming gratitude does not always come easy. And it is ok to acknowledge that today, this week, or this semester has not surfaced much gratitude in our reflective awareness. It is not advised to force an expression of gratitude when it does not feel true to who we are or the reality of the world around us. If you’re in a place like this, you might need to pursue support, help, and guidance from friends, mentors, and trusted guides who can accompany you in your journey and help locate the blockages to experiencing gratitude. But we must also acknowledge that the social reality around us also gets in the way of freely naming a sense of our gifts. The endless episodes of senseless violence, including the recent shooting at the University of Virginia, and the reality of injustice and oppression make us more aware of our responsibility to build up and restore the common good. But this awareness of suffering and injustice might also make us feel the opposite of gratitude.
In this week’s Mission in Motion, we pause in advance of the Thanksgiving holiday to savor gratitude in our individual lives and in our collective experience of Georgetown SCS. Several events this week at SCS, including a Thanksgiving potluck and an Instagram Live for Jesuit Heritage Month with alumna Karim Trueblood, were sources of gratitude.
This week at SCS has surfaced much gratitude. Students and faculty are hard at work in their courses, nearing the end of a full semester. This community is also finding ways to build community and convene outside the classroom. This past week, SCS staff helped put together a series of dynamic public events, including a fall lecture series by Project Management, an International Student Series about the H-1B hosted by Hoya Peers to Peers, a Community Listening Circle for faculty and staff hosted by the Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion Council (DEBIC), an Instagram Live session for Jesuit Heritage Month with alumna Karim Trueblood, and a Rock Creek Hike hosted by the English Language Center (ELC). The ELC introduced its students to the American rituals of Thanksgiving by offering a panel discussion of SCS colleagues reflecting on their own holiday traditions. For faculty and staff, ELC also organized a Thanksgiving-themed potluck lunch.
This is just a small list of the many ways that SCS students, faculty, staff, and alumni are working to construct a more just and generous society and world and realizing the Spirit of Georgetown’s commitment to becoming People for Others. However you experience next week’s Thanksgiving, I hope that you can find some quiet time to savor the gifts of your life.
In recent years, SCS has deepened and expanded the presence and integration of Mission and Ministry in the life of the community. Mission in Motion has highlighted these efforts, including dedicated retreats, pedagogical and faculty support, communications, and course offerings. Bringing the Spirit of Georgetown to life has included opportunities for service-learning, community and global engagement in Washington, D.C., and beyond, and advocacy for justice and the common good. All of this work is presented in an inclusive and invitational way, presenting Jesuit values in a holistic and context-tailored manner that sparks inspiration and reflection for our diverse community.
SCS is growing this commitment to the Spirit of Georgetown with the appointment of Rabbi Rachel Gartner as Senior Advisor of Spiritual Care. Rabbi Rachel arrives at SCS having served for more than a decade as Rabbi and Director of Jewish Life at Georgetown. Rabbi Rachel brings many professional gifts with her to the work of animating the SCS community with mission and values. I am so excited to work alongside Rabbi Rachel because I have witnessed firsthand her skillfulness in interfaith engagement, her resourcefulness for spiritual accompaniment, and her creativity in meeting the pastoral care needs of a diverse constituency. I could go on!
I encourage you to watch this introductory video by Rabbi Rachel that now lives on the SCS YouTube page. As you watch, I encourage you to pay attention to three important points articulated by Rabbi Rachel:
The work of spiritual care is to deepen, develop, and diversity SCS Mission and Ministry offerings so as to enhance the lives, learning, and leadership of ever-growing circles of the SCS community;
Interfaith engagement is so powerful because different traditions can provide new angles, food for further thought, and sometimes deeper illumination about the places where traditions connect without having to connect in every place; and
The Ignatian, Jesuit tradition of education, spirituality, and mission presents resonances and entry points for other religious, non-religious, and spiritual traditions.
This is such an important message for a diverse community like SCS. Mission lacks meaning unless it comes alive, and it only does so when deeper connections are made within the context of one’s lived experience. Rabbi Rachel offers a fresh perspective on how to do this work by bringing her considerable experience in pastoral care and interfaith engagement to bear on the opportunities and challenges facing our community. In a turn toward the practical, Rabbi Rachel’s introductory video ends with a “how” of this work: an invitation to Journey together on the path of mutual discovery through inclusive retreats and informative and inspiring communications.
This week’s post highlights an event hosted at SCS and convened by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life: “What Is the Good Life Now? Work, Relationships, Faith, and Wholeness Today.” You can watch a recording of the event and reflect on the deep questions that were considered. Photo courtesy of the Initiative’s website.
Readers of this SCS Mission in Motion blog should be well aware that Georgetown does not shy away from asking big questions about the meaning of life. What distinguishes Georgetown’s approach is how these big questions are asked in a way that is not only about the conceptual and theoretical dimensions. Georgetown strives to encourage “the meaning of life” discussion and deliberation in a manner that stimulates practical responses and positive changes in the way that we individually and collectively live together in society. At SCS, our mission commitment is directly related to the transformation of professional and continuing education students who arrive at various points in the life cycle of their careers.
In light of the significant flux and social, economic, political, cultural, and religious disruptions of the last few years, there seem to be fewer bigger questions than this: “What is the good life now?” And this question was asked this week when SCS hosted Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life for its first in-person event at 640 Massachusetts Avenue in over three years. SCS has gratefully partnered with the Initiative in the past on these special events, which are offered as part of Salt and Light Gatherings for young faith-motivated leaders in the Washington, D.C., area who desire to explore the links between faith, moral traditions (especially the resources from Catholic social thought), and their own lives and work. The event took place in three phases: a welcoming happy hour, a panel discussion, and a reception that followed building on the conversation.
The event brought together young professionals in the D.C. area at the SCS Campus. Conversation and community-building preceded and followed the panel conversation.
I found the framing questions for the event to be thought-provoking and useful for generating deeper personal and communal reflection, so I want to share them here:
What does “the good life” look like for young leaders in Washington and the United States today? What contributes to the good life? What threatens it?
How can young people find meaning, participation, balance, and wholeness while dealing with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges, political polarization, debates over human life and dignity, and economic, environmental, and racial justice issues?
How can faith and Catholic social thought inform and guide our choices, actions, and how we live our lives?
In the SCS auditorium as well as a live-streamed broadcast, panelists pondered philosophy, religion, politics, economics, technology, and social media.
The talented panel brought together faith-motivated leaders with different perspectives and life experience, including a Notre Dame philosophy professor, a Boston College psychology professor, an author and policy advocacy director, and a young professional who has worked on immigration issues. You can watch a recording and relive the lively discussion. You can also consult a helpful list of additional resources prepared for the event.
I listened in on the conversation and noted a creative tension as a theme: the need for balance between working out one’s own philosophy of life and needing to rely on the wisdom, support, care, and teachings of others in developing this personal vision. To respect a philosophical heritage that is over 2,000 years old does not mean that one’s definition of living a good life has to conform precisely to someone else’s. Instead, determining the meaning of a good life has to take into account all of the unique factors of one’s lived experience and social influences. It is not wise nor possible to enforce a single definition of what living the good life means. But we can benefit from sustained reflection on the meaning of the exemplar actions, teachings, writings, and thinking of the wisdom that we have inherited through the ages.
So much of the conversation came back to the fundamental need to develop healthy habits of interiority and discernment. Readers of the blog will recognize these as consistent themes expressed about the way to live out the Spirit of Georgetown. No one else can claim your own interior experience. Cultivating a deep inner life, regardless of the “what” that you profess to believe about the biggest, most ultimate questions, is a solid starting point for journeying in the direction of your good life.
This week, Mission in Motion considers contemplation as a response to an overly utilitarian approach to time. The upcoming graduate and professional retreat offers an opportunity for living out the Spirit of Georgetown value of “contemplation in action.”
The upcoming graduate and professional student retreat, “Rest, Recharge, Renew,” is being offered as an opportunity for busy students to take some time away from the pressures of work and school and enjoy each other’s company in a beautiful, natural setting. The motivation for organizing the retreat is as simple as the tagline: rest, recharge, and renew. Graduate and professional students are accustomed to daily and weekly routines that require rigorous time management in order to fulfill their obligations as students balancing lives outside of the classroom. Making the time and space for this kind of structured experience of relaxation in the company of other students is well worth the effort. Making space for retreat, a temporary interruption and dislocation from daily routines, is a healthy and fulfilling use of time.
The retreat has me reflecting on the nature of time and how graduate and professional students relate to time. If we take seriously the Spirit of Georgetown value of “contemplation in action,” which is the value that motivates retreat programs across the University, how do we make sense of the tension between these ideas? How does the seeming paradox of “contemplation” and “action” relate to the life of a graduate student at Georgetown? What from the many spiritual traditions represented at Georgetown can help us answer these fundamental questions?
Despite the disciplinary diversity of graduate and professional programs, I think a common trait of these students is the limited amount of time for activities that might be considered non-essential. The weekly calendar quickly fills up when school, work, home, and social activities are added. Economists tend to make a distinction between “leisure” and “work,” but this simple distinction does not seem to capture well the in-between range of activities. Perhaps unlike traditional residential undergraduate students taking four years to earn a degree, graduate students have a more utilitarian relationship to time. The stakes seem to be higher for older adult students with more responsibilities and the discernments about how to use their non-essential time for activity require lots of negotiation and planning. As someone with a full family and work schedule, I can appreciate these tensions.
But even busy adults who have important tasks to accomplish everyday can develop an unhealthy relationship to time. The theater critic Walter Kerr in the book The Decline of Pleasure captures the tendency to equate virtue with constant activity: “Only useful time is valuable, meaningful, moral. Activity that is not clearly, concretely useful to oneself or others is worthless, meaningless, immoral.” This utilitarian interpretation of the meaning of how we use our time has some negative consequences. For the purpose of this reflection, I think a concerning outcome of this mentality is that if time becomes a possession that we acquire, then it becomes more difficult to pause and make meaning of our lives in the midst of our activity. The questions that should be orienting our work and activity can be pushed aside if we don’t intentionally make time to ask our core questions: Who am I as a person? What matters to me? What is the “why” of my life? And what path do I need to travel in order to realize my deeper purpose?
This is where the value of contemplation comes in and can relate harmoniously with the life of action. It is important to note that there is not a single, universal way of naming and understanding a vast concept like “contemplation.” Various philosophical, religious, spiritual, and humanistic traditions have different understandings of this term and its implication for practices. I’ll be relying on an invitational and inclusive understanding of contemplation taken from the Jesuit tradition of education and spirituality. The Jesuit Walter Burghardt describes contemplation as a “long loving look at the real.” This is a way of considering contemplation and the practices it inspires as “experiential awareness of reality” and a “way of entering into communion with reality.” But what do the pieces of this definition mean for graduate and professional students? Let’s take each of these components.
Real: This is the stuff of your life that cannot be reduced to abstract concepts. The real is people, things, nature, objects, etc. Reality is living and pulsing, concrete and singular. Look: This is not analysis or interpretation, but communion with the stuff of our reality by noticing and engaging reality with all of our senses. For Burghardt, to look is to feel and to experience in our senses the fact of our whole person gazing at reality. To contemplate is to be aware that we are physical bodies in a world of other bodies. Long: This is not a recipe for length of time in contemplation, but an invitation to be unhurried about it. Burghardt describes the long nature of contemplation as rest: “[T]o rest in the real, not lifelessly or languidly, not sluggishly or inertly.” These long looks can happen on a walk, on a train ride to work, in the office or classroom, picking up our kids from school, etc. The point is that our contemplative gazing is “whole person enraptured” with full senses. And finally, loving: Contemplation is not always delightful or comforting and sometimes it surfaces the wounds and hurts of our lives. By lovingly entering into contemplation, we make it more likely that our response will be more generous and more compassionate toward others. Contemplation is not actually individualistic or indulgent navel gazing.
There is no monolithic way to translate this understanding of contemplation into meaningful practices. The “how” of contemplation depends on the individual person and their full context of life. Burghardt’s suggestions for how to do this are reflected in the upcoming graduate and professional retreat. He recommends that we can develop the capacity for long, loving looks at the real by 1) interrupting our ordinary patterns of life (by going on retreat!); 2) developing a feeling for festivity; 3) building habits of play and wonder; 4) learning not to expect profit from our contemplation or possession of our objects of delight; and 5) finding guides and mentors to accompany us along the way.
My hope is that the invitation to bring together “contemplation” and “action” sparks something for you. Find a retreat, spiritual companion, leadership coach, affirming community of peers, etc. And next time you feel yourself judging yourself for any empty pockets on your schedule, I invite you to reconsider your relationship with time. We can slow life down even in a few free moments with a long, loving look at the real.
This post relies on Walter Burghardt’s article, “Contemplation: A Long Loving Look at the Real,” as reproduced in An Ignatian Spirituality Reader, edited by George Traub (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008).
This week’s post is about a new welcome video shared with SCS students that invites reflection and meaning-making during the early stages of a new semester. You can watch the video and then explore the Spirit of Georgetown.
What does it feel like to begin something new? When you start a new experience for the first time, what are you paying attention to? What grabs your awareness? How do you transition from the beginning to the next stages of a new thing?
These are the kinds of questions that all students at SCS ask when a new semester starts. Whether you’re a continuing student steadily or quickly making progress in your degree or non-degree program, or just starting out at the School, every student grapples with big questions in the first few days and weeks of a new semester. So often, in my experience, new students are navigating a mix of emotions related to a range of the student experience. There might be nerves about logistics and work-life balance, such as: How can I make this academic program fit into my daily life? Others might be uncertain about their course selections and eager to better understand what their faculty members are like. And other concerns might be about the social aspect of the learning experience: Will I fit in here? Do I belong?
One of my favorite lines from the author T.S. Eliot is that “We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.” The lesson that we can take from Eliot, I believe, is that a new semester is as good a time as any to consider the deeper meaning of our time at Georgetown. The crunch of early semester business might not seem like an opportune time for deeper reflection, but I believe that the first weeks of a new experience provide the best opportunity to get in touch with the bigger picture of our lives as we navigate the details of the day-to-day.
Luckily at Georgetown, we have a set of resources and tools for students to do the work of meaning-making about their learning experiences. The Spirit of Georgetown, 10 values distilled from five centuries of Jesuit history and educational innovation, facilitate this kind of deeper exploration.
So as the dust settles on the first few weeks of the semester, the SCS Mission and Ministry team offers a new welcome message to help students consider the deeper meaning of their student experience.
We hope students will receive the message at a fruitful time in the life of the semester, perhaps at a time that students are more eager to pursue some of their bigger questions than they were in week one. Some of these questions might be: How is my coursework informing my reflection about what kind of professional I want to become? What are my unique gifts and talents and how can I apply them in class assignments and extra-curricular opportunities? What is there about being a Georgetown student that goes beyond what happens in my classes?
SCS students are supported through various programs and events to seek greater meaning, purpose, and belonging. Retreats are great (like this upcoming Graduate and Professional Student retreat) for this kind of structured reflection. And there are other ways that SCS accompanies the spiritual life of its students. New experiences, like starting a graduate program after years in the workforce or transitioning into an entirely new career path, can be filled with uncertainty and worry. But these experiences can also serve as invaluable opportunities to discern how we are called to seek something greater in our daily lives.
Last week, Mission in Motion reflected on the critical contributions of Georgetown’s staff community that bring to life the University’s mission on a daily basis and often do this work behind-the-scenes. This week, we sat down with SCS Assistant Dean Lynnecia Eley to learn more about her role at SCS, how she has grown professionally and personally during her decade of service at Georgetown, and what advice she gives to new students. Lynnecia is a mission-driven higher education professional and she consistently invites her colleagues and the students she supports to a deeper level of commitment grounded in the Spirit of Georgetown.
This week’s Mission in Motion is an interview with SCS Assistant Dean Lynnecia Eley, who shares about her journey at Georgetown and what motivates her work at SCS.
1. You’re an Assistant Dean for the Analytics, Technology, and Security Programs. Tell us more about this role and what your responsibilities entail.
As the Assistant Dean for the Analytics, Technology, and Security Programs at SCS, I often find myself in a catch-all between coaching advisors or managing expectations of students and faculty, while also being an enforcer of academic policies. Specifically, my role includes assisting in planning and implementing curriculum in cooperation with program faculty directors, and also managing a team of academic advisors that counsel students in academic matters and student recruitment. At times you may also find me directly counseling students on personal or disciplinary matters and working closely with other colleagues to develop strategies for marketing, communications, enrollment, and monitoring program financial budgets.
At least that’s most of what my job description says…
While all true in relation to responsibilities, I view my role a little differently at times. Assistant deans can wear many hats and balancing them all can sometimes be a challenge between being in service to our teams and students and also being the “closer or fixer” when another voice is needed. Neither of which is specifically bad or difficult, but it is a balance nonetheless. I’m a caring and supportive individual by nature, so I thrive in space that allows me to be both a cheerleader or coach and a judge on tough matters. As assistant dean at SCS, I’m able to bring a little of my inner self to my daily work activities.
2. You have been at Georgetown SCS for nearly 10 years. Say more about your journey at the University and what you have learned about yourself along the way.
It’s been a long journey, but one that has been met with many meaningful experiences that stand out. There is so much rich history at Georgetown and honestly before working here all I really knew was its history of faith and basketball. I started at Georgetown SCS in the Summer & Special Programs department after two years of taking career risks and trying out jobs that didn’t connect with me as a person. It didn’t take long for me to begin feeling right at home and making connections with so many people.
Nearly 10 years is a long time, and throughout those years I’ve met people that became close friends, some of which have helped me become the person I am today. I remember struggling a bit in my early years, battling being myself versus being who I thought others needed me to be or “wanted” me to be. I remember a staff/faculty member, Wanda Cumberlander, asking me, “When are you going to come out of that box they have put you in?” You see, she saw so much more in me that I was almost afraid to let out. I used to take for granted how much being myself was needed for me to evolve personally and professionally.
What I have learned most along the way is how to show up authentically and how putting myself forward is part of showing up and being successful. Authenticity is at the core of being effective and sustainable because being authentic pulls from personal strengths and core values. I learned authentic self-promotion. It’s having the conviction that I have something of special and unique value to offer and the willingness to show up to serve and thrive within the process.
3. As someone who prioritizes good advising relationships with students, can you share with us some of the advice that you give to new students about being successful?
My best piece of advice to new students comes in the form of a question: “If you had to grow your own food, would you wait until you are hungry to plant a few seeds?” Rather you are entering graduate school immediately after undergrad or a seasoned career changer, relationship building is key to being successful. You cannot wait until you have graduated to begin planting seeds that can affect or change the rest of your life. Relationship building and career networking begins with your first class meeting.
When we intentionally plant seeds we have to nurture them and wait for them to grow. Accelerating the process is just not humanly possible. So while a student, especially in a setting like SCS where programs are industry-specific and you are amongst other adult-learners, start building an integrated network of contacts early. This is more than exchanging business cards or the occasional like on LinkedIn; in essence I advise building intentional and quality relationships over a mass quantity of “people you know.”
Some of the tips I’ve shared are to get to know your instructors and their areas of expertise, volunteer and/or join professional organizations, or even adopt a mentor (instructor, program alum, or current classmate) that can prove great payoff in the future.
4. Reflecting on Georgetown’s mission and values, what about the Spirit of Georgetown most matters to you as a person and professional? What are some ways that you bring the University’s mission to life in your work and daily life?
Georgetown’s mission is to educate a diverse community with holistic values rooted in faith and traditions, but what matters most to me personally and professionally is the commitment to educating the whole person. The University integrates “real life” into academic experiences where students, staff, and faculty are able to connect and share about influences and interests that make them unique. My belief is that when you find something you really enjoy doing, you also find a way to help others while doing it and the feeling it provides gives a sense of purpose or fulfillment.
Outside of the University I’m a huge cheerleader for others in coaching and teaching them how to show up as their best selves with confidence and go after the freedoms that allow them to do whatever it is that they love. At work, I’m the same with my team. I’m very intentional and careful about affirming their qualities, while also coaching and teaching them to be great student advisors. The effect they have as advisors, being of service to so many students, in turn creates a circle of personal and professional growth.
A screenshot of the Instagram account of Georgetown’s Campus Ministry. You can follow along a series of Magis Immersion pilgrimages to Ignatian Spain, involving students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
“The time has come to set out for sacred ground … that will stir our sense of wonder. It is down the path to the deeply real where time stops and we are seized by the mysteries. This is the journey that we cannot Not take. The old hermit along the side of the road whispers, Stranger, Pass by that which you do not love.” ― Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred
The Ignatian Year officially ends on July 31, 2022, on the Feast Day of St. Ignatius. Georgetown has celebrated this 500-year anniversary in many ways throughout the last 12 months, including a Storytelling event in the fall semester and a Sacred Lecture in the spring. A University committee came together and, among other things, created a universally appealing bookmark intended to spur discussion, reflection, and action about the Ignatian Year across the campuses.
And as the Ignatian Year officially comes to a close, Georgetown has embarked on a series of pilgrimage trips to the Ignatian holy sites in Spain during the months of June and July. Separate experiences for students, faculty and staff, and alumni are offering participants a direct opportunity to explore together the sacred sites of the Jesuits’ founder.
Pilgrimage is an appropriate way to bring this year to an end. For St. Ignatius, all of the spiritual life is essentially a pilgrimage. Ignatius’ own autobiography is described as a “pilgrim’s journey” and details how he literally traveled much of the world and figuratively traveled in his own soul in order to discover the ultimate, authentic purpose of his life. Andria Wisler, Executive Director of Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service, is fond of sharing Cousineau’s quote above at the beginning of Magis Immersion Trips (like this one to the U.S.-Mexico Border). There is a strong link between Cousineau’s images of the pilgrimage as an of real holy ground that stirs wonder and the Ignatian notion of Finding God in All Things.
For St. Ignatius, no experience is too mundane to potentially become an encounter with the Divine. By paying attention to the details of our outward and inward journeys, whether they be the magnificent Spanish sites of Ignatius’ life or our own daily commutes, we can enter into deeper communion with the transcendent mystery of our lives. It is through this daily pilgrimage, and the discernment that it entails, that we travel closer and closer to our ultimate destination and purpose.
In the coming weeks, Mission in Motion will share more about Georgetown SCS’s participation in the Ignatian pilgrimages to Spain.
