INTRODUCING OUR NEW SENIOR IMMERSION PROGRAM

By Christina Ortiz DIRECTOR OF THE IGNATIAN IMMERSION & SOLIDARITY PROGRAM

For many years, our juniors and seniors have participated in the traditional twoweek winter immersion program with our local community partners. Through this program they’ve been invited to engage more deeply and wholeheartedly with one community for two weeks at a time, and every winter we see incredible growth on the part of our upperclassmen as they learn from our community partners in nonprofit work and education. Historically, we’ve also invited upperclassmen to travel for overnight service immersion experiences in diverse locations such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, New Orleans, Belize and Alaska, however these opportunities were only available to up to 20% of the senior class.

When the pandemic forced us to put a halt to these endeavors for nearly two years, we took that as an opportunity to reimagine what’s possible. Rather than repeating the same immersion model two years in a row, we asked ourselves how we could instead stagger student formation and invite our seniors into even deeper immersion experiences before graduating from Regis Jesuit. Simultaneously, the new

Strategic Vision for Regis Jesuit was unveiled in the spring of 2020 which included a bold move of inviting 100% of our students to participate in an overnight service immersion by the time they graduate from our school. It was in this context that we devised an altogether new model for senior immersions.

Starting this year, Regis Jesuit began offering semesterlong senior level immersion courses that would both prepare and inspire seniors to use their gifts to build the Kingdom of God on earth. Rooted in every single tenet of the Grad at Grad (Open to Growth, Loving, Religious, Intellectually Competent and Committed to Doing Justice), these courses represent the pinnacle of Regis Jesuit education. They challenge both heart and mind, encourage excellence and inspire vulnerability and connection. This year, the courses offered were through the Theology and Fine Arts & Media Technology departments, and students enrolled in the classes participated in overnight immersions mid-semester in Colorado, Tennessee, Mexico and Ecuador. In the coming years, we anticipate immersion courses being offered through most, if not all, academic departments so that students can choose where and how they feel called to use their gifts and talents in service of God and others. By the 2024-25 academic year, we will expand the capacity of our course offerings to a point where they will replace the current two-week senior immersions program.

While we are incredibly excited at the prospect of this new model, we recognize that this is a big and audacious goal, and we are incrementally implementing this program to ensure we are doing so in an ethical, sustainable and prayerful manner. We’ve designed these courses to help our students resist the temptation to “otherize,” and to focus humbly on their own formation as they learn to be compassionate listeners and informed allies of their vulnerable neighbors. In a world that is too frequently polarized by violence and division, we hope these courses will teach our students to be more compassionate listeners, to love those with different backgrounds, faiths and politics from their own, and to resist indifference in the face of others’ suffering.

While the content of each class is uniquely designed to hone the skills required by each academic department, they share many things in common such as prayer, reflection and social action. A major component these classes share is an emphasis on narrative and storytelling. Students in all immersion classes this year were invited to listen to numerous personal stories told by migrants, the unhoused, the disabled, activists and their peers, among others. Ultimately, the students were invited to write a story or two of their own; stories that illuminate experiences of pain, outrage, joy, wonderment, hope, helplessness or transformation. Together they found the courage to name their own vulnerability and celebrate their own humanity, not as heroes or saviors but as loved sinners.

After countless discussions about what our immersion program is and hopes to be, one word and image has resounded above all others: encounter. Pope Francis defines a culture of encounter as “…not just seeing, but looking; not just hearing, but listening; not just passing people by, but stopping with them; not just saying ‘what a shame, poor people!’, but allowing yourself to be moved with compassion…”

The ultimate learning objective of Jesuit education is to invite our students into sainthood by inspiring them to build the Kingdom of God on earth. In our Catholic faith, the Kingdom of God is the ultimate sign of hope, belonging, community, reconciliation and justice. Jesus reminds us that building the Kingdom of God will require us to embrace our own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of others. Doing so will invite God’s grace to perpetually renew us through reconciliation with self, others and all of Creation.