The Church in the 21st Century Center is a catalyst and a resource for renewal of the Catholic Church.
C21 Resources, a compilation of the best analyses and essays on key challenges facing the Church today, is published by The Church in the 21st Century Center at Boston College, in partnership with publications from which the featured articles have been selected.
c 21 resources editorial board
Patricia Delaney
Kenneth Himes, O.F.M.
Karen K. Kiefer
Peter G. Martin
Michael Serazio
Melodie Wyttenbach
guest editor
Elizabeth H. Shlala
managing editor
Lynn M. Berardelli
assistant editors
Lorenzo F. S. Leo
Thomas R. Pauloz
Ethan Strouse
the church in the 21 st century center Boston College 110 College Road, Heffernan House Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467 bc.edu/c21 • 617-552-6845 church21@bc.edu
photo credit: Courtesy of Lee Pellegrini, Boston College
LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
Its Value and Impact
Mmy father was a career educator. He graduated from Boston University in the late 1950s, and yet, all he ever wanted was for one of his children to graduate from the Jesuit, Catholic college a few MBTA stops up the road. He believed that a liberal arts education grounded in faith was a gift of and for a lifetime. Dad got his wish. Three of his five children graduated from Boston College (BC), the first being me.
In the fall of 1978, I enrolled as a commuter student at BC. I knew my parents couldn’t afford to send me, and yet they believed they couldn’t afford not to. Student loans became my reality, but my educational experience became my life’s fortune.
Today, BC is committed to need-blind admissions and financial aid that meets full demonstrated need. However, it’s understandable that many have begun to challenge the exorbitant cost of a college education. The price is staggering, and we do need to find new and creative solutions to make higher education accessible and affordable to many more.
As you read through this issue, you will be reminded that a Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts education is priceless, because it teaches us to think better, live better, love better, and give more of ourselves to God and others. This enduring life lesson is beautifully stated by the late theologian Fr. Michael Himes. “...We have the opportunity to learn how to give ourselves to one another wisely and courageously and with tremendous forgiveness and deep acceptance. If you’ve learned that, you’ve learned everything you need to know. If you learn everything else, and you never find that out, you’ve missed what it means to be a human being, because human beings are called to be the people who do what God is. God is agape, and we get to enact it.”
Special thanks to Elizabeth Shlala for serving as guest editor of this C21 Resources magazine and curating a collection of articles that gives readers a look at Catholic higher education and why it matters today for tomorrow.
Karen K. Kiefer
Director, The Church in the 21st Century Center karen.kiefer@bc.edu
GUEST EDITOR
Elizabeth H. Shlala is associate dean and professor of the practice in the University Core Curriculum at Boston College and the founding director of the Core’s Justice and the Common Good Living Learning Community. A historian of the Middle East and North Africa, she has appointments with the history department, international studies, and the Islamic Civilization and Societies program, and extensive research experience globally. Dean Shlala holds a B.S. in foreign service, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University. Her latest book is The Late Ottoman Empire and Egypt (Routledge, 2018).
For more information on this issue and additional resources, please visit: bc.edu/c21jesuithighered
The Invaluable Question: Who Will Our Students Become?
Elizabeth H. Shlala
Aas a nearly 500 - year - old tradition of academic excellence around the world, it is interesting to ponder how Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts education will intersect with the future of higher education. There has been a striking decline in the value of a college degree in United States (U.S.) public opinion polls. The liberal arts are being threatened and, in some cases, completely abandoned as part of cost-cutting measures. Americans are wondering what the actual advantage of a liberal arts education is. In this issue, we explore the historical, contemporary, and future value of Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts education from multiple perspectives.
Market-driven industry forces are circling their wagons around higher education in the U.S. What will be the result? Might robots and 3D holograms replace the faculty? Could the development of an industry-driven “knowledge core” harvested by artificial intelligence eliminate the need for human beings to develop their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills? Is it possible that campuses will detach from geographical locations, moving learning into a virtual reality aimed at digital and economic efficiency? There is no doubt that technological advancement always has a role to play in the future. However, the future of higher education should not be led by technology, only enhanced by it. Institutions of higher education must focus on helping students successfully navigate the contemporary world by giving them the tools and perspectives to create the circumstances for human flourishing.
American society is facing many challenges, including the proliferation of social media use linked to the youth mental health crisis, political polarization and the erosion of democracy, the geopolitical consequences of climate change, and for faith-based institutions, the “Great Dechurching,” which is the first time in American history that more adults in the U.S. do not attend church than those who do. Likewise, American higher education is confronting multiple challenges, such as the closure of college campuses, an impending demographic cliff of young people, the rising cost of tuition, shifting industry demands on the workforce, and public opinion devaluing
Convocation procession at Boston College, an annual tradition for first-year students.
...the Jesuits’ educational model is more important than ever—accompanying our students as they do the hard work of learning who they are called to be in this world.
higher education. However, Jesuit, Catholic higher education is perfectly suited to meet these challenges. It has proven its historical adaptability in the face of cultural, social, and technological changes while maintaining its deep roots in the meaningful exploration of what it means to be fully human, critically addressing the most enduring and universal questions of life.
To understand how our schools will meet the future, we have to look to our past. From 1548 to 1773, the Jesuits established 800 schools around the globe. Jesuits literally mapped the world—their missions spread throughout Asia and the Americas, exchanging knowledge in science, literature, and art. It was the Jesuits’ investment in educational excellence that saved the order under Russia’s Catherine the Great during its suppression in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Jesuit institutions produced great thinkers from Voltaire to Descartes, Diderot to Heidegger, and Joyce to de Saint-Exupéry. Today there is a network of 133 Jesuit institutions of higher education in 31 countries around the world. In the U.S., there are 27 Jesuit colleges and universities and 62 Jesuit high schools.
The Jesuits’ educational mission seeks to train individuals to do great things. Their mission and the core curriculum grounded in the liberal arts are intertwined with the character formation of young men and women who will live in service to other people. How? By achieving a standard of excellence, or magis , in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts, and by methodically reflecting on what it means to be fully human. Operating in different historical contexts, the Jesuits’ educational model is more important than ever—accompanying our students as they do the hard work of learning who they are called to be in this world.
Central to this work is reflection that integrates what students learn with who they are becoming. Imagining and contemplating the ethical and philosophical frameworks of human existence require constant attention in order to create systems of equity and justice for all. Reflection becomes the bridge that links experience and action; it is an ongoing process. Through reflective practices like guided meditation, discernment, praying the examen, retreats, and journal writing, students process and adjust their personal knowledge. Reflection does not mean recall, memorization, or reaction. In the Jesuit context, it is much more significant. Faculty and school leaders must be intentional in designing and planning sessions of reflection. Reflection is active, not passive. It can bring about interior transformation as students find
that “the place that God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Frederick Buechner).
This leads to the question of how to assess the impact of reflection in the process. Some questions to consider: What are the real-life implications of the issue? Who do our students become in the long term? How are they using the tools of reflection in class, in the dorms, and in other areas of their lives? Each student is on his or her own path; reflection makes the journey all their own and allows them to fully live the questions along the way.
Complementary to its primary responsibility of educating students and helping them to achieve academic excellence, the special role of the faculty in a Jesuit, Catholic institution is to make each person on campus feel welcome and included because every single person counts. The distinctiveness of the social apostolate is the valuing of every person because the divine is present in every person, and we are compelled to promote the flourishing of each person for the good of the world. Working in this way, and centering reflection as a habit of mind, the college experience is more than transactional—it is fundamentally relational. Through those relationships with self and others, it becomes transformational. Because the Jesuit “way of proceeding” occurs in a dynamic feedback loop of experience, reflection, and action, continuous renewal, innovation, and reinterpretation are not only permissible but required. Jesuit pedagogy is indeed a living tradition.
In this issue of C21 Resources, we consider the contemporary issues facing our students and our institutions from the most virtuous to the most practical ways. We thoughtfully consider our traditions. With hope, we look toward future directions like Messina College, the Prison Education Program, and the Companions Program at Boston College that make Jesuit education more accessible. We intentionally include current student and alumni voices to address who our students become.
Listening to the leaders, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni in these pages, it is clear that our students are not only the products of our education. They are also the producers of social change in a larger network that embraces the invaluable ultimate freedom that a Jesuit, Catholic education provides. ■
Elizabeth H. Shlala is the guest editor of this issue of C21 Resources. She is associate dean and professor of the practice in the University Core Curriculum at Boston College.
A Vision for a JESUIT, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
William P. Leahy, S.J.
Remarks by Boston College President William P. Leahy, S.J., to BC’s Management Development Perspectives (MDP) program, November 2, 2022 (edited). The MDP program provides BC managers and administrators with access to senior University leadership to promote understanding of institutional goals, challenges, and vision.
Aat the core of my vision for Boston College (BC) are three words: university, Catholic, and Jesuit.
UNIVERSITY
We are a university, a community of scholars and learners, not a parish, not a seminary, not a social service agency. We are an academic institution where teaching, research, community service, debate, inquiry, and learning occur. As John Henry Cardinal Newman, the great nineteenth-century English educator wrote, “Great minds need elbow room.... And so indeed do lesser minds and all minds.” Our students come here expecting to learn and grow intellectually, spiritually, and socially, to be stretched by new experiences, ideas, and people, and to be valued and treated with respect.
To achieve these goals, we have to be committed to being an institution that seeks to inform and form so as to transform. We cannot merely transmit the past; we must foster a spirit of intellectual inquiry. BC is committed to research and selected graduate and professional programs. We know that we cannot do everything. But we are committed to the transmission and discovery of knowledge in ways and programs appropriate to our mission and resources.
I often think about the words of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., that a university should be a beacon, a bridge, and a crossroads.
CATHOLIC
Undergraduate education focusing on the liberal arts is at the heart of Boston College and that has long been true for Catholic colleges and universities. The liberal arts by definition help people become more liberal, more human, more free. And thus be more able to recognize their gifts and use them for the good of others. As a Catholic university, we are called in a particular way to be a meeting place between faith and culture, especially between the Catholic Church and society. As a Catholic institution, we strive to integrate religious commitment and intellectual excellence, and our institutional priorities reflect Catholic values and perspectives, where t he liberal arts are emphasized as a way of helping free minds and where students especially are asked to consider questions about self, God, and neighbor.
I remember a Jesuit at Marquette University saying once that being in a Catholic university was like being in a mist; stay in it long enough and you get soaked. For these goals to be achieved, we have to be a place where
...we have to be committed to being an institution that seeks to inform and form so as to transform.
people of all faiths can study, teach, research, work, and where faculty, students, and staff have the opportunity to engage in religious inquiry through worship, retreats, and intellectual and personal exploration.
JESUIT
To be a Jesuit university is to be part of a longstanding educational tradition stressing a rigorous, methodical approach to education, one based on the liberal arts and a core curriculum, reflecting the experience of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his companions at the University of Paris. Ignatius praised the approach at Paris and soon sketched out a prescriptive curriculum, a core. He wanted graduates of Jesuit schools to be a leaven for good, and he committed the Society of Jesus to education by the early 1550s because he concluded that schools were apostolic endeavors and means of promoting the greater good. His genius was to combine the best of humanistic education of his day with character formation.
Jesuit schools should strive to combine intellectual excellence and character formation. Jesuit education
also means caring for the individual and urging students to develop competence in a particular discipline, to consider God’s call to them, and to share their gifts with others. It is about student formation, not just student development. It is intentional, but not coercive or indoctrinating. I think being a Jesuit and Catholic university requires that we always be involved in the life of the community, nation, and world around us. St. Ignatius once told one of his subordinates that, when establishing a new school, he should be sure that the site be “not far removed from the conversation of the city.” We continue the work begun decades ago by our founders, promoting these conversations. I hope that Boston College will continue to be a meeting place grounded in our Jesuit, Catholic tradition. ■
William P. Leahy, S.J., a member of the U.S. East Province of the Society of Jesus, is the 25th and longest serving president of Boston College.
Liberal Arts in the Jesuit Tradition: A Historical Perspective
Michael T. Rizzi
Eeven though colleges and universities tend to be self-reflective places, they can have a surprisingly short memory span. For at least the past decade, many critics within higher education have grumbled that enrollment in liberal arts and humanities majors is in decline nationwide. Cash-strapped colleges (public and private) have been shuttering departments of philosophy and foreign languages even as they expand their revenue-generating schools of nursing and business. Although these trends are concerning, they are not unprecedented. A longterm view of higher education, especially Jesuit higher education, can show us that colleges and universities have faced challenges in sustaining the liberal arts for centuries.
A common misconception about the liberal arts is that they have slowly, steadily declined in popularity over time as society became more secularized and began to view higher education purely as an investment. In fact, there have been ebbs and flows of interest in humanities. In the past century, broadly speaking, enrollment in liberal arts majors increased when the economy was strong and when access to higher education was high. When the GI Bill made college accessible to millions of veterans in the 1940s and 1950s, and when federal financial aid empowered GenX and the Millennial generation to attend college in unprecedented numbers in the 1990s and 2000s, the liberal arts thrived. But during the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and the present day (when college debt often exceeds earning potential), students flocked to more “secure” majors like business
and engineering (or chose to forgo a college education altogether).
Jesuit education is based on the liberal arts, but even Jesuit schools have struggled at times to cultivate student interest. The traditional Jesuit curriculum first published in 1599, the Ratio Studiorum , was built around three main areas of study: philosophy, natural science, and classical languages. Today, we often look back on this traditional curriculum, with its emphasis on Latin and Greek, Cicero and Plato, as the definition of a classical liberal arts education. In the 1600s, though, this plan of study arguably had a practical purpose. This was what educated Europeans at the time were expected to know; this was the knowledge base that made it possible for young men to move up in European society. By making this curriculum the focus of their first colleges, the Jesuits were in fact giving students useful skills to help them become upwardly mobile in seventeenth-century society.
The Ratio Studiorum went virtually unchanged for 300 years, with the exception of a small revision in 1832 that added updated perspectives on physics and mathematics, along with a slightly bigger emphasis on the vernacular language. Every Jesuit college worldwide essentially followed the same core curriculum, and a Jesuit teacher who moved from one school to another could expect to teach the same classes with nearly identical standards.
Philosophy, Latin, and Greek theoretically remained the focus of Jesuit higher education when the Jesuits brought their colleges to the United States, but there were
many exceptions in practice. In the 1800s, most Jesuit colleges had both a “classical” division and a “commercial” division, the latter being something like a modern-day business school. “Classical” students adhered to the Ratio Studiorum while “commercial” students studied bookkeeping, banking, Morse code, telegraph operation, and (at western schools like Gonzaga and Santa Clara) mining and assaying gold and silver.
Even in the nineteenth century, the commercial divisions usually attracted more students than the classical divisions. This was especially true at frontier colleges like Saint Louis, Creighton, Gonzaga, and Santa Clara, where students from local pioneer families had little interest in the liberal arts. When a Jesuit inspector from Ireland, Father Peter Kenney, visited Saint Louis University in 1831, he was disappointed to discover that only 5% of the students were studying Latin. At a short-lived institution called St. Joseph’s College, which existed from 1884–1898 in San Jose, California, the Jesuits offered free tuition to anyone who enrolled in the classical division; despite that incentive, there were years when the entire student body chose to enroll in the commercial track.
To emphasize the liberal arts, some Jesuit schools closed their commercial divisions, only to reopen them quickly after they experienced unsustainable losses in enrollment. In 1861, St. Ignatius College (now the University of San Francisco) began requiring all students to take Latin and Greek, but dropped that policy five years later after enrollment fell to dangerous levels.
By the 1890s, it was becoming such a challenge to recruit students to the Ratio Studiorum track that Jesuit colleges were beginning to look out-of-step with mainstream U.S. higher education. Harvard President Charles W. Eliot, who had scrapped his university’s rigid classical curriculum in order to introduce free electives, severely criticized the Jesuits for not doing the same. Harvard Law School began denying admission to most Jesuit college graduates unless they passed an entrance exam; many Jesuit colleges started their own law schools shortly thereafter.
In 1906, the Society of Jesus formally acknowledged that its schools could deviate from the Ratio Studiorum and follow the standards of higher education in their own countries. As the Jesuit colleges “Americanized” their curriculum, they found ways for the liberal arts to coexist with more professional forms of education. Whenever they opened law schools, medical schools, and formal schools of business and engineering in the twentieth century, they tried to incorporate philosophy, morality, ethics, and a humanist perspective into those fields. The Jesuit commitment to the liberal arts empowered them to build such connections where secular schools did not. If elite undergraduate programs in the liberal arts struggled to attract students, then the Jesuits would find ways to bring the liberal arts tradition into dialogue with other programs that were in higher demand.
Today, the most important lesson we can draw from this history is not to panic when we see the latest ebbs and flows in liberal arts enrollment. The challenges we face today are not unprecedented. While it is true that the liberal arts are in decline on many college campuses
around the country, Jesuit schools have successfully weathered even steeper declines in the past, and the situation today is far from the worst it has ever been. The twenty-first century presents an opportunity for Jesuit schools to think creatively about how to make liberal arts education relevant and accessible.
We can draw some inspiration from the Jesuit response to previous declines in enrollment. During World War II, when the college-age male population was depleted due to the draft, many Jesuit colleges sought out new audiences by admitting women and taking steps toward racial desegregation. Some, like Loyola College (now University) in Baltimore, began offering evening classes to appeal to factory workers and blue-collar students who could only attend after their shifts were complete. They found new ways to introduce the liberal arts to audiences they had previously overlooked. Today, online education offers a similar opportunity to expand, to reach new student audiences, and bring Ignatian education to those who may not live in proximity to a Jesuit campus.
In lean years, Jesuit schools also created new programs to diversify their enrollment. During the Great Depression, Boston College opened its Schools of Business and Social Work, both of which have become valuable additions to the campus and national thought leaders for the Catholic perspective in their fields. Today, Saint Joseph’s University has recently acquired new programs in healthcare by absorbing the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences in Lancaster, incorporating previously independent schools into the Jesuit tradition.
If Jesuit schools believe that liberal arts are valuable and central to the Jesuit experience, the challenge before us today is to find ways to incorporate liberal arts education into all programs—not to replace schools of nursing, business, education, engineering, and law, but to establish a Jesuit voice and a humanist perspective in those fields. Jesuit universities are uniquely positioned to become national leaders in this effort. Boston College, for example, has developed a human-centered engineering major that gives students both technical skills and opportunities to reflect on the moral imperative to use those skills to improve the human condition.
The liberal arts and professional education need not be in competition with each other. Professional education is not a necessary evil—it is simply necessary both to society and to the survival of universities, and history shows that most Jesuit institutions would not exist without them. Today, as in the past, Jesuit colleges are called to help the liberal arts tradition thrive in modern circumstances, knowing that those circumstances have changed throughout the past and will continue to change in the future. ■
Michael T. Rizzi is the author of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States: A History (Catholic University of America Press, 2022), and is director of student affairs at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Celebrating Catholic Education
Fr.
Michael J. Himes
On September 15, 2012, Fr. Michael Himes delivered this homily at a Mass in Fenway Park to nearly 20,000 that celebrated the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of Boston College. The following is an excerpt from his poignant remarks on Jesuit, Catholic higher education.
Iif you want to know what it is to be a human being, if you want to know who you and I are or could be at our very fullest and best, look at Jesus of Nazareth. In Him, we see the fullness of humanity revealing the fullness of divinity. What follows from that? What follows from it is an all-important principle. The principle is that if you really want to be like God—and that’s about as good a definition of holiness as I know—if you really want to be like God, be as human as you can possibly be. Because the perfectly human is the realization of the presence of the perfectly Divine. That the fullness of God is found in the fullness of humanity and vice versa.
What flows from that is the allimportant principle of all of Catholic education, which is that anything that helps us to become more fully, richly, perfectly, splendidly human is making us more like God. Whatever humanizes, divinizes. Whatever makes us more h uman, makes us holy. That is the very core of the whole of the Catholic and Jesuit traditions of education. Because, if you think about it, it explains why we think that education is a holy work. What we are saying is that if education means humanization then education is central to the Church’s mission, because education is simply the long process by which we become more truly and authentically human. So whatever humanizes divinizes. Not just the teaching of religion, not just the teaching of philosophy, but the teaching of chemistry, of physics, of history, of economics and the training of nurses, the teaching of teachers, because all education makes us more like God. Because whatever makes us more human, makes us holy, makes us more like the fullness of God’s presence.
tradition is so priceless and so powerful is because it’s so Catholic. You see, that’s what lies at the heart of Catholicism, the conviction that we are engaged in making one another holy by making one another more completely human, and therefore, nothing is foreign to us. There’s no question that we have to be afraid of asking, no position that we need be frightened of exploring, no task that we need to be too daunted to undertake.
Education is central to the Church's mission, because education is simply the long process by which we become more truly and authentically human.
That brings me to when Jesus says in Mark’s Gospel, a principle which we find again and again throughout the Gospels, that if you hold on to your life, if you try to preserve your life, if you grasp your life and will not let it go, you will lose it. But if you give it away, if you hand it over, if you are willing to die, you will discover that you cannot run out of life. If you hold on to it, you lose it. If you give it away, it becomes everlasting.
As I edge, ever so gingerly, through late middle age, I find that there are certain key issues which have become absolutely central to me. There aren’t as many things as I once thought were super important, but those things that I still do think are crucially important are now unshakably central to my life. One of them is that claim. What you hold on to, you lose. What you give away, you can never run out of.
If that’s true, then think of what a blessing to the Church the Jesuit tradition is. The reason that the Jesuit
Let me suggest to you that this applies to your education as well. If you think of your education as a gift given to you to be grasped, as something that you’ve achieved and will hold on to; if you think of your education as a training to make more money or get a better job; if you think that your education is all about your success in being able to provide for yourself and your family, all of which are great and wonderful goals. And if you think that’s what’s central to your education, then I must say that I think you’re unworthy
of your education. The reason to be educated is to teach somebody else. You will never fully grasp the fruits of your education until you give it away to another. The measure of the success of your education is the measure to which the lives of people who never got to come to Boston College are richer, fuller, more genuinely human because you did go to Boston College. That it’s enabling you to give something to others. And in that process, for the first time, you will fully possess it.
You never own what you don’t give away. What you do give away, you can never lose. Now, maybe that’s not true. But if it’s not true, then nothing in the Gospel is true. Because that’s what the Gospel is. It is the story of the fullness of God present in a perfectly human human being, and the way in which He gave everything until there was nothing left to give, “Father, I hand myself over to you.” It is finished. He’s all used up, there’s nothing left, and the tomb can’t hold Him. He cannot not live because He has given away everything. To be able to give away everything is what all of us are in training to do from the moment of our baptism. And in doing it we become a little more human. And in becoming a little more human, we become genuinely holy.
If I had to describe, to give one image for everything that Catholic education, that Jesuit education, that Boston College at the seat of education, is about, it would be the very last canto of the Divine Comedy. Dante, who of course gets everything right, describes in that last canto what can’t be described. He tries to describe the beatific vision. He tries to describe what it is to see God. And needless to say he fails. He just fails less than anybody else who has ever tried. Dante says that what he saw was a dazzling light. That’s a familiar image for the presence of God, but he goes on to say that that dazzling light, which seemed to destroy his sight, in fact was steadily making his eyes stronger
and clearer, that the light seemed to emanate from three concentric spheres of different colors, together forming one dazzling white light. An image, of course, of the Trinity. As his sight grew stronger, he could gaze more deeply into that light. In its very center, he saw one who looked just like him. He saw the Incarnation. He saw the fullness of humanity, united to the divinity in the person of Christ.
And then he says in that dazzling last line, “then I knew the love that moves the sun and all the stars.” But, you see, it is by discovering that what unites us with God is our humanity. That thanks to the Incarnation, you and I and God have one thing in common. We’re all human. Therefore, if you wish to be like God, be more human. And the way to be more human is to help others to be more human, to give yourself away. To discover that is to have discovered everything that is important in the Christian tradition. It is to genuinely be educated. It is to be the kind of person that the Society of Jesus has been forming for five centuries. It is to be people who see the love that moves the sun and all the stars.
That’s the gift that has been given to us by Boston College.
Give it away. ■
Fr. Michael J. Himes (1947–2022) was a diocesan priest from Brooklyn, New York, a distinguished theologian, and a faculty member at Boston College for almost three decades.
For more resources from Fr. Himes and to watch the full homily, visit: bc.edu/c21jesuithighered
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Core Curriculum: The Heart of a Jesuit, Catholic University
Elizabeth H. Shlala
Tthe core is the heart of a Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts education. It is the curriculum that links all students to each other and to the mission. Through these required courses, students explore the disciplines, ask enduring questions, grapple with complex problems, d evelop their talents and skills, and form their characters. Words that Boston C ollege students often associate with the renewed Core are: “integrated,” “holistic,” “discernment,” and “love.” The Core Curriculum pairs the practicality of the humanities and sciences with the desires of the human heart. As one recent graduate shared, these foundational studies prompted him to “see God in all things.”
In 1548, when the first Jesuit school was founded in Messina, Sicily, Jeronimo Nadal, S.J., asserted that “the primacy of pietas (maturity of character)” was t he heart of Jesuit education. “Everything is to be so arranged,” he said, “so that in the pursuit of these studies pietas holds first place.” Formative education has been balanced with intellectual rigor since the beginning. In 1599, when the Ratio Studiorum was released, the top faculties were scripture, scholastic theology, ethics, philosophy, rhetoric, and grammar. Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s ultimate goals never changed, although he encouraged himself and others to change paths through a process of discernment. These two tensions—the interiority of the Spiritual Exercises and the exteriority of disciplined rule-following—have been called “authoritarian humanism.” Upholding the foundational
structures of nearly 500 years of excellence in education allows for the ability to adapt to both the needs of students and the challenges of our time. Even to this day, deep critical thinking grounded in theology, philosophy, and literature remains foundational in Jesuit pedagogy for intellectual and spiritual formation. Core requirements in Jesuit, Catholic i nstitutions include theology, philosophy, writing, h istory, literature, mathematics, natural science, s ocial science, arts, and cultural diversity courses. We are living in an age of great uncertainty. The turn of the twenty-first century has included plague, wars, forced migration, terrorism, political polarity, corruption, s ocial inequities, racial injustice, environmental degradation, and advances in artificial intelligence. In the face of such turbulent historical times, how can leaders and faculty in Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts institutions of higher education help our students and, frankly, ourselves to find hope?
EMBRACE
Faculty hold a privileged position in the classroom, and it is through them that our schools can make the greatest impact. The role of the teacher as modeler and formator is key for the promotion of a hopeful mode of intellectual inquiry, community building, contemplation, companionship, and conversation. These are core practices of the faculty in the Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts
photo credit : Courtesy of Lee Pellegrini, Boston College
In the face of such turbulent historical times, how can leaders and faculty in Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts institutions of higher education help our students and, frankly, ourselves to find hope?
tradition. Therefore, before we can produce, reproduce, and critique disciplinary knowledge, skills, and content with our students, we are called to this special mode of modeling “how to be” in the classroom, and in the world, for our students.
The faculty’s natural curiosity, love of learning, and willingness to embrace the life of the mind led us to our roles in higher education. We certainly model these attributes to our students, but in a Jesuit, Catholic context, we are asked to be and to do more. It is our hopeful mode that is the most formative attitude we can have with our students for their overall education as whole persons, facing whatever challenges lie ahead.
ENCOURAGE
My own undergraduate and graduate Jesuit, Catholic education continues to reveal its impact on me in new and unexpected ways. As a historian, I teach my students disciplinary knowledge and skills, but with each year that passes, I believe more strongly that the most important method that we use to open the minds and hearts of our students is love. If we educate lovingly, that is where higher education transforms into transcendence no matter one’s religion, socioeconomic status, gender, race, ethnicity, or political persuasion. Once the educator as formator embraces love as a method in the classroom, the class can really engage with difference, they can seek justice as companions, and they get closer and closer to the common good. Working with students through conversations, labs, writing, projects, and travel creates the conditions for transcending “what is” to becoming “what may be.” In an era of great uncertainty, it seems even more critical to make the unseen more visible in our classrooms, in our interactions with our students, and in our interactions with each other. As scripture states, “For what is seen is transitory and what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18).
ENLIGHTEN
Through the Core Curriculum, we create and curate communities across campus, from the classroom to the dorms, in support of the University’s mission. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminds us, “God accepts as pleasing those who live by the best lights available to them that they can discern. All truth, all sense of beauty, all awareness of goodness has one source, God, who is not confined to one place, time, or people.” In
this spirit, our mode is hopeful, and our method is love, which leads to transcendence in word and deed, intellectual productivity, and well-being in mind, body, and soul. This is indeed formative education that should flow through every action and communication across the University ecosystem from dining to janitorial staff, from dorms to athletic facilities, and from our administrative staff to our faculty and deans. The academic project both intellectually and socially may be reframed as one of love, and we are co-creators of that project.
ELEVATE
How do we define and measure success for our students as whole persons in body and soul, or cura personalis, as they make their way through the Core Curriculum? We want them to demonstrate critical mathematical, analytical, expressive, and creative skills that are essential for an educated person, for a vocation. We want t hem to understand the major ideas and methods of the scholarly disciplines. We want them to be able to identify and articulate the strengths and limits of the disciplines themselves as well as their relationship to each other. We want students to be able to intelligently discuss fundamental enduring questions and complex contemporary problems and to be able to approach them in an interdisciplinary way. We want them to understand how faith and reason are related to the search for truth. We want them to be able to examine their values and then integrate them with their experiences to guide their lives. Finally, we want students to use their talents and education as global citizens and leaders to contribute to the common good. The Core Curriculum elevates high school students into college students. It then elevates college students into men and women in the world for other people—that is the true value of its success. ■
Elizabeth H. Shlala is the guest editor of this issue of C21 Resources. She is associate dean and professor of the practice in the University Core Curriculum at Boston College.
For more information on the Core Curriculum at Boston College, visit: bc.edu/core
student reflections on the Core
Lauren Evans, Aidan Mackey, Foday Nabbie
LAUREN EVANS '25
Majors: History & English
Minors: Finance & Pre-Law
Hometown: Dublin, Ireland
As I reflect on my time as a high school student, I realize how much my mindset has changed because of my experiences at college. I remember spending hours readying myself for the ACTs and stressing about my grades. I was constantly questioning myself. Am I doing enough? What more can I do to strengthen my college applications? When my freshman year began, I brought these anxieties with me. From the first week, I worried about the courses I was taking, and I wanted to figure out my major as quickly as possible. I was convinced that any classes that didn’t fulfill my majors were a waste of time. These thoughts occupied my mind until I began to recognize the Jesuit values offered to me.
I remember hearing about cura personalis —having concern for the development of the whole person— during orientation week. I entered my first week of classes imagining that I would be completely overwhelmed. I was surprised when my professors wanted their students to come to office
hours just to chat, even if we didn’t have any questions about the material we were learning. They wanted to know about how we were adjusting to college life and hear about any interesting extracurriculars.
The educators at BC cared more about my growth as a human being than the rise of my grade point average. Advisors and professors were constantly encouraging me to pursue interests that lay outside of my schoolwork. I had thought that the key to finding my place in the world could be found in whatever degree I obtained, but I quickly learned that it was more important to try to discover what empowered me or what I felt passionate about. Thus far in my experience, I have found that following my curiosity, serving others, and reflecting on my journey has helped me find cura personalis
AIDAN MACKEY '25
Major: Nursing
Hometown: Oneonta, NY
I believe the soul of a Jesuit, Catholic education is a student’s curiosity. As a student, I am able to truly explore academic interests, social involvements, and most importantly myself through reflections and discussions. Through
the University Core Curriculum and retreat experiences on and off campus, where I am challenged to think critically of myself and my trajectory through college, I have been tasked with finding meaningful connections to my work and how that can make an impact on the world around me.
Our student body encompasses people at so many different points in their academic journey and self-discovery, which I think is why the Jesuit mission and mottos are so impactful. "Magis" relates to the widening of a lens on the world and a deepening of impact and intention. "Ever to Excel" represents our desire to learn and continually achieve more. These mottos fit the University because students are multidimensional and eager to explore. Through my courses, I have been able to make connections across disciplines that directly apply to the world at large. As a nursing student, my courses in art, philosophy, and literature have informed my nursing practice beyond what I originally thought possible. Freshman fall semester, I took a course called Geographies of Imperialism, which highlighted the similarities and differences between the British and the Ottoman Empires through a historical and theological
lens. This was the first class I had ever taken that truly focused on interdisciplinary study, and it made me so much more engaged in the course. In fact, I thought of the class as a snowglobe, because you could view the content in many different ways to give you new perspectives. It was an important example of how nothing can live independently through one mode of thought, and that it takes a foundational understanding of the world, often found through the Core Curriculum, to generate the best changes moving forward.
FODAY NABBIE '25
Major: Neuroscience
Minor: Applied Psychology & Human Development
Hometown: Prince George's County, MD
On the first day of class of my first college semester, I sat down for a set of Enduring Question lectures entitled Truth-telling in Literature and Truthtelling in History. My professors started strong, asking significant questions that every one of my 18 classmates gave a different answer to. “What does it mean to tell the truth? What kinds of truth are there? How are we supposed to read,
LOVE
Learning the true meaning of agapic love, being empathetic and loving, while seeing God in all things.”
“
write, and understand any of them?” Throughout the semester, my professors broke these questions apart, challenged us to reflect on them in a number of contexts, and slowly pieced back an understanding of the ever-evolving nature of “truth.”
For three hours, every Tuesday and Thursday, my classmates and I would come together to make sense of these questions and how they related to ourselves and what we cared about. With so much time spent together in the pursuit of a common understanding, this class is also where I made some of my earliest friendships. The principles I learned in this course, on seeking truth within oneself, others, media, and culture, have been foundational in how I approach learning across disciplines. This is the earliest example of how I have been enriched by my Jesuit, Catholic education, which is in no small part due to our Core Curriculum.
I came to college as a biochemistry major and, somewhere down the road, settled on neuroscience instead. In typical “science kid” fashion, I had an ambivalent stance on the Core Curriculum. I arrived to college with very few completed Core requirements, which made the list of classes I would have to take seem daunting at first.
The emphasis on reflection, which helped me discover what I was passionate about in life, made me more inclined to study what I loved and follow a career path that both gives me joy and allows me to positively impact the world.”
Discernment
My mind quickly changed as I delved deeper into my coursework. A host of opportunities for growth and learning, that I wouldn’t have explored otherwise, opened up for me. One example was Child Growth and Development, a course offered through the Lynch School of Education and Human Development. I loved the class so much that I decided to pursue a minor in applied psychology and human development. While mostly unfamiliar with Jesuit education before coming to college, I have truly benefited from it and now appreciate Jesuit pedagogy in action. The emphasis on formative education has illuminated my college experience so far—in clubs, at work, on retreats, and most certainly, in the classroom.
The ability to engage deeply and intentionally with issues/areas of study that matter—which impact the lives of other people—so that my education is not just for me, but to better the lives of others.”
photo credit : Courtesy of Lee Pellegrini, Boston College
Unveiling Sources: The Jesuit Tradition in Higher Education and How to Cultivate It
Cristiano Casalini
Jjesuit educational environments have inherited a distinctive characteristic directly derived from the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola and the mindset of the earliest companions who co-founded the Society of Jesus with him. Ignatius, through various facets of his personality, particularly impressed upon them the significance of the Spiritual Exercises. These exercises involved cultivating a reflective attitude toward one’s spiritual dynamics, encompassing emotions, actions, and experiences. Their emphasis permeated the Jesuits’ endeavors and missions, including formal education, which swiftly became the primary apostolate of the Jesuits, and this practice of reflecting upon “our way of proceeding” has remained an enduring characteristic of Jesuit education for centuries.
perennial question of what truly characterizes education within Jesuit institutions.
The inquiry into the essence of being a Jesuit educational institution has been a continual concern for the Society. The concern prompted the formulation of the Ratio Studiorum in 1599. This document delineated the official plan of studies and administrative regulations and was mandated for implementation across all Jesuit educational institutions worldwide. For centuries, it served as a guiding reference, outlining the parameters of what it meant to be a Jesuit institution. While the Ratio could not comprehensively address all facets of the Jesuit philosophy of education, it provided a robust framework for a globally interconnected network of educational institutions with a standardized curriculum.
However, as the feasibility and efficacy of implementing a uniform curriculum globally diminished over time, the Jesuits began to reassess how schools and universities could adhere to the spirit of the Ratio while adapting to contemporary demands. The crux of the challenge for Jesuit education lay in defining this spirit, marking a departure from the need for a specific Ratio Studiorum , a shift that became evident in the mid-twentieth century. Evolving national educational systems, transformative events like Vatican II, and internal shifts within the Society of Jesus gradually obscured the direct influence of the Ratio on the self-conceptualization of Jesuit education. This neglect left an imperative to address the
Contemporary documents, such as “The Characteristics of Jesuit Education” (1986), “The Ignatian Pedagogy Paradigm” (1993), and more recently, “Jesuit Schools in the Twenty-First Century: A Living Tradition” (2019), illustrate how schools have dynamically filled the void left by the abandonment of the Ratio. They articulate the identity of Jesuit education through a philosophy that engages with mission statements, goals, values, and tenets. Additionally, they introduce a specific pedagogical approach, known as the Ignatian Pedagogy Paradigm (IPP), as a tool to animate teaching and services in Jesuit and Ignatian schools.
T hese documents, while drawing inspiration also from official pronouncements of the Society of Jesus, such as the commitment to the promotion of justice, represent a departure from the earlier emphasis on a prescribed curriculum. They represent a broader focus on philosophical underpinnings and pedagogical principles as the contemporary way for Jesuit education, answering the long-lasting question about “our way of proceeding.”
The cultivation of the Jesuit, Catholic identity has become increasingly integral to the vision and promotion of Jesuit colleges and universities, particularly in the competitive landscape of international higher education. Rediscovering and nurturing the distinctive culture and spirit of these institutions enriches their vision for research and education, extending beyond the generic
The practice of reflecting upon “our way of proceeding” has remained an enduring characteristic of Jesuit education for centuries.
pursuit of truth that characterizes any dedicated learning institution.
For Jesuit, Catholic universities, asserting their identity has become a response to the challenges posed by secularization and the declining presence of Jesuits within their own establishments. The trend, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, toward fewer vocations has intensified the question of the essence of Jesuit institutions in the absence of a significant Jesuit presence. The increasing proportion of lay individuals employed and engaged in Jesuit institutions, traditionally managed predominantly by members of the religious order, necessitates a reevaluation of the Jesuit identity of these universities. This includes understanding the role of Jesuits, addressing what it means for lay companions to share the mission, and exploring how the identity of these institutions can be maintained amidst changing demographics.
While this discussion holds significant importance for the Society of Jesus, it remains open-ended. Official documents and speeches by recent superior generals of the Society have outlined the Jesuits’ perspectives on the collaboration of lay individuals in their institutions. However, the question of who or what carries the mission—the person or the curriculum—continues to elicit diverse responses and perspectives within the order.
Unveiling the wealth of memory preserved in this living tradition, to which every Jesuit has contributed over time as an active participant, is integral to cultivating the Jesuit identity of a university. By expanding the notion of Jesuit sources, colleges and universities, and likewise schools, which often possess extensive repositories of neglected memories, can foster a profound understanding of their identity. This identity is dynamic, constantly evolving, and cannot be fixed as a relic of a bygone golden age. Instead, it thrives on the contributions of countless agents-in-the-tradition, including the lay companions who now actively participate in the Jesuit educational mission. ■
Cristiano Casalini is associate professor, Endowed Chair in Jesuit Pedagogy and Educational History, and a research scholar at the Boston College Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies.
DEFINING Liberal Arts Education
A liberal arts education is not just a collection of different courses and majors from which an undergraduate may choose, often with little guidance or informed discrimination. It is a curriculum that is comprehensive and coherent, teaching tradition while being critical of it; it is, to borrow from Augustine, learning to love the right things.
PRINCIPLES OF A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
1. That a university (universitas) exists for the pursuit of truth, the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, and the instruction of students as future teachers, scholars, career professionals, and citizens of this republic.
2. That a university should maintain at least one college (collegium) that is dedicated to the liberal arts (artes liberales), of which the essential components are full and robust programs in philosophy and religion/theology, history, English language and literatures, classical and modern languages, mathematics, the natural and physical sciences, the social sciences, and the creative arts (including art, drama, and music).
3. That neither a university nor a college should claim to be founded in the liberal arts, nor have liberal arts in its mission statement, unless it upholds these principles.
4. That a liberal arts college and curriculum should strive to be diverse and inclusive, including by enrolling students and employing faculty from underrepresented groups, and also to foster intellectual diversity, to not be governed by ideology but to be an open, respectful arena for exchanging ideas.
5. That a liberal arts college is primarily an intellectual community of scholars—faculty and students— and that the curriculum belongs solely to the faculty, who have training and expertise in these disciplines and who will seek advice from students, staff, and administrators if and when they make any curricular changes.
6. That if a liberal arts college is to be truly free, it must be free from outside political, ideological, and managerial pressures.
7. That it is expected that such a college will develop individual and distinctive characteristics, and therefore should not be formed or evaluated by government or accreditation bodies. ■
Christopher A. Snyder is a professor of history at Mississippi State University and a visiting research fellow (2023) at Oriel College at the University of Oxford.
This excerpt was originally printed in Inside Higher Ed (October 23, 2023) and is reprinted with permission.
The Value Proposition of a
Liberal Arts Education
Thomas Wesner
photo credit : Courtesy of Caitlin Cunningham, Boston College
Aas a boston college (bc) graduate, faculty member, and parent of young adults who have attended Jesuit, Catholic schools—including BC—I have a unique perspective on the value of this enterprise and fervently believe the education we provide has never been more valuable.
The headwinds facing higher education are real: declining public confidence, climbing costs, deep polarization, and artificial intelligence are poised to change the way we teach and learn. And students have never had more distractions that can derail and desensitize them from what we might want them to think about. The constant inundation of electronic messages and their heightened degrees of anxiety make teaching far different than it was a mere decade ago. All of these factors contribute to why many question whether college is worth it.
As I contemplate the value from varied perspectives, my first thought is that the word value implies that something can be measured. I am unsure if an education—especially a Jesuit, Catholic education—can be m easured in a conventional manner via a cost-benefit analysis. Some things in life, such as love, simply cannot be quantified. My view is that value cannot be determined when a life is transformed in powerful ways, as happens at Boston College.
STUDENT/ALUMNUS
As a BC graduate, I first experienced the transformative impact of a Jesuit education as a teenager. My first Jesuit teacher told us that he was “old school” and that he would be tough, yet we should know that “discipline was actually love in disguise.” Another told us that we needed to attend to our minds, bodies, and souls, and that if we didn’t take ourselves seriously, no one else would. A third told us that a good life should include service to others, and that being men and women with and for others was the goal—our education was not for us to hoard and hold on to.
As a young person, hearing these ideas kindled a sense of idealism within me. Sure, we learned math, science, philosophy, and economics, yet, alongside our learning were constant reminders to contemplate how we could make a positive impact on the common good. Ideas like these made it clear that we were here for important reasons—at BC and on earth. The ideas and moral imperatives steered and shaped us to believe that important work was within our grasp if we committed to giving our education away and if we worked hard and prayed even harder.
PARENT
As a parent, I have witnessed the transformative impact of BC’s formative, whole person education upon my children. Rigorous academic training and skill development have been critical, yet when asked to describe their time here, my young-adult children always start by reflecting on the people and their relationships. They talk not only about their friends but also those they met on faith-based service trips, on 48 Hours, Jamaica Magis, Kairos retreats, and in the Campus School Buddy Program, where BC undergraduate volunteers work with children and young adults who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Such programming being integrated into one’s education tells students that their faith formation and s ervice is central to life. Programs like these—which steer students into loving relationships with others—put them into direct contact with God (consciously or not). Opportunities like these were precisely what we hoped our children would engage in while at Boston College. Reflection, discernment, and service-learning are not adjuncts to one’s education here—they are central and they nurture and cultivate within our students an integrated perspective that shapes whole people.
FACULTY
The influence of my BC education shaped my career trajectory. I was drawn back to Boston College to teach because I sensed a call to return to my alma mater, where I could play a small part in the formation of our students just as many great teachers had done for me. I understood the power of a BC education and wanted to share it with others.
Now, as a faculty member, I am deeply inspired by a statement from Peter Hans-Kolvenbach, S.J., that success for Jesuit universities “lies in who our students become.” This is a high call, especially given the headwinds. Yet, I have witnessed the transformative impact of a Jesuit education on thousands of students. And I join hundreds of colleagues who similarly believe that teaching at BC requires far more than passing on information and prodding students to seek truth.
Inside and outside of the classroom, we focus on undergraduates being at formative stages in which they are wondering about their roles in the world. While they wonder and daydream about their futures, it is our responsibility to encourage contemplation about what really matters and to push students to envision and discern career paths that will allow them to use their gifts and talents for the benefit of others—while serving in professional roles that are genuinely rewarding. Making connections between the curriculum and a larger interdisciplinary landscape helps their learning become more meaningful.
Formative and “whole person” education means that learning is not an end but a beginning—an invitation to use knowledge to help advance the common good. As the Boston College theologian Thomas Groome has written, the deep “spiritual roots of our institution and our curriculum cannot be separate from our pedagogical approach.” Integrating Ignatian principles of whole person education, social justice, and intellectual, social, and spiritual experiences leads to much deeper formative experiences and supports our mission of guiding students as they contemplate their “way of proceeding” and discern what they will do long after they depart our campus to help solve the world’s most urgent problems. ■
Thomas Wesner ‘89, Ed.D. ‘07, is professor of the practice in the Carroll School of Management (CSOM) at Boston College and also serves as director of CSOM’s Summer Management Catalyst Program.
The Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the Jesuit, Catholic University
Gregory A. Kalscheur, S.J.
On January 30, 2024, Dean Gregory Kalscheur, S.J., lectured to students, staff, faculty, and community members on "The Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the Jesuit, Catholic University." The following is an excerpt from the lecture.
F
for a jesuit, catholic university truly to be animated by engagement with the Catholic intellectual tradition, we need to find ways to sustain a college-wide intellectual culture in which faculty come to experience the engagement with the Catholic tradition as something more than a call to draw on a “vast repository” of truths and practices. Instead, we need to help faculty members experience engagement with the tradition as something exciting and dynamic; something that flows out of what John Courtney Murray described as “the excitement inherent in the free search of the mind” for truth and order, giving rise to a project that responds to “an inner need of the human spirit” itself. For this to happen, we will need to find ways to foster conversation with faculty colleagues t hat will allow them to connect the tradition’s aspiration for wholeness with their own innate drive for
photo credit : Courtesy of Gary Wayne Gilbert, Boston College
Questioning might open up a conversation that seeks to move beyond narrow disciplinary isolation to make connections leading to a deeper understanding of the human person and a more comprehensive realization of the common good.
catholicity as it manifests itself in their intellectual lives. John Haughey suggests that this sort of engagement with the tradition might begin by inviting faculty to reflect on the questions and desires that drive their own particular scholarly work. We might ask our colleagues questions like these: Describe the good you are attempting to achieve through your teaching, research, and service. What is it that you find compelling or life-giving about your pursuit of this particular research question? Do you have a dream, a hope, or a long-term project that you are seeking to implement in and through your discipline? Do you see your work as being a piece within a larger whole? Does your faith play a role in your work, and if so, how concretely is your faith connected to your work?
This sort of questioning might open up a conversation that seeks to move beyond narrow disciplinary isolation to make connections leading to a d eeper understanding of the human person and a more comprehensive realization of the common good. Such a conversation might be open to the in-breaking wholeness and fullness of life that the tradition calls “the reign of God.” We need, therefore, to try to engage faculty colleagues in conversations that invite reflection on the ways they search for meaning or coherence or truth, in whatever their discipline might be. As Michael Buckley puts it, “inchoately religious....The intellectual dynamism inherent in all inquiry initiates processes or habits of questioning that—if not inhibited—inevitably bear upon the ultimate questions that engage religion.”
Rather than understanding the Catholic intellectual tradition simply as a collection of texts or a body of teaching that scholars must master in order to participate fully in the life of the tradition, I hope that I’ve been able to suggest why we might better describe the tradition itself as a conversation in which the participants are open to the sort of uninhibited process of questioning that leads across disciplinary boundaries with an openness to questions of ultimacy, a conversation in which all are invited to participate as a leaven for their scholarly lives.
The Catholic intellectual tradition as I’ve tried to describe it is a dynamic conversation extended over
time with a highly diverse range of participants: it is an ongoing conversation made of variant strands, multiple voices, and a range of positions. In the words of Frederick Bauerschmidt, “it would seem that the fostering of the Catholic intellectual tradition not only allows for, but even requires, truth to be sought wherever it might be found, in authors who hold the Christian faith, or another faith, or perhaps no faith at all.” For the conversation that is the tradition to be “a living and self-reflective conversation,” it must be open both to “the inclusion of disturbing voices” and to conflict among the voices engaged in the conversation. The desire for truth that lies at the heart of the tradition demands that all assertions of truth, meaning, and purpose be tested by the best evidence against them—evidence that may be presented by anyone, of any or no religious tradition, who is engaged in serious inquiry.
The tradition understood in this way has what John Courtney Murray called “a growing edge”: a capacity for continuity and change, allowing it to develop in new ways even as it retains its firm roots in the foundational Catholic worldview. In the life of a Jesuit, Catholic university that is alive to the Catholic intellectual tradition, wisdom accumulated in the past is handed on, criticized, reworked, and re-appropriated in response to new questions prompted by new experiences, new evidence, new arguments, and new conversations with new conversation partners. ■
Gregory A. Kalscheur, S.J., is dean of the Boston College Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of law and political science.
To watch the full lecture and learn more about the Catholic intellectual tradition, please visit: bc.edu/c21jesuithighered
LOVE IN Jesuit Pedagogy
Marina Berzins McCoy
Iin a recent plato class , I had my students read a dialogue in which Socrates contrasts himself to other leading teachers of his day, a school of intellectuals called sophists who taught rhetoric and other skills that they thought would help to make young men successful. Socrates claims that he knows nothing for certain except “the things of love” (Theages 128b4). I said to the class: “What a peculiar thing this is for Socrates to claim. Can you imagine universities marketing themselves in this way: we teach you absolutely nothing, nothing except things about love.” The students laughed, and then one of them replied, “But isn’t that at least part of what our Jesuit education is about?” Absolutely. The student is right: part of what we want in forming our students is for them—and for faculty and staff, too—to love well.
As a professor of philosophy, I care about the knowledge that is foundational for my field, and I try to prepare both graduate and undergraduate students well in my areas of expertise. We do teach specific knowledge. But what and how any of us choose to teach is not morally or socially neutral. At Boston College (BC), I have engaged in many conversations with fellow faculty where we have intentionally asked and reflected on the following kinds of questions as well: How can teaching help students and future citizens to live in communities that are more just and more loving in seeking out that justice? How in the Core Curriculum do we teach people scientific, sociological, theological, artistic, and historical ways of knowing, both for their own sakes and so that they can better understand the world and their place in it after graduating? How is simply coming to know, to contemplate what is good and beautiful for its own sake, also part of what it means to “know the things of love”?
I am currently teaching a course on Mass Incarceration. The course is composed of graduating seniors who are curious or, in some cases, already passionate about examining our incarceration system more deeply. In both classes, though, there is a shared commitment to seeking what is true and reflecting on how it is meaningful both in and outside of the classroom. I hope that my students will lean into the complexity of philosophical
arguments that reflect the complexity of our lived social and ethical realities rather than seeking simple answers. Most of my Mass Incarceration students find our high rate of incarceration, with its unequal treatment of Black and Brown people in our criminal justice system, to be unjust. They long for greater fairness and for more of an emphasis on rehabilitation than punishment. Some wonder whether the entire system ought to be abolished in its current form. At the same time, they also recognize that protecting society from individuals who harm others is important, and they wrestle with how that can best take place. As we read through theories examining our criminal justice system, students also connect this to service work in which they are engaged, and let their experiences inform their evaluation of the theories, and vice versa. For me, this sort of integration of theory and practice is a skill that I hope will, indeed, help them to know better concretely how to work for a more just society after graduation—whether that means working as a prosecutor or defense lawyer, as some have gone on to do, or as reflective citizens who consider these issues as they vote or are politically active.
What has surprised me is how much both teaching my classes and the commitments of other colleagues have also formed me. Twenty-six years ago, I came into BC as a Protestant interested in the Catholic intellectual tradition and already drawn to the liturgy, and through teaching in Core I have not only gained a sense of respect for its value, I also converted and became a Catholic. Through listening to students and fellow faculty and staff over the years, I’ve also become aware of how important a deep spirit of inclusion—inclusiveness of religion, class, sexual orientation, nationality—is for us to really be “catholic” in the sense of “universal.” When I arrived at Boston College, I was not well-versed in post-Holocaust moral theology or philosophy of race. But in the course of conversations with others, I grew in my understanding of what students might need to know in order to live and love well in the world in which we reside. I have been formed to love and appreciate many of the ideas in these texts. A faculty/staff immersion trip to Nicaragua years ago, led by Mission and Ministry, not
Part of what we want in forming our students is for them—and for faculty and staff, too—to love well.
Students serving others through BC’s transformative PULSE service learning program, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020. To date, this pioneering initiative has accumulated over 3.2 million hours of service in the community.
only had a lasting impact on me in widening my sense of the Americas beyond North America, it also has formed points of connection with students. For example, a recent Presidential Scholar told me about her immersion trip to Costa Rica and was sorting out how it may inform the larger arc of her education, especially in care for marginalized communities.
Being in dialogue with people of different religious, social, racial, and national backgrounds in our work together hopefully shapes us in how the general ideals of the mission get lived out in practice. Just as is the case with my student who places their classroom theories in dialogue with practice, as educators we also have to revise our own concepts of what a good education looks like as we listen to the experiences of others across differences. We are still not “there” yet, but a Jesuit, Catholic university that wants that mission to be successful needs to be open to the sort of cross pollination between faculty, and between students and faculty, that makes our work more fruitful.
For me, Jesuit, Catholic education does not end in the classroom, quad, or even the dorm room; it extends into the larger community. My colleague in theology, Jim Keenan, S.J., wrote an essay on the idea of Jesuit hospitality in which he argues that in contrast to religious orders who sought to find Christ in the visitor to t he monastery, the apostolic nature of the Jesuits means that they are called to go out into the wider community and to seek Christ in the other there. I teach this article at the end of the year in my PULSE class, Personal and Social Responsibility, where students serve 10–12 hours a week at nonprofits and schools in the city of Boston while learning about philosophy and theology. At the end of the year, after they read Keenan’s work, I ask them to reflect on what the difference would be if, instead of going out into the city, they served the same clients at BC. Without exception, the students think the
experience would be lacking. First, they find that through service, they learn that they are not lone individuals but are part of a larger community, which they get to know through their time working with community partners. Many express the idea that they learned not only from class but also from these communities beyond the “BC bubble.” Keenan also asks us to reflect on how we can bring that sense of hospitality back to the University itself. So I also ask students to consider, as a year of service ends, who is marginalized within the University community and needs to be brought in, and how many of those same folks have a lot to teach the rest of us about truth, goodness, and justice.
For me, teaching at a Jesuit, Catholic university is not only about teaching a body of knowledge, it is also learning more about the core of what it means to be human. For me, Socrates’s idea that he knows only about love resonates with Ignatius’s claim in the Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises that we ought not to treat health, wealth, reputation, or other limited goods as though they are the ultimate end; love of God and love of our fellow human beings is the point of all of our labors. While we indeed have further to go in how to live out that ideal, and we do not do so perfectly, that we have this aim at all sets apart Jesuit, Catholic universities. To seek to better understand the “things of love” is indeed a worthy aim. ■
Marina Berzins McCoy is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and teaches in the Personal and Social Responsibility service learning program (PULSE).
To learn more about PULSE, visit: bc.edu/pulse
photo credits: Courtesy of John Walsh '17, M.B.A. '20, Boston College
Investing in the Future Lifelong Skills through the Liberal Arts
John L. Mahoney
Aaside from top - tier colleges with large endowments, many of the rest struggle to balance their budgets. Despite raising tuition by approximately 70% from 1995 to 2020, most public and private institutions do not collect enough tuition revenue to meet expenses and invest in their futures.
Critics, including politicians, urge higher education leaders to be more efficient by cutting majors and programs. Not surprisingly, liberal arts education is often in the crosshairs of these critics. If a major or field of study doesn’t lead directly to a job and paycheck, they say, it’s not worth having.
In recent decades, technology has profoundly changed how people live and work. Experts predict that this will continue at an even more rapid clip. But this is no justification to abandon the liberal arts. In fact, it might underscore their importance.
David Deming is an economist at Harvard University who studies education, skills, and the future of work. In an article he published in The New York Times in 2019, Professor Deming acknowledges that “computer science and engineering majors have better employment prospects and higher earnings than their peers who choose liberal arts.”
However, his research shows that this advantage for STEM majors “fades steadily after their first jobs, and by age 40 the earnings of people who majored in fields like social science or history have caught up.” The reason, he says, is that “many of the latest technical skills that are in high demand today become obsolete when technology progresses.”
Furthermore, Professor Deming explains, “although liberal arts majors start slow, they gradually catch up to their peers in the STEM fields.” He argues that “a liberal arts education fosters valuable soft skills like problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability.” He also points to a 2018 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers that reveals that the skills considered most important by employers are “written communication, problem-solving and the ability to work in a team.”
Martha Nussbaum, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, points to David Rubenstein, a founder of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, and current chair of the board of trustees at the University of Chicago, as another standard bearer for the importance
of liberal arts education. He expresses his support in a simple formula, H=MC, which means Humanities Equals More Cash! (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 17, 2024)
All of this has important implications for how young people should approach college today. Rather than being narrowly focused on one field of study, students should pursue a broad array of courses in the arts, humanities, and social sciences as well as STEM courses. When students read the great writers and thinkers, grapple with t heir ideas, and debate them with peers, they learn how to read critically, think analytically, and communicate effectively with the written and spoken word. These skills imbue students with the versatility to remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving employment climate.
Steve Jobs was widely regarded as one of the greatest tech entrepreneurs of our time. Yet, he attended liberal arts-focused Reed College in Portland, Oregon, before dropping out to pursue his career. Mr. Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson: “I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
Think of the first Mac computers and the iPhone, both marvels of scientific engineering. What made them popular, though, was that Mr. Jobs designed products which were essential for work and daily life but also visually and functionally appealing. This understanding of human nature emanates from someone who is comfortable at the intersection of the humanities and sciences.
Drew Gilpin Faust was the 28th president of Harvard University and the first woman to hold that office. While a noted scholar of American history, she acknowledged the importance of a balanced education when she said that society needs “scientifically sophisticated humanists and humanistically grounded scientists and engineers.”
The poet John Ciardi delivered a speech in 1954 at Rutgers University in which he reflected on the purpose of a college education in the context of one day. For eight hours, he said, most people will be engaged with some kind of work, and hopefully a good education will serve them in that endeavor. For another eight hours, most people should be asleep, which should require no education at all. For the remaining eight hours, over which they have complete control, he asks his audience
how they might choose to spend that time. Will they sit around idly wasting it until it’s time to work? Or will they read a book, see a play, listen to some music, engage in some kind of mind-stimulating behavior? Will they be intellectually alive and will they engage with their fellow citizens and their communities? In short, will they use this critical eight-hour period to live with meaning and purpose and in a way that elevates the human condition? These individuals are preaching the importance of balance in a college education. Given their investment of time and money, students must acquire a skill set to compete in the modern workplace. But they also need a broadly based liberal arts education to sharpen their
Given their investment of time and money, students must acquire a skill set to compete in the modern workplace. But they also need a broadly based liberal arts education to sharpen their critical thinking, enlarge their imaginations, and fuel their creativity.
Students at the Boston College main Commencement ceremony in Alumni Stadium (2022).
critical thinking, enlarge their imaginations, and fuel their creativity.
Liberal arts education prompts students to think about what it means to be human, to care for others and for the planet, and to fashion lives not just of ambition and accomplishment but also humility and compassion. ■
John L. Mahoney ‘79, M.A.T. ‘85, retired as vice provost for enrollment management at Boston College (BC) in 2023. A key architect for BC’s success in undergraduate admissions and enrollment, he served as director of undergraduate admissions from 1990–2018.
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Caitlin Cunningham, Boston College
THE VALUE OF My Jesuit Education
Kyle Sutton
Iis the value of a college education simply the things you learn? Is it only your degree? What sets a Jesuit education apart from a regular one?
I came to Boston College committed to my idea of the good. I established a “right” and “wrong” for myself, entrenched myself into a worldview and dismissed the possibility of being incorrect. I had heard that it was impossible to have an all-good and all-powerful God and an evil world, and that was good enough for me. God was out of the question. Organized religion was a bad thing, or so I told myself. Despite priding myself on being open-minded, with minimal reflection, I had dismissed what billions of people consider their universal truth.
Yet, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church at the end of last year, so what changed?
A constant feature of my Boston College experience has been interacting with the Center for Student Formation (CSF). At CSF, there is a wonderful pamphlet outlining the three “be’s” of a Jesuit education: be attentive, be reflective, and be loving. Being attentive was introduced to me in simple, short reflection exercises about things in my life that were either energizing or draining me. I looked into my life and tried to find what excited me and what did not. These reflections, along with the Core Curriculum, forced me to learn about and see new perspectives and be attentive to how I felt about them. These two aspects of my Jesuit education forced me not only to be exposed to alternate worldviews but also to consider how they could work in my life.
The next “be” is to be reflective. Reflecting is how “we discover and compose meaning to our lives.” I still remember the first day I took that “be” seriously. For a long time, I was terrified about being alone with my thoughts. I would run to the endless distractions around me, digital or physical. Being left alone and reflecting on life is something I never did and was genuinely scared to do. One day, I decided to sit alone with myself in the Houghton Garden, a small nature reserve directly off the Upper Campus, and take that second “be” seriously. I remember the feeling that I had when walking over there more vividly than maybe anything else in my life. I was so excited! The colors around me were bright. Deep inside me, I was floating through every cell in my body. I felt warm; I felt alive. I felt so confident on my walk
over there that something significant would happen in my life.
I sat on the rock that was carved into a bench, and I felt. I watched the leaves fall from the trees into the stream and flow in front of me. I watched the branches blow in the wind while the sun filtered through them. That feeling inside of me was still there. And for hours, I sat with my thoughts. It took work to sit alone with myself. There were always things to do and apps to scroll through that kept me away. The day I decided to take myself seriously was when I decided to sit with myself and just exist. I kept returning to that garden throughout that fall. Meeting myself felt like meeting a new best friend.
That feeling I got from the garden that day I have only felt a few other times. I was not religious when I went there. But while there, I considered some of the things I was learning in my Engaging Catholicism Core theology course. Eventually, a few months later, I decided to try to go to church and then to confession. I sat with the priest; I told him things I have never told anyone else, the absolute darkest parts of my soul. I was completely vulnerable with him—and he told me he still loved me. When I sat down with him and told him it had been more than 10 years since my last confession, he exclaimed, “Welcome back!” I have never felt more open and vulnerable, yet so loved, than I did in that confessional. That feeling of bliss rushed over me. In every cell of my body, I was floating.
That day, I decided to get confirmed in the Church.
By being attentive, I noticed those moments in my life when I felt that feeling. By reflecting, I have resolved that those moments were important ones in my life and ones God wanted me to notice. I feel like God brought me to that garden, God brought me to that priest, and God brought me to Boston College, where I could discover my faith. To reflect is to discover and compose the meaning of my experiences. I reflected on God’s work throughout my existence.
The final “be” is to “be loving.” That might be the most important of them all. Being loving is how you treat others and the world around you. During my confession, the priest reminded me that life is a gift, and God will take that away one day. While you have that gift, you ought to use it, and all the other gifts God has
ATTENTIVE. REFLECTIVE. LOVING. BE
given you, to bring out God’s kingdom, not your own. I try my best to live my life lovingly, to be a man for others, and to make God proud with every action I take. I came to Boston College somewhat indifferent to life. Now, I look at the world and see God’s beautiful creation. Sonder is that feeling when you realize every passerby is living as real and complex a life as yours. I feel sonder not only for other people but for every part of creation. In every leaf, in every blade of grass, in every hand-railing, in everything—I try to see the work of God. I feel absolute joy when I look at the world, the colors of the sky, and the beautiful balance in nature; I feel that absolute joy that I used to cut myself off from. The world can sing; I just needed to listen to hear it.
By being attentive and reflective, genuinely opening myself up to different perspectives, and considering how they could fit into my life, I opened myself up to a love of this world I couldn’t feel before. Suppose Socrates was right, and education is more than putting knowledge into souls, but turning the whole soul around and directing it at what is good. In that case, the value of a Jesuit education is not in the facts you learn but in a change in the way you interact with the world. My Jesuit education opened me up to a whole new world of life-affirmation. In everything, I see God. ■
Kyle Sutton ‘24 is a graduate of Boston College with majors in political science and philosophy.
photo credit : Courtesy of Caitlin Cunningham, Boston College
The MOST PRACTICAL of Questions
Chris Higgins
Oone day, after class , a student followed me back to office hours. Clearly, there was something he wanted to get off his chest. After a few minutes, he summoned the courage to reveal his shameful secret: “I am undeclared.”
I don’t know how moments like this still manage to surprise me. I am well aware of the stigma around “gaps” in your resume. Even as college websites extol exploration, the message on the ground is clear: pick a lane and step on the gas! Still, it pains me to see young people mistaking the virtue of the quest for the vice of indecision.
I know how sophomoric this sounds, this talk of college as a quest for meaning and purpose. To this I say: “Long live sophomores!” As the great developmentalist William Perry put it:
The function of the college is to present to the students’ attention in concentrated form all the questions that the sophomore in man has raised for himself through the ages and which he has then spent the rest of his history trying to resolve, rephrase, or learn to live with.
Perry is referring not to second-year students but to the sophomore in each of us, that still unjaded voice willing to admit uncertainty in the face of the big questions.
What Perry does not mention is the other voice in each of us, that inner bully who mocks our metaphysical longings and tells us to grow up. How should we r espond to this self-appointed representative of “the real world”? Let’s see if the old advice about bullies holds here. In fact, let’s see if we can beat the voice of practicality at its own game. Is a cynical approach to college actually practical?
To answer this, the first step is to recall that stance matters. Imagine, for example, two people in a museum: one is an aspiring artist who loves nothing more than sitting with a painting and learning to see through its eyes; the other is an insurance risk assessor. As the assessor walks the galleries, he does not really encounter paintings, only pigmented assets and liabilities. Too many of today’s students are just like this risk assessor. And who could blame them for treating college as simply an advanced form of the studenting they had to master to succeed in the high-stakes game of college
photo credit : Courtesy of Yoon
S. Byun, Boston College
...the point of liberal learning is precisely to expand the range of your noticing and enrich your vocabulary of aspiration...to examine and rebuild your compass.
admissions? There are requirements to be met, credits to be accumulated, majors and minors to complete, and the resulting credential does have value in the job market. All of this is true, but only partially so. Just as the assessor saw only canvases—oblivious to the invitation to expanded vision issued by each painting—so the instrumental stance of the ace student can blind him to what is really possible in a place of learning.
The instrumentalist greets the world with variations on the same question, What’s the best way to get where I want to go? This question is sensible and can lead to valuable forms of learning as we apprentice ourselves to rich and varied instrumental practices. If instrumental learning has one flaw, it is a pretty big one: it likes to pretend that it is the only game in town. Caught up in the question, How do we get what we (happen to have already learned to) want?, we fail to see that we are begging the fundamental question of what is worth wanting. What is truly worth wanting to have, to participate in, to achieve, to become? This is liberal learning’s defining question, but it is a fugitive question. It cannot be permanently installed and left running, like a fountain. Each time, it must be posed anew, and always as an interruption of the instrumental attitude.
Consider that awkward moment at the start of many college classes. As the professor goes over the syllabus, you can feel a question in the air, whether or not a student is brave enough to voice it: What’s the point? What’s this good for? Here the liberal educator finds oneself in a bind. This is a real and important question, and the students deserve a response. And yet, to answer then, at the outset of the course, is impossible. For in effect, the student is asking, What is the value of this class in terms of what I currently notice and appreciate as valuable? But of course, the point of liberal learning is precisely to expand the range of your noticing and enrich your vocabulary of aspiration. It is a contradiction to try to state the payoff of humane learning in terms of one’s current values when the point is to examine and rebuild your compass.
We are now in a position to attempt an answer to our earlier question about the practicality of viewing college as credentialing. To do so is to instrumentalize the very process that offers a safeguard against runaway instrumentalism. It is to treat college as if it were an
answer to the question of how to get what you happened to learn to want when it is in fact one of your only serious opportunities to face up to the deeper question of what is worth wanting. The instrumentalist is like someone who, having received in the mail an invitation to a more expanded life, fixes on the envelope and uses it as scrap paper on which to jot down things to do. There is nothing practical, we are ready to conclude, about skipping over the question of where we are and should be headed in the name of “real-world” considerations about which route is fastest.
Thus, if higher education is to be truly practical, it requires what the Greeks called skholê , a period of release from the grind. This is not “leisure” if that means only pausing the hamster wheel to rest. Skholê means exiting the wheel altogether. Without unhitching ourselves, at least for a time, from the yoke of necessity, we would never get a clear sense of our nature and condition. To proceed under the illusion that life is nothing but a things-to-do list and you are nothing but a checker of boxes is to make a mockery of education. College, Michael Oakeshott argued, is “the gift of an interval”:
Here is a break in the tyrannical course of irreparable events; a period in which to look round upon the world and upon oneself without the sense of an enemy at one’s back or the insistent pressure to make up one’s mind; a moment in which to taste the mystery without the necessity of at once seeking a solution. ■
Chris Higgins is chair of the Department of Formative Education in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College, where he directs the B.A. program in Transformative Educational Studies. A philosopher of education, Higgins is the author of Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024).
For more resources on topics discussed and sources for this article, visit: bc.edu/c21jesuithighered
M Cultivating Conscience Why I Chose Catholic Higher Education
Colleen Dallavalle
my education at a Catholic institution has transformed my life. It encouraged me to explore the world from multiple perspectives and helped me develop the skills needed to become an agent of positive change. As someone who has learned and worked in both public and Catholic settings, I have seen the impact and benefit of thinking more broadly about an individual’s holistic formation—celebrating their God-given talents, showing them how to connect with their purpose, and working together to serve the needs of the world. And as a higher education professional, I’ve seen firsthand the power of building an educational model that cultivates an ecosystem of support, grounded in holistic student development.
When earlier generations of my family came to the United States, access to Catholic education transformed
my entire family’s trajectory. My grandfather graduated from Seton Hall University and went on to become an educational administrator, which inspired many family members to do the same. His legacy instilled important values that we all share—to serve your community; to treat others with kindness, grace, and compassion; and to leave the world and your community better than you found it. As I explore education options for my daughter, I find myself reflecting on which will best prepare her to be a good person, and I return to Catholic education, which emphasizes holistic formation, reflection on shared values, and experiences that foster empathy, truth, and compassion.
Higher education should be, and is, a laboratory for exploration—an opportunity for individuals to determine who they want to be, what they want to contribute to the world, and how they choose to practice those interests and values daily. Colleges and universities, especially Jesuit, Catholic institutions, are uniquely positioned to utilize their values framework to lead formative research and support holistic development of their communities.
The mission of a Catholic higher education institution requires us to integrate a human-centered approach—one that brings interpersonal components into the knowledge acquisition process. Instead of bifurcating students’ experiences and creating silos for their learning, the framework and mission calls us to explore complex problems alongside shared universal truths—ideas that reinforce our shared humanity. When we know that we have been called to serve a greater purpose, it gives practitioners and learners the opportunity to think deeply about how the liberal arts connect learning to real-time interpersonal behavior and actions.
I chose to work at Boston College (BC) because of its leadership in formative education. As a Jesuit, Catholic institution that infuses Ignatian pedagogy into our holistic model of education and the campus culture, BC seamlessly integrates the principle of cura personalis care for the whole person—into the framework of all that we do.
As I look toward the future of education, I know that student formation will be key to addressing the growing needs of the world and the ever-evolving demographics of new classes of incoming students. These i nstitutions are poised to address complex problems by preparing individuals with the ability to think critically and compassionately while also differentiating between transactional learning and transformational learning. I am confident in this, because this has been the case for me and for my family. I’m forever grateful for the lessons I learned as a graduate of Seton Hall, an administrator at BC, and a practicing Catholic, because each of those experiences has helped me understand the world, people, and how to better act as a servant leader. ■
Colleen Dallavalle is associate vice president for student engagement and formation within the Boston College Division of Student Affairs.
Fred Field, Boston
Engaging the World
A Theological and Ecological Reflection
Jaime L. Waters
Oone of the many benefits of a Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts education is a holistic approach to education and formation that is attentive to student needs and the needs of the world, which I experienced firsthand as an undergraduate student at Boston College (BC) years ago. Since joining the BC Clough School of Theology and Ministry faculty in 2022, I have taught Scripture courses focused on intellectual, spiritual, pastoral, and personal formation, critically engaging biblical texts while also creating opportunities to engage contemporary society in meaningful ways.
One example is a recent course, Ecology and the Bible, exploring biblical perspectives on animals and the earth. In it, students study texts that reflect on blessing and care of animals and the earth and explore legal traditions in the Pentateuch. While critically reading and analyzing biblical traditions, students discover how theological texts reflect on the interdependence and interconnectedness of the whole earth community.
ATTENTIVENESS TO ISSUES
In addition to reading ancient theological reflections, students engage recent statements from Pope Francis, including Laudato si’ (2015), the Message on World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (2023), and Laudate Deum (2023), and ongoing global efforts to address climate change, such as the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28). When discussing contemporary issues and theological statements, the course is intentional about looking for ways that Scripture might contribute to, enhance, or inspire reflections that might be used to speak to ecological crises with a theologically grounded vision of justice that requires aggressive and overdue responses to crises.
COMMUNITY INTERACTION
Students are encouraged to share what they learn in the classroom with their communities. For instance, the midterm paper requires students to prepare responses to questions on Scripture, ancient legal tradition, and current Church teachings; find outside conversation partners to discuss the biblical texts and responses to the writing prompts; and record the feedback to incorporate into their papers. The interactions help the class practice articulating their ideas to people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives and to rethink their analyses. The interactive component enriches the assignment and gives the class more ideas about how to interact with their larger community to strengthen their own theological, intellectual, and personal growth and development.
INCORPORATING THE ARTS
A course on Ecology and the Bible also lends itself well to incorporation of the arts. When studying Psalms 148–150, which emphasize all of creation praising their creator, the class listens to musical renditions to consider how they enrich our understanding of the Psalms. During another class meeting, students visit the McMullen Museum of Art to view religious artwork, including depictions of biblical creation accounts of Genesis and Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom. Thanks to the museum curators and educational directors, the class views pieces from the collections and engages in conversations about how Scripture influences art and ways artists find inspiration in biblical texts.
Overall, a course like Ecology and the Bible is an example of the creative freedom, range, and opportunities that are possible through a Jesuit, Catholic liberal a rts education. This course shows ways that theological texts can be studied in dynamic ways to inform and inspire critical inquiry and thoughtful engagement with the world. ■
Jaime L. Waters ’06 is associate professor of Old Testament at the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry.
photo credit: Courtesy of Gary Wayne Gilbert, Boston College
Shine Your Light for all to see
Liberal arts education in the Jesuit tradition encourages students to reflect on their lives, identify and develop their talents, and use those talents to help others. With this in mind, we asked several prominent Boston College alumni to consider the value of their liberal arts education.
STEPHEN J. PEMBERTON ’89, D.B.A. ’15 (Hon.), M.S. ’19
The college experience is never really measured by a specific time or place, but over the span of a lifetime. That is how long it takes to realize just how treasured your time there really was, that you developed friendships that you could have never found anywhere else. They will be your anchor, your compass, your guide for the rest of your life. You will be at each other's weddings. You will be godparents to one another’s children. You'll take on some great entrepreneurial risk together. You'll celebrate one another's successes and stand shoulder to shoulder in times of uncertainty. As time and life move on, I suspect you'll see that your time at college really was only just the beginning.
You know, if you study lighthouses, as I have come to, you are called a pharologist. This is an acknowledgment to the first attested lighthouse constructed on the Greek island of Pharos. So I can tell you as a quasipharologist, as a practical matter, the
lighthouse really is no longer necessary. Technology has rendered these architectural marvels nearly obsolete, and yet they still endure. The reason for this, as near as I can tell, is that the lighthouse, the savior of the sea, exists now not to help us navigate the sea but to help us navigate humanity: to show us and provide to us a perpetual reminder of how we ought to be with one another and how we ought to be to one another. A lighthouse is perhaps the most selfless structure that humankind has ever created. It serves no purpose other than to be of service to another, to simply be a beacon in times of uncertainty and chaos. It is faithful, steadfast, humble, resilient. It seeks neither reward nor recognition. It is not concerned about one's race, gender, or faith expression. It neither qualifies your distress nor renders judgment on your uncertainty, nor does it care about your title, where you stand on a specific social issue, or who you voted for in the last election. The lighthouse is only concerned about protecting your journey, and in doing so, sees our common humanity.
Steve is a member of the Boston College Board of Trustees, senior advisor at Franworth, and the author of A Chance in the World and The Lighthouse Effect . He is also founder and CEO of the Lighthouse Academy, a leadership, coaching, and HR consultancy fostering inspired management of human capital in a world of shifting workplace trends. Steve is a board member of the University & College Accountability Network, Loyola Academy, the Wily Network, the Academy for Urban School Leadership, Boys Hope Girls Hope, and Disability: IN. He has received the Horizon Award from the United States Congress and the Lifetime Achiever Award from the New England Opportunity Association as well as honorary doctorates from WinstonSalem University, Providence College, and Boston College.
CHARLES I. CLOUGH, JR. ’64
I grew up on the streets of Boston in the 1950s, when we thought everyone was Catholic. Our local parish, Holy Name in West Roxbury, was like a second home. I am a product of the Boston Public Schools, but early on I had Boston College in my sights. BC was the only school to which I applied and the only Catholic institution I've attended.
My life has had two tracks, and both had their starting point at Boston College. Lacking an aptitude for mathematics and the sciences, I chose the liberal arts, chose history as my major, and I had the good fortune to be exposed to such luminaries as Professors Thomas O'Connor, Radu Florescu, and Raymond McNally. The study of American and European history at the level they offered left me with not only a love for learning but the ability to go beyond facts to develop thought and perspective. Most importantly, at Boston College I discovered aspiration. I went on to receive an M.B.A. and spent my career in investments, my first track, in which the attributes I developed at BC were critical for success. I found that in business, wisdom is more important than economics, science, and politics.
While working with young people in my parish and in the wider Church, I found myself called to the permanent diaconate, my second track, and was ordained in 1986. My clerical career has focused on prison ministry and parish work. My BC training in the liberal arts helped me become more sympathetic to the thoughts and challenges that other people face—critical attributes in a ministerial career. My wife Gloria and I were able to name the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, which is a place where young
Jesuits, religious, and lay people who want to serve the Church come together and learn from one another. The school is a powerful force in fulfilling Pope John XXIII's understanding of the Church as the "People of God."
Chuck is chairman, chief investment officer, partner, and portfolio manager at Clough Capital. Prior to founding Clough Capital, he served as the chief global investment strategist at Merrill Lynch & Co., where he advised many of the world’s top institutions and investors on portfolio strategy. Previously, Chuck served in key positions in a number of other financial service firms. He has served on the boards of a number of medical, educational, and charitable institutions, including Boston College. Chuck graduated magna cum laude with a major in history and a minor in economics from Boston College and earned an M.B.A. at the University of Chicago. He is an ordained permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Boston, serving at his local parish in Concord, MA.
JUAN ALEXANDER CONCEPCIÓN ’96, M.Ed. ’97, J.D. & M.B.A. ’03
I am a product of Catholic education from grammar school at St. Rose of Lima School in Manhattan, to Cardinal Hayes High School, to four degrees from Boston College (BC). One of the reasons that I chose BC over other great universities was that I wanted to continue my formation through Catholic
Boston Light (foreground) and Graves Light Station (background) stand at the entrance to Boston Harbor, guarding this historic shipping lane and guiding vessels entering the port. Boston Light, first illuminated in 1716, is the oldest lighthouse in the United States.
education. At BC, I majored in history and political science and minored in African American studies with a multidisciplinary focus on social justice. I made the absolute right choice for college because the Jesuit, Catholic tradition places ethics and morality at the center of every subject under study. I felt very much a part of a community working together toward something excellent and good. As students, we held each other accountable to the ideal of serving others.
Now, as a well-rounded professional, I’ve worked in health care, transportation, education, and other dynamic fields. I credit my broad liberal arts education with giving me the malleable background to enter these different fields, adapt to new and challenging roles, and apply the same core ethical and moral principles I learned in my earlier education to my career in business and public service leadership. In everything I do, I bring with me a part of our universal Catholic Church. My Catholic education formed the core of my identity as a person and a professional.
Juan is a director and senior legal counsel at Boston Scientific Corporation, where he guides legal compliance and strategic workforce management.
Before joining Boston Scientific in 2019, he served in various senior leadership roles at MassDOT/ MBTA and was the assistant general counsel at a publicly traded company in Irvine, California. Juan is a long-serving director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a legal engine for racial equity and social justice in Massachusetts. In 2020, he joined other leading executives to establish the New Commonwealth Fund (NCF), which raised $30 million in its first year to help combat systemic racism through corporate, nonprofit, and government partnerships in Massachusetts. Juan has four degrees from Boston College. He serves as a trustee at Saint Columbkille Partnership School in Brighton and at Cardinal Hayes High School in the South Bronx, New York.
MICHELLE A. KNIGHT ‘98, M.B.A./M.S. ‘05
While I am working in economics now, I was an English major at Boston College and I am a firm believer in the value of a liberal arts education no matter what field one eventually enters. I always say "English majors can do anything!" Through English courses and, really, much of the liberal arts Core Curriculum, you gain the ability to read carefully, take in information, analyze, make judgments, and articulate the reasons for your judgments. I think you already need to have these fundamental skills when you hit the "real world."
In my case, I was fortunate to have great people who taught me about the world of finance on the job. And of course, I need to keep up with new developments and trends in a business that is often in flux. The liberal arts skills are the constants—the tools I rely on every day. I don’t know how I would be successful thinking critically and communicating effectively—with my colleagues, with businesses, with families—without them.
The Jesuit approach to the liberal arts was also formative for me. It has
led me to look at situations in business and in life with greater empathy and gratitude. I try to approach life with a strong appreciation for the people with whom I work and interact. When I consider what my legacy might be in this world, I don’t think about the financial elements of my work. I think about the relationships I have and the spiritual elements of my life.
Michelle serves as managing partner, president, and chief economist for Ropes Wealth Advisors, LLC. As president and managing partner, she is responsible for day-to-day management of the firm and executing its long-term strategic plan. As chief economist for Ropes Wealth, Michelle is responsible for apprising clients of the firm of global economic and market activity. In addition to serving as a trustee of Boston College, she is a trustee of Boston Latin School, Dedham Country Day School, Leventhal Map and Education Center of the Boston Public Library, and Rosie’s Place. Michelle teaches third grade religious education at Holy Name Parish in West Roxbury and is a parent volunteer at Saint Sebastian’s School and Dedham Country Day School.
BRIEN M. O’BRIEN ’80
I had a memorable four years of Jesuit high school at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, and then earned a bachelor of science with honors from Boston College (BC). I enjoyed studying finance, but it was my liberal arts degree that really completed my education. After I finished my finance degree requirements, I used all my elective courses and overloaded for a couple semesters to complete a theology degree from what is now BC’s Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences. In theology, as in all my humanities courses, I found that the Jesuit emphasis on asking the deeper, most meaningful questions and more complex thinking benefited me
personally and professionally throughout my adult life.
For me, the business or finance education in the Carroll School of Management was certainly important. It provided a set of tools that I use daily in the business world and that have been integral to my career. But the liberal arts aspect of my education provided a method of thought. You should learn skills in college that help you get a job, but it’s learning how to think that will help you develop your life. I am referring primarily to post-secondary education, but I think the same principles apply to our entire educational system. A lack of investment in holistic education—in fact, a lack of investment in education generally throughout our nation—has led to many of the problems we have in our country today.
Brien is chairman and chief executive officer of Port Capital, LLC, a global asset management firm. In addition to his role as a trustee of Boston College, Brien serves as a trustee at the University of Chicago and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He also serves on the board of trustees at the National Parks Foundation, a position to which he was appointed by the Secretary of the Department of the Interior during the Obama administration. Brien has been active in the world of education for many years, and he and his wife have subsidized the college education of several low-income students from around Chicago and elsewhere.
SUSAN MARTINELLI SHEA ’ 76
Growing up, I always wanted to be a teacher, and so the Boston College School of Education [now the Lynch School of Education and Human Development] was a natural fit for me. And I certainly gained the educational methodology that I needed for the classroom. But the Jesuit approach in my education classes, as well as the wider academic program, was all about
the values that nourish the whole person. Through these experiences, including a transformational experience in PULSE [BC’s service learning program that combines field work with the study of theology and philosophy], I learned to see the value of each person and each child. I ended up pursuing a career teaching children with learning differences, which I have continued in some form until the present day. When I was an undergraduate at Boston College, Fr. David Cummiskey, S.J. [who taught at BC from 1957–1977], told me something I would never forget. He
said, as graduates of Boston College, you will never say “I can’t do that.” Indeed, everywhere I’ve taught I’ve had a banner in the classroom that says “Never Say I Can’t Do It.” I think that attitude reflects a lot of the Jesuit spirit in education.
Sue is founder and president of Dancing with the Students, a nonprofit organization that offers ballroom dance instruction to students in underserved neighborhoods in and around Camden, Philadelphia, and Los
What will your next chapter be?
Angeles to promote respect, civility, exercise, and enjoyment. In addition to serving as a trustee of Boston College, Sue also serves on the board of the Gesu School in Philadelphia. She was presented the James F. Cleary Masters Award from Boston College, the Great Friends to Kids Award, and the Gesu Spirit Medal. Long active in philanthropy, Sue also owns and operates the Charleston Dirty Birds Atlantic League minor league baseball team with her son, Andy (’04).
Boston College Companions
Boston College (BC) has joined a growing group of institutions who are welcoming accomplished leaders and professionals back to campus. BC Companions is a yearlong immersive intergenerational program for individuals who are curious and open to imagining how they may live life differently. The program is intended for people who are ready to reflect on their own personal journeys, to explore new ways of being in a supportive and lasting community, and to connect their lives with meaning and purpose through the distinctive lens of Jesuit, Catholic formative education.
BC Companions combines academic study with elements of Ignatian spirituality to help individuals renew purpose, explore discernment, and deepen spirituality. The Jesuit “way of proceeding” goes back five centuries in forming men and women for transformative service and leadership. The program name itself acknowledges that St. Ignatius of Loyola always valued having companions to walk with throughout his journey. The program prioritizes the importance of community for supporting one’s own growth and change.
What does the program entail? A cohort of 15–20 Fellows audit courses in select areas of interest across the University’s nine schools and colleges while participating in a bi-weekly seminar designed for the program. Fellows share and reflect on their life stories and are invited to shape the upcoming years of their lives in an intentional and purposeful way. Through Boston as a Classroom, Fellows also think about community, history, and how each of them may contribute to the common good. Cohort members learn from University leadership
and Jesuits, work closely with a faculty advisor, and have the option to meet with a spiritual director. Fellows travel to Spain and Rome for a pilgrimage to learn more about the life of St. Ignatius and can choose to experience a five-day silent retreat as well.
The program allows Fellows the space and tools to imagine how they are going to continue to live their lives with purpose in the decades to come. One might discover a new vocation or decide to continue in one’s work while contributing in a different way. Others might decide to get involved in the nonprofit world, become an entrepreneur, or opt to live in another country. Every Fellow has the opportunity to reflect on their life thus far, consider what is next, and leave with a set of tools to keep reimagining how they might live with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.
Individuals often say they wish they could go back to college later in life for the sheer joy of learning. Boston College now provides just that opportunity through a year at BC examining life and deepening one’s spirituality while further appreciating the value of a Jesuit liberal arts education—across the lifespan. ■
Margaret Laurence is director of Boston College Companions and Initiatives for Formative Education at Boston College.
For more information, visit: bc.edu/ companions or contact Margaret Laurence at companions@bc.edu.
Opening Minds
Liberal Arts for ALL
Patrick Conway
The Boston College Prison Education Program (BCPEP) is an Applied Liberal Arts B.A. program serving incarcerated students at a men’s medium-security prison in Shirley, MA, and a men’s minimum-security prison in Concord, MA. Housed in the Provost’s Office, with degrees granted through the Woods College of Advancing Studies, BCPEP has admitted 62 incarcerated students across four different cohorts since its founding in the fall of 2019, making it the largest college-in-prison program in the state of Massachusetts. All courses are led by Boston College faculty. Beyond coursework, the program provides co-curricular opportunities for its students, including an annual Manresa Retreat, a “For Welles” event, inter-cohort debates, and participation within a student committee. The first students to graduate from the program will receive their diplomas in September 2024.
Boston College’s Jesuit, Catholic mission is a natural fit with BCPEP, especially as it relates to “the desire to learn, and in the call to live justly together.” BCPEP’s students not only aim to excel academically, but also greatly value the opportunity to participate in a community of “men and women for and with others.” Serving as a natural extension of Boston College’s commitment to academic excellence and the improvement of the human condition, the program is committed to fulfilling both the academic and career objectives of its students, prioritizing a humanistic, formative approach to teaching, learning, community building, and student development. Providing high-quality educational opportunities to students who very likely would not otherwise have access to them reflects the long Jesuit tradition of service to incarcerated populations alongside Boston College’s broader mission of affirming the value of a strong liberal arts education and addressing complex societal challenges while simultaneously seeking to contribute to the common good.
BCPEP seeks through research, advocacy, and policy work to rethink and reimagine the role of colleges and universities in addressing the many challenges of mass incarceration.
Running such a program requires working in partnership with various stakeholders, including faculty and leadership, correctional staff and administration, and, of course, BCPEP students themselves. The program is proudly affiliated with the Bard Prison Initiative, the most robust national network for the liberal arts in prisons. BCPEP’s transformative work is made possible through the generous support of its donors, and, as the program continues to develop and expand, it aims to serve as a model that pushes the bounds of what higher education in prison can be. ■
Patrick Conway, M.A. ’12, Ph.D. ’22, is program director of, a nd teaches in, the Boston College Prison Education Program.
BC found me in the land of the lost and forgotten, sitting very still and wasting my time away. What the BCPEP did was restore in me the desire to learn and elevate what I had lost along my journey in life. It’s refreshing to be reacquainted with a deeper meaning to exist. I feel as if my senses of motivation and drive have now been reinstated and that my life no longer hungers for purpose.”
Christian M.
“
Ultimately, the BCPEP has given voices to so many voiceless people who need others to stand up and speak up for them. Thank you to everyone involved. Whether you realize it or not, you are changing lives for the better every single day.”
Christopher G.
Nurudeen A. “
BCPEP is a great opportunity for those who are considered unworthy or undeserving like myself at one time. This program provided me with tools and confidence and shined a light on my academic potential.”
For more information on the BC Prison Education Program or the Human-Centered Engineering Program, visit: bc.edu/c21jesuithighered
photo credit :
Courtesy of Gary Wayne Gilbert, Boston College
Human-Centered Engineering and the CORE
Jenna Tonn
In the fall of 2021, Boston College (BC) welcomed its first cohort of undergraduate Human-Centered Engineering (HCE) majors to campus. The HCE program is located in the new Department of Engineering, part of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences (MCAS), both of which are the result of Boston College’s investment in the sciences as guided by the 2017 10-year Strategic Plan Ever to Excel
The Department of Engineering provides HCE majors a distinctive approach to their undergraduate engineering education. Like all other undergraduate students in MCAS, BC engineers fulfill all Core Curriculum requirements, integrating their engineering education with the strengths of the Jesuit, liberal arts tradition. During their four years on campus, HCE majors gain technical expertise in engineering, math, and science while experiencing the intellectual breadth of the Core Curriculum. BC’s approach to engineering—incorporating it with the liberal arts as a way of sharpening focus on engineering in relation to society—educates a new generation of engineers prepared to grapple with the complex ways that engineering problems and solutions impact society.
BC’s liberal arts tradition encourages a dynamic exchange between expertise, integration, and reflection, a combination found throughout the HCE curriculum. For instance, I co-teach a Complex Problem course for first-year students, Making the Modern World: Design, Ethics, and Engineering, with my engineering colleague, Professor Jonathan Krones. The course explores the history of engineering and technology through the perspective of equity and justice while also introducing students to the fundamentals of engineering. In designing this course, we worked to model what an engineering education at BC means: a devotion to technical rigor in the context of critical attention to the impact engineering decisions have on everyday lives, vulnerable communities, conditions of work and labor, and the environment.
Careful consideration of the social impact of engineering—its
socio-technical aspects—also emerges in the HCE curriculum’s focus on partnership with communities. In Professor Avneet Hira’s first-year Introduction to Human-Centered Engineering course and the junior-year Collaborative Service Engineering Project (CSEP) class, for example, students embark on engineering design projects alongside a community partner. Student teams in Prof. Hira’s course have collaborated with The Campus School to design and prototype personalized technologies for individual students, while CSEP teams led by Prof. Krones have focused on Boston’s Additional Dwelling Unit (ADU) program and contextualized their engineering design and analysis within Boston’s history of racism and housing segregation, housing justice movements, and climate justice. Becoming an engineer in conversation with real users and current policy priorities develops engineering expertise and reframes it as one of many skills needed to solve important, complex problems.
While philosophy and theology might not always have had a place in the engineering classroom, at BC they most certainly do. As sophomores, BC engineers learn how to become discerning problem-solvers in the engineering classroom and also how to identify, ask, and start to answer enduring questions about the self and society. At a programmatic level, all second-year engineers take Engineering Foundations Studio, a year long sequence of five courses that introduces them to engineering topics across fields including statics and mechanics; circuits; thermodynamics; fluids; mass transport; probability; systems engineering; and engineering modeling and analysis. In addition, they can elect to take BC’s yearlong Perspectives on Western Culture, the long-standing Core sequence in philosophy and theology that asks students to consider the “best way to live.” Through this coursework, students can attain the breadth and depth of engineering within the liberal arts.
One of the most distinctive aspects of BC—and of the HCE
BC engineers learn how to become discerning problemsolvers in the engineering classroom and also how to identify, ask, and start to answer enduring questions about the self and society.
program—is the intentional attention to not just what students are learning in the classroom but how their experiences are shaping their development as people. The HCE program considers student formation, the formation of students as individuals and as engineers, an essential and important part of academic life. Each semester, engineers participate in weekly faculty-led reflection sessions that integrate their academic and extracurricular experiences on campus and reflect on their growth as individuals. And as faculty, we are learning from their experiences, reflecting, and continually looking for creative and cross-disciplinary ways to continue building a rigorous and thoughtful program of study for our engineers. ■
Jenna Tonn is assistant professor of the practice and director of undergraduate studies for the Human-Centered Engineering program in the Boston College Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences.
Messina’s Mission: Expanding Access to Transformative Jesuit Education
Erick Berrelleza, S.J.
Ii recently attended a Halftime retreat—a three-day experience that invites sophomore students to reflect on living a life of meaning and purpose. They were privileged days in Dover, MA of listening to our students reflect on their experiences on the Heights and asking life’s big questions. I was transported back more than two decades to my own journey of discernment, not necessarily my path to Jesuit life, but more broadly to the non-linear reflection about career and vocation I engaged in as a college student myself. I recalled the twists and turns of trying to figure out what the late Father Michael Himes framed here as the three key questions: What brings me joy? What am I good at? Who does the world need me to be? While at Dover, I thought about my own Jesuit education at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. I don’t recall going on anything quite like Halftime, but I realized throughout my undergraduate Jesuit education that the degree I was earning was intended to make an impact on the world around me. To do anything less with it would squander its value.
DISCOVERING A PURPOSEFUL LIFE
In my freshman year of college, the 9/11 attacks disrupted the world as we knew it and brought many of us to consider how we all fit together. Although I was safely some
Dean Erick Berrelleza, S.J., and students at the first Accepted Students Day for Messina College.
3,000 miles away in Los Angeles, those events recalibrated my worldview and prompted me to keep questions of living a purposeful life front and center in my collegiate years. I was moved by the show of humanity at its best, how communities around the nation rallied to respond with care in the wake of disaster, and wondered about my own contribution to the needs of those I encountered. I recall one formative experience was when a group of my classmates and I were assigned a project at Homeboy Industries—an organization founded by Father Greg Boyle, S.J., to provide rehabilitation and re-entry for formerly gang-involved women and men. Our specific project seems irrelevant now, but the experience was a moment of seeing how someone was using his education for the good of those around him. I wondered about my own contribution. Who did the world need me to be?
When I was getting ready to join the Jesuits, I remember packing up the few things on a checklist we were allowed to bring with us—only what was essential we were told. Not on the list was the diploma I received from Loyola Marymount just a few months before. As the first in my family to complete college, that piece of paper was hard-won. Not knowing what to do with it, my parents kept it for safekeeping. When I visited them some months later, it was clear the diploma would never make it back to
photo credit : Courtesy of Lee Pellegrini, Boston College
I realized throughout my undergraduate Jesuit education that the degree I was earning was intended to make an impact on the world around me. To do anything less with it would squander its value.
me: my mom had it framed and proudly put it on display at their home. I was happy my parents could share in the joy of that degree, as it was theirs as much as it was mine. When I think of that piece of paper now—still hanging in its frame at my parents’ home—it reminds me that the degrees we earn are meant to be shared with others, much like the education we receive. I’ve been trying to do that ever since. I did end up getting another copy of that diploma, but the original is where it belongs.
DEVELOPING THE MISSION
I think it’s my life as a Jesuit, though, that has attuned my eyes to see where my contribution is most needed. I’m honored now to serve as the founding dean of Messina College, Boston College’s ninth school, which will welcome its inaugural class of students this July. The mission of Messina College is to serve students not too different from my own background—students who are the first in their families to attend college and who likely didn’t have college at the forefront of their minds. Through a fully residential associate’s degree program, Messina College is intentionally designed to support first-generation students with high financial need. Beyond academic support, the model takes a holistic view of students and invites them to experience the transformative Jesuit education we know well at Boston College (BC) and elsewhere. Our Messina students will engage the Core Curriculum and choose from one of four majors, each aligned with learning goals of an existing undergraduate program: Applied Data Science, Applied Psychology and Human Development, Health Sciences, or General Business. Upon completing their associate’s degrees at Messina College, graduates will have pathways to complete bachelor’s degrees (including at BC) and opportunities for skilled entry into the workforce.
CONNECTING TO THE PAST
The very name of our new college—Messina—is appropriate for the program we are developing on BC’s new Brookline Campus (formerly Pine Manor College), as it is tied to the historical roots of Jesuit education. It was in the port city of Messina, Sicily, that the newly founded Jesuits opened their first school in 1548, accessible to students regardless of their economic background. It was the local community of Messina that invited the Jesuits to found a school for the education of their children. Boston College’s own beginnings in the South End of Boston in 1863 are not too different from this story. BC was to be Boston’s college, established at the invitation
of the bishop to educate the predominantly Catholic and immigrant communities (though religious affiliation was never a bar to admission). And so, Messina College brings us full circle to these stories of beginnings, as BC makes another intentional commitment to expand college access and provide robust resources to support student success.
As we recruit students to Messina College primarily from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, I see in our prospective students both excitement and uncertainty about what lies ahead. I remember sharing this experience, not having many people to talk to about applying to college or about navigating college life. As first-generation students, college presents many unknowns. Our proposition at Messina College is to remove that uncertainty and create a small-school setting within a leading Jesuit university where our students feel they belong.
Thanks to BC’s Office of Undergraduate Admission, our class is already taking shape. We made history together when on January 16, 2024, we admitted the first group of students through the Early Decision process. I had the opportunity to call some of the admitted students later that week, and I will never forget the brief conversations I shared with them—hearing their exuberance of being invited to something new and the understanding that they will imprint Messina’s story with their stories.
I am humbled that this is the way I’m giving away my degrees today. Building the foundation of Messina College has been a privilege, but I have not done it alone. Messina benefits from collaborations across the University community. I am proud to say that this is a BC initiative in the fullest sense. Come July 2024, Messina College will welcome its first undergraduates. We will welcome them to the best that BC has to offer—to our formative education and mentorship, clubs and intramurals, retreats and service. And, in two years when they receive their diplomas, my hope is that they, too, will recognize what the world needs from them. ■
Erick Berrelleza, S.J., is a Jesuit priest of the USA West Province and founding dean of Messina College, Boston College’s first associate degree program beginning courses in the 2024–25 academic year.
For more information on Messina College, visit: bc.edu/messina-college
