This is Detroit Mercy: News from around our campuses

“Solidarity invites us to walk alongside and learn from our companions, both near and far, as we journey through life together as one human family.” This passage from Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ greets visitors as they visit the University’s new Reflection Garden, an inspirational focal point to all people who enter the McNichols Campus.

This first campus-wide project by University Ministry was designed with the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC), the private design firm arm of Detroit Mercy’s School of Architecture & Community Development. The DCDC gathered input from students and employees to design a peaceful, welcoming, creative and calming space where people can step away from everything going on in the world and have a talk with God.

Thanks to the generosity of one donor, a portion of the new garden has been completed and the remainder is planned. Donations for the Reflection Garden can be made with the envelope included in this magazine.

THIS IS Detroit Mercy.

University of Detroit Mercy is the sum of its stories. Here are just a few. Read more at sites.udmercy.edu/alumni.

Meet the new Law dean • 6 Building God’s network • 8

A stronger neighborhood • 9

Alumni helping students • 10

So they said • 11 A record-breaking year • 12

New Law dean’s focus is helping students thrive

By Grace Henning

Jelani Jefferson Exum began serving as dean of Detroit Mercy Law on July 1, 2021. She is the first person of color and second woman to serve as dean of Detroit Mercy Law. She follows Phyllis Crocker. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Jefferson Exum served as a law clerk for a federal appellate judge and a federal district court judge before joining legal academia. As a professor, she earned numerous teaching awards at multiple law schools. As an administrator, she developed a successful pipeline program. In 2019, Jefferson Exum joined the Detroit Mercy Law faculty as the Philip J. McElroy Professor of Law. She received the Detroit Mercy Law Professor of the Year award from the student body earlier this year. As a nationally recognized expert in sentencing law and procedure, she is a sought-after speaker and writer. She has given two TEDx Talks on the use of fatal force by police officers in America, serves as a member of the editorial board of the Federal Sentencing Reporter and her work has been featured on prominent sentencing blogs. Originally from New Orleans, Jefferson Exum has lived in the Detroit area for the past 11 years with her family — her husband Lowen and their three young children, Zora, Xavier and Isaiah. She appreciates the community, history, cultural diversity, art and music scenes and architecture of Detroit.

What will be the focus for your first year as dean?

I want to make sure we are doing all that we can to support our students from Day One until they step into their legal career. We will put a lot of energy into cultivating resources and putting systems in place that will allow our students to thrive, like bolstering our academic support department and increasing our resources for bar success. Additionally, we will continue to support the good work that is already being done in admissions and career services. My commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion will go beyond maintaining our diverse student and employee body. I want to make sure we have measurable outcomes not only in our diversity but that we are also looking at our policies, our curriculum and the climate of our institution to make sure that we have an inclusive environment where all of our community can thrive.

What originally drew you to Detroit Mercy Law?

I knew how important Detroit Mercy Law was to the community. I had been living in the area for about 11 years and working out of state at a different law school that I enjoyed, but I wanted to be rooted in the community where I was living. When I started to think seriously about finding a school to be my home institution in Detroit, I thought about what is most important to me. Social justice has always been the core of my own scholarship and professional work. I wanted to join a school where social justice was an embraced part of the tradition and mission of the entire university. For me, Detroit Mercy Law felt like a place where I would fit and my values would align with the institution’s values.

What are the strengths of Detroit Mercy Law?

Our greatest strength is our community — our bright and tenacious students, engaged alumni, expert faculty and dedicated team of administrators and staff. Our commitment to social justice and dedication to educating lawyers with a commitment to service through the law are key to the Jesuit and Mercy traditions at Detroit Mercy Law. Through our clinic and externship programs, relationships with alumni and bar associations and other work of our faculty and students, we are a visible presence in Detroit. I am proud of the work Detroit Mercy Law does for our students and community, and I am committed to making our outreach and legal services programs even stronger and ensuring our reputation reflects the impact we make. I must also recognize our Canadian & American Dual JD program, which is the only program of its kind in North America. We are fortunate to educate transnational lawyers through this program in partnership with Windsor Law, which also has a dedication to ethics, justice and service.

Why did you want to be dean of Detroit Mercy Law?

When I joined Detroit Mercy Law, I did not plan to pursue being the dean. I was just happy to be a part of the community. As faculty, I came to appreciate the school even more and to understand the real impact it makes in Detroit and on the students. I realized what a great team we have at Detroit Mercy Law. When the deanship became open, I thought, if ever there were a time to lead a school that I appreciate all the people in the institution and have a genuine desire to see the school thrive for those people, that it made a lot of sense to give it a shot.

Alumna takes a leap of faith to spread God’s word to youth

By Ron Bernas

Jenifer Young ’18, ’20 remembers what she felt on her first day of classes on Detroit Mercy’s McNichols Campus. “I was standing in front of the Commerce and Finance building and holding my books and being so excited about the idea that one day I would be graduating,” she said. That was almost 20 years ago. Today, at 37, Young is putting her Detroit Mercy education to use as the CEO of One God TV Network, a global Christian television network aimed at millennials. It’s a company she built from the ground up led, she says, by God. It took Young 10 years to earn her bachelor’s degree in Business and another two to earn an MBA. Along the way she raised children and worked full time in Detroit Mercy’s Office of the Registrar and the College of Engineering & Science records office. At the same time, she was making a name for herself in Christian media as host of a radio program for youth on The Word AM 560, Detroit’s Christian Talk, and a podcast iRoc Jesus, which reached more than a million listeners through Yes Lord Radio and several other syndicated internet radio stations. With Yes Lord Radio, she received a Stellar Award for Best Internet Radio Station in 2014. “It’s like a Grammy Award for the Gospel or Christian industry,” Young explained. After the Stellar win, she felt called to transfer her success to television and created a TV show called, “To The BEAT,” a Christian show for young people that dealt with issues of faith. Filmed in Detroit, it featuring unscripted interviews with Christian entertainers. She worked to find a national network to pick up the show, but it didn’t work out. Then, during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said she heard a voice. “God told me to start a TV network,” she said. After praying about it for a while she realized that she had the media background, the knowledge of business and the drive. “I had everything I needed to do this,” she said. With the capital investment of $20,000 from her IRA account, she built a studio in her house in late 2020 and moved forward with the plan.

“University of Detroit Mercy is my safety net and has been my home for 17 years,” she said. “When God asked me to leave my job, others said to wait…but if I would have waited on what seemed like the perfect time for me, how would that have been me trusting what God asked me to do?” She went live with One God TV on Feb. 14 this year and left the University in March. She isn’t looking back. “I look at it as God is building his own platform to showcase light and positivity,” Young said. One God TV offers talk shows, musical specials, movies and prayers. There is no shortage of possibilities. Hundreds of creators have come to her eager to get their content – which they have aired on YouTube, Instagram and other sites – on the network. Young receives funds through subscriptions and pays the content creators for their work based on the number of subscribers, and through affordable paid airtime for local ministries who need a televised outlet. It’s a point of pride for her, as other sites charge creators to air their work. “I don’t know what’s coming next,” she said. “But I keep thinking back to that young woman standing in front of the Commerce and Finance Building who didn’t know where she would go. And now, I’m CEO of a network.” For more information about One God TV Network, visit onegodtvnetwork. com or download the app for free to your smartphone or smart TV. A longer version of this story can be found at sites.udmercy.edu/alumni.

Live6 Alliance completes McNichols improvement

Since its founding in 2015, Live6 Alliance has supported more than 100 community initiatives designed to have a positive impact on the lives of those who live, work and play in the neighborhoods surrounding Detroit Mercy’s McNichols Campus. The highest-profile project debuted in October when University President and Live6 Board Chair Antoine M. Garibaldi, along with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Live6 Executive Director Geneva Williams, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially unveil the work recently finished on Six Mile near Livernois. The McNichols streetscape includes safe biking lanes, new sidewalks and lights, making the area more walkable for residents and patrons of six new restaurants, educational and business opportunities and public spaces in the area. Duggan said the work was the direct result of the collaboration. “Even though the McNichols streetscape has just been completed, we already are seeing new investment under way and more projects on the horizon that will make this corridor a vibrant part of this community,” he said. “This is what happens when city government partners with residents, businesses and other institutions to develop investment strategies that benefit everyone.” The partnership is also driven by the University’s strategic plan, one tenet of which calls for University investment in helping create “Detroit’s College Town” around the McNichols Campus. Live6 Alliance was co-founded by Garibaldi and University of Detroit Mercy in partnership with The Kresge Foundation in August 2015. The organization is an independent nonprofit whose purpose is to strengthen the neighborhoods and businesses surrounding the Livernois Avenue and McNichols Road/Six Mile corridor.

Project connects PA students, alumni

By Ron Bernas

Service learning is an important part of the University’s Physician Assistant program. That’s why Assistant Professor Kelli Frost generally assigns students in her first-year Introduction to the PA Profession class service work in healthcare settings. She says the students gain important skills, as well as a deeper understanding of the field. But like so many other things, the pandemic forced Frost to change her plans. In 2020, when clinics and other healthcare providers were not bringing in students, Frost had them exchange letters with residents of the St. Patrick Senior Center. It helped students connect with and learn about the needs of an underserved population. This year, with clinic placements still scarce, Frost had to find another way. She turned to the program’s alumni. “The PA program has a pretty engaged alumni base,” Frost said. She reached out and 35 alumni responded saying they were willing to chat one-on-one with a first-year PA student. “The goal was to have the freshmen understand the life of a PA and the challenges they are facing during the pandemic.” Frost said it was an extension of the regular series of PA speakers she has speak to her class, but the conversations turned more personal and emotional. These candid conversations took place virtually and started with a few scripted questions, and then went deeper. One of the students, Shawn Schwesinger, was paired with a PA working in Sterling Heights. He found the experience eye-opening. “She was more fortunate than many people; because she worked in a family practice the pandemic did not cause as many problems for her as it did for others,” Schwesinger said. “The office did mostly telehealth, which increased her paperwork and there weren’t other people in the office to help share the work.” She told him about the increase in patients with complaints of anxiety and depression, and of her own emotions when patients were healthy one week, and on a ventilator the next. “She did experience provider burnout,” he said. “But she was better off than many people because she was able to keep her job throughout the pandemic.” Molly Soraghan was another student who participated in the project. Her reflection paper talks of a moment in her interview of a PA who works with cardiovascular associates. “I know she has to put on a brave face every day, work through the fatigue and get back to helping those in need. It was in this small moment that I could see the toll that this pandemic has taken on everyone, especially healthcare providers.” Jeff Cornell ’12 is a PA on the Critical Care Team at Ascension Hospital in Warren. He remembered the day the PA student called him. “I always enjoy talking to the students,” he said. “I think it’s important for them to have a clinical perspective, which was hard because so many clinical placements were canceled because of COVID. I don’t think students can really appreciate what the field is like without clinicals.” After the experience, Frost and her students felt the need to give back to the alumni who helped her. She took inspiration from a project one of her children did in elementary school: A virtual quilt. “I had each student create a square for what we called an Alumni Gratitude Quilt,” Frost said. Students offered encouragement and thanks. Frost turned them into a paneled piece of art that she sent to the alumni who participated. “The students got a lot out of it and the alumni said they were grateful to have someone to tell their story to,” Frost said. Frost hopes to use transcripts of all interviews and the student papers reflecting on the experience in an academic paper about the project.