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Santa Clara University

Contact: Rev. Michael C. McCarthy, SJ
Executive Director, Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education
Phone: (408) 554-4715
E-mail: MCMcCarthy@scu.edu
Website: www.scu.edu/ignatiancenter

Mission Statement

“Santa Clara University will educate leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion and cultivate knowledge and faith to build a more humane, just, and sustainable world. The University pursues its vision by creating an academic community that educates the whole person within the Jesuit, Catholic tradition, making student learning our central focus, continuously improving our curriculum and co-curriculum, strengthening our scholarship and creative work, and serving the communities of which we are a part in Silicon Valley and around the world.”

Structure

The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education has been given the primary responsibility for preserving and extending the Catholic identity and Jesuit mission of Santa Clara University. The Center’s staff includes 12-15 persons, and the executive director is designated as the Mission and Identity Officer, who reports directly to the president of the university. The Director of Campus Ministry also reports directly to the president. In conversation with the Rector of the Jesuit Community and other key constituents among the Administration, Faculty/Staff, Board of Trustees, Students and wider community, the executive director is tasked with strategizing ways to operationalize the mission of the university.

Although recognizing that responsibility for mission and identity is distributed throughout the community, in 2005, the university brought some of its most uniquely Jesuit programs together to form the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education as one of its three centers of distinction. Dedicated to extending the core values of Santa Clara University to the campus as a whole, the Ignatian Center’s three constituent departments serve students, faculty, and staff in their studies, professions, and faith.

The Bannan Institute assists Santa Clara in keeping its Jesuit and Catholic character at the center of the educational enterprise. Through grants, fellowships, publications, and events, the Institute encourages all members of the SCU community to reflect on, discuss, and creatively explore Jesuit principles and help cultivate a university community characterized by respect, solidarity, and justice.

The Arrupe Partnerships for Community-based Learning educate students, and the university as a whole, in the realities of the lives of the marginalized and the poor. Through community placements in Santa Clara County, Arrupe Partnerships create opportunities for active engagement, research, and service, serving as a catalyst for a unique collaboration between scholars and community members.

The Kolvenbach Solidarity Program offers students, faculty, staff, and alumni extended immersion experiences into the gritty reality of our globalizing world. These poignant moments of vocational discernment invite participants to consider their place in our global society and to see the world with new eyes. 

In sum, the Ignatian Center links the university with important stakeholders through partnerships, scholarship, and service, as we seek to realize the Jesuit higher education mission of forming women and men of well-educated solidarity.

Orientation Programs
 
Faculty Development
These programs aim to inform newly arrived and more senior faculty of the Catholic and Jesuit intellectual traditions. The President and Executive Director of the ICJE speak on the Jesuit Tradition of Excellence in Education at the New Faculty Orientation and follow up with discussion regarding how our traditions can enrich their teaching and scholarship and ground a sense of vocation to inspire their academic commitments.
 
Staff Development
These programs strive to connect the university’s Jesuit education themes of faith and justice to people's careers. We create a space in small group reflection sessions for staff members to share reflections upon their work life here at Santa Clara University and to discover the deeper dimensions of their work.

Ongoing Educational Programs
 
Ignatian Faculty Forum
The Ignatian Faculty Forum (IFF) is a university-wide faculty leadership program established in 2002. The objective of the Ignatian Faculty Forum is to discover the elements of a modern Ignatian spirituality that would be true to the "lived experiences" of faculty members fully engaged in their professional careers. The Forum provides a small community of trust in which faculty meet for four hours each month to share joys and struggles as they engage in reflective discernment, as well as to discuss readings related to Jesuit education.

Student and Faculty Immersion Programs
Sponsored by the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, students, staff and faculty are given an opportunity to learn directly from people living on the margins of society. These programs further the Jesuit ideal of integrating faith and justice by combining immersion experiences from East Palo Alto CA to El Salvador with ongoing reflection.
 
Western Conversations
SCU has sent teams of ten faculty members to participate in annual meetings of the Western Conversations with faculty from five other Western Jesuit universities to discuss issues common to those working in a Jesuit, Catholic institution.
 
Collegium
We recruit annually one or two faculty members to attend Collegium, a joint effort of Catholic colleges and universities across the United States to develop faculty who can articulate and enrich the spiritual and intellectual life of their institutions.

Integration of M&I into the Curriculum and Academic Programs

Strategic Plan 2011/Core Curriculum
The recently approved strategic plan for the university identifies as its first priority “Excellence in Jesuit Education” and as its fourth priority “Justice and Sustainability.” In addition to requiring of all students three (trimester) courses in Religion, Theology, and Society, and one in Ethics, the new Core, piloted in 2009, has added a new requirement, “Experiential Learning for Social Justice,” a course in which students must engage in a community placement.

Bannan Grants
The Center through its Bannan Institute also offers Bannan Grants and Dialog and Design Grants for Santa Clara faculty, staff, and students to support scholarship and pedagogy that further the mission of the Center, which is “to assist the University in enhancing its Catholic and Jesuit character.”

Spiritual Exercises/Retreats

Retreats
SCU supports (with time and money) retreats for faculty and staff centered on Ignatian spirituality and on spiritual development more broadly conceived. Ignatian-style retreats are available to faculty/staff/students through the Campus Ministry faculty/staff/student retreat program.
 
Publications, Audio-visual Materials Developed and/or Used

In 1994, the Santa Clara Lecture Series was inaugurated by the Religious Studies Department with funding from the Bannan Center (now the Ignatian Center’s Bannan Institute) on topics related to the Catholic and Jesuit identity of the University. Reprints of each lecture are distributed to 4,500 bishops, priests, and faculty throughout the United States and abroad.
 
Explore Journal, and examination of Catholic identity and Ignatian character in Jesuit higher education, is published twice annually by the Bannan Institute with a circulation of 2,300.
 
Since 1993, the Jesuit Community has published The Jesuit Tradition at Santa Clara (2nd rev. ed.) which is distributed to all new faculty and professional staff.

Miscellaneous

Jesuit Community
Many of the Jesuits on campus (and on occasion the entire Jesuit Community) have made a concerted effort to share their own experiences of Ignatian spirituality more openly through various formal and informal opportunities for faculty and staff to join the Jesuits for conversation, dinner, and/or sharing.

The Jesuit Community sponsors conversations with faculty, staff, and students throughout the year. Groups of twenty are invited by ten Jesuits for an hour conversation, followed by a social hour and dinner. Different groups are targeted at different times.

The Bannan Institute funds Bannan Fellows, often Jesuits from other schools, to come to Santa Clara for one or more quarters.
 
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics sponsors a variety of programs focusing on ethical issues, from noon time discussion on current topics for faculty and staff, to workshops on medical ethics in conjunction with the local Catholic hospital, to national conferences.

Updated 9/2/11