| Explore Journal | Winter 2023 |
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In this month’s newsletter, we are so proud to feature SCU faculty reflections on the power of a Jesuit education. During the 2022-23 academic year, a cohort of faculty met regularly to wrestle with the meaning and opportunity in this living community project that we share, which is Santa Clara University. The University’s mission statement identifies the three Cs of competence, conscience, and compassion to express our own take on what a Jesuit education entails. A critical moment, however, is how our students experience this particular Jesuit education. Our faculty’s reflections offer us a vivid rendering of why a Santa Clara education makes a decisive difference in our students’ lives. The 2023 explore Journal chronicles their reflections.
As you will read for yourself, three compelling themes emerged in the faculty reflections. First, the purpose of a Jesuit education is directed through the development of students toward building up a community that shares core values. Second, to build a community based on Jesuit values, we educate the mind and the heart; we approach education by sharing information and inviting people to practice what they learn. Finally, a Jesuit education is not ‘one-and-done,’ but consists in relationships that last a lifetime. As my brief closing essay in the journal notes, Jesuit education is a social project: “one generation shapes the character of the next, and a community practices how to live together according to the values they profess.”
While the Ignatian Center newsletters often showcase our students’ transformation, their transformation depends in no small part upon faculty. SCU’s faculty are remarkable because they are so deeply committed to Jesuit education as a shared endeavor to make a difference in this world of ours.
Please spend some time with our faculty members’ powerful essays in the 2023 explore Journal. As you do, I invite you to reflect deeply on what a difference Jesuit education has made in your life - here, there, and everywhere!
Alison Benders
Executive Director, Ignatian Center
Vice President, Mission & Ministry |
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 | Exploring the Integration of Faith, Justice, and the Intellectual Life in Jesuit, Catholic Higher Education
The essays in the newest issue of the explore Journal consider the tension between ideas and practice in a variety of ways. In the classroom, and beyond, the authors in the Fall 2023 issue of explore are working toward their own understanding of how we might put theory into action.
Read the full issue of Explore |
 | by Aaron Willis
"Diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas can open new avenues of understanding - this radical inquisitiveness can, for instance, create new perspectives about our relationship to the natural world."
Read Aaron Willis' article |
 | by Paul A. Soukup, SJ
"To truly work from a Jesuit or Ignatian perspective, the idea of service learning begins in the education of the whole person."
Read Paul Soukup's article |
 | by Sally Vance-Trembath
"The monarchical papacy is one wave of seeping shadow that hovers over the Catholic teaching tradition. There is a direct line between it and the current distrust of authority."
Read Sally Vance-Trembath's article |
 | by Brian Buckley
"Equal dignity invokes justice and justice is about action. So, the church that has a moral theology or intellectual tradition that does not comport with its practice then undermines the ideal of being whole and universal."
Read Brian Buckley's article |
 | by James Nati
"These various views about the accessibility of understanding, about who - if anyone - is able to become wise, are thus situated in particular socio-historical circumstances."
Read James Nati's article |
 | by Madeline Ahmed Cronin
"It is not easy to be a university committed to justice when the predominant model of a university is the neoliberal model, but this is what we are trying to do.'"
Read Madeline Ahmed Cronin's article |
 | by Ezinne D. Ofoegbu
"I am thankful for communal spaces in which we can talk about how the values of CIT can be enacted in our work, and discuss the triumphs, rewards, and challenges of incorporating these values in our curriculum."
Read Ezinne Ofoegbu's article |
 | by Laura L. Ellingson
"Domestic labor and power disparities, and the traditional gender roles that they promote, underlie persistent gender disparities in workplaces."
Read Laura Ellingson's article |
 | by Aleksandar Zecevic
"Perhaps the most obvious reason for changing our attitude toward nature is the existential threat that the environmental crisis poses to humanity."
Read Aleksandar Zecevic's article |
 | by Alison M. Benders
"The power of a Jesuit education comes from our practically developed self-understanding as a people united in a common, social project."
Read Alison M. Benders' article |
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