Transformative Education in the Jesuit Tradition

IN THE JESUIT TRADITION

TRANSFORMATIVE

EDUCATION

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

“ Transformative Education in the Jesuit Tradition”

first edition was written by Daniel Hartnett, S.J.,

in coordination with a team of editors from Loyola

University Chicago, February 2009. Revised 2015 version

was edited by Justin Daffron, S.J., with a team of editors

from Loyola University Chicago.

ON THE COVER • A statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola

located in the Klarchek Information Commons

on Loyola’s Lake Shore campus

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IN THE JESUIT TRADITION 3

OUR MISSION

WE ARE CHICAGO’S JESUIT, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY—

A DIVERSE COMMUNITY SEEKING GOD IN ALL THINGS

AND WORKING TO EXPAND KNOWLEDGE IN THE SERVICE

OF HUMANITY THROUGH LEARNING, JUSTICE, AND FAITH.

As a Catholic and Jesuit University,

Loyola is guided by and seeks to articulate a living intellectual

tradition. All of Loyola’s undertakings—its teaching, research,

and service—are infused with a conviction regarding the

sacred character of all reality, the dignity of every human

person, the mutually informing dynamic between faith

and reason, and the responsibility to care for those who are

suffering most in our world. And Loyola’s Jesuit pedagogy

is informed by the conviction that faith, knowledge, and the

promotion of justice are intrinsically related: they are not three

independent aspects of education that are merely juxtaposed,

but rather they form a triad in which each is dynamically relat-

ed and incomplete without the others. The University invites

those of all faith traditions who share this outlook to join in

pursuing its goals.

4 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

This twofold intellectual tradition encompasses a rich record of

discursive knowledge—or theoria—developed by intellectuals across

the centuries. It includes the creative word—or poiesis—of artists who

have expressed their Catholic vision through architecture, painting,

sculpture, poetry, music, and dance. It also involves the social action—

or praxis—of prophets and activists who generously devoted their lives

to making the world a home for all. The more one reflects on this rich

tapestry, the clearer it becomes that this rich tradition is a very diverse

and dynamic reality, nothing like an ancient family heirloom, to be kept

in a safe-deposit box. Rather, the Jesuit and Catholic tradition is ever

evolving in new and unexpected ways; we can all learn from it and all

contribute to it. This tradition both elicits participation and engenders

personal and communal transformation.

Adapted to the context

of today’s world

A JESUIT EDUCATION SEEKS to address the world in which we actually

live as well as the hopes and challenges of that world. Indeed, one can

view the current situation in the world against a backdrop of a whole

range of key desires, really, “hungers” of the contemporary world for

wholeness, peace, and justice for all. These are hungers that life and

learning have helped us to identify in ourselves as well as in our stu

dents, hungers that our kind of education hopes to stir and meet:

• A HUNGER FOR INTEGRATED KNOWLEDGE: Students today appre-

ciate having so much information at their fingertips, and yet, they

long for a more robust formation that integrates their intellectual,

affective, and volitional capacities and helps them to appreciate how

the varied subjects and disciplines fit together reaching depth of

understanding;

• A HUNGER FOR A MORAL COMPASS: Students today experience the

limitation of a moral discourse that focuses almost exclusively on

individual rights while almost ignoring the responsibilities we have

to each other; not looking for recipes, our students display desire to

acquire an ethical foundation and a method for moral discernment;

• A HUNGER FOR COMMUNITY: Students today value building

meaningful community with genuine connectedness that has them

What are the

five ‘hungers’

we identify

and choose

to foster in

our students?

What is

the twofold

intellectual

tradition of

Loyola?

engaged civically; they display a new strength of passion and

commitment to use their gifts and talents for others; there is a

sense among them that they have found their voice as change

agents, and now they long to participate more actively, creating

more good in the world;

• A HUNGER FOR A GLOBAL PARADIGM: Having seen the limita-

tions and the dangers of ethnocentrism, our students want to

embrace a more cosmopolitan perspective; they see very clearly

that each of us dwells in many communities, from the commu

nity of our birth to the community of the human family, and we

have duties to all of them;

• A HUNGER FOR AN ADULT SPIRITUALITY: Tired of the polarized

debates between a lifeless secularism, on the one hand, and a

dogmatic fundamentalism, on the other, our students long for

a spirituality that sustains and empowers, one in which there is

ample room for both faith and reason.

This educational mission of the University lies precisely in the

study, debate, conversation, and discovery that help students iden

tify these hungers, form their own assessment of them, and decide

how they might address them for themselves and the world they

seek to shape.

REFLECTION

JACKIE TAYLOR HOLSTEN

JD ’99 • BOARD OF TRUSTEES

“Whether we know it or admit it, we are all searching

for an opportunity to make a dierence. The commu-

nity at Loyola, which is dedicated to the Jesuit mission,

has encouraged and inspired me to contribute every

day and to realize we all make a dierence.”

6 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

An education that empowers

and transforms

What are

the marks

of a true

education?

AS ENGLISH WRITER G.K. CHESTERTON once said, “Every education

teaches a philosophy of life, if not explicitly, then by suggestion, by

implication, by atmosphere. If the different parts of that education

do not cohere or connect with each other; if the educational process

as a whole does not combine to convey a coherent view of life; if, in

the end, it does not empower and transform, then, it is not educa-

tion at all.” A transformative education is one in which the student is

incrementally invited to engage life, to reflect upon it and, then, to

be of service to our world.

STRATEGIC THEMES

• EXPANDING HORIZONS AND DEEPENING KNOWLEDGE: The Univer-

sity is the steward of a long and deep tradition of learning and

knowledge. It has a responsibility to this living tradition of which it

is a part and whose continuing significance it fosters in ever-new

ways. Students who come to Loyola can expect to be enriched and

broadened by that tradition and, at the same time, be challenged

by it to lead extraordinary lives that are relevant in new and differ

ent circumstances.

• SELF-APPROPRIATION: Beginning with an appreciation of one’s gifts

and the progressive discerning of how best to use them in practi

cal ways and diverse settings are both the starting place and the

trajectory of an educational process that we call self-appropriation.

When students arrive at the University, they often have not yet

fully identified their gifts and vocation. It often happens that their

REFLECTION

ZACHARY ENRIQUEZ

LOYOLA STUDENT

“The Jesuit philosophy is designed to benet the

many through the realization of potential within the

individual. Jesuit education has started me on a path

of personal growth. I am trying to become the best

version of myself that I can be, so that others can grow,

learn, and prosper alongside me.”

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IN THE JESUIT TRADITION 7

thoughts, actions, and choices are being dictated by convention or

by mimetic group pressure. A transformative pedagogy is one that

helps students name their gifts, formulate their convictions, and

ultimately take full ownership of their own lives. A transformative

education, then, is one that transforms students in order that they

might transform the world.

• DIALOGUE: Students who come to Loyola can expect to be chal-

lenged to a kind of dialogue and diversity that is authentically

transformative. At Loyola, diversity does not simply mean that all

are welcome and can have a seat at the table. More than that, it

means that those who have a seat at the table should be prepared

to be changed and transformed by their encounter with each other

and by the values that pervade Loyola’s educational experience. A

transformative pedagogy trains students for dialogue and conversa

tion, providing a way to tackle the root of so many crises that face

humanity today. It is also a way of bridging the divides of gender,

race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class.

• MORAL RESPONSIBILITY: There are clear moral dimensions to the

economic, political, social, and environmental crises our world is

currently facing. Many professionals—lawyers, bankers, accoun

tants, politicians, academics, and the entire chain of intermediar-

ies, including Church leaders—have failed to detect or deter the

wrongdoing of our institutions; instead of exercising their moral

duty, many chose the path of silence, convenience, and complicity.

It is more important than ever that our students receive a strong

foundation in moral discernment in order that they can act respon

sibly in all their relationships and pursue the common good.

• CARE FOR THE PLANET: One of the main goals of a transformative

education is learning to live in right relationship: right relationship

with oneself, right relationship with others, right relationship with

God, and right relationship with our environment. Each of these

fundamental relationships requires sensitivity, understanding, and

care. Since the ecological problems we are facing are related to the

problem of consumerism, which devours the resources of the earth

in an excessive and disordered manner, our aim must not only be

theoretical clarity but also a more responsible lifestyle. The Univer

sity has a decisive role to play in fostering new attitudes and new

practices of good stewardship and peacemaking within the context

of a global paradigm.

• FAITH AND JUSTICE: The overriding purpose of the Society of Jesus,

namely “the service of faith,” or its communication and deepening,

must also include the promotion of justice, a goal shared with many

8 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

What are

the four

processes of

knowing?

religious traditions. So central to the mission of the Society was this

union of faith and justice that it has become the integrating factor of

all that Jesuits and their institutions undertake. But it is not enough

simply to juxtapose these two terms; it is essential to hold the two

together. Because, in the end, injustice is rooted in a spiritual problem

and its solution requires a change of heart. More than ever, we face a

world that has an even greater need for the faith that does justice.

IGNATIAN METHODOLOGY

Transformative education is not simply a content; it is also a method

designed to foster continual growth in the hearts, minds, and will of the

students. This method bears no resemblance to an older approach that

stressed dissemination where instructors merely relay or convey informa

tion. Rather, Ignatian pedagogy aims at assisting learners to undergo a

series of internal transformations in how they go about understanding

themselves vis-à-vis their own inclinations, passions, biases, and sponta

neous reactions. Hence, the need arises to learn how to make one’s own

internal operations more discerning.

The early Jesuits struggled to describe this transformative process in

the Ratio Studiorum and, over the years, have done so in different ways.

The accounts may vary, but there are certain constants in the Jesuit “way

of proceeding.” A cognitional way of understanding this Ignatian meth

odology is to realize that the antidote to self-immersion is self-transcen-

dence. And at least one way of proceeding out of the first condition and

into the second is to become more attentive to the different operations

one uses, though usually inadvertently, in coming to an answer to a ques

tion or to a choice.

In short, an Ignatian pedagogy is one in which the student is chal

lenged to appropriate his or her own process of knowing. The first step in

any process of knowing is experience, and the advice of Ignatius would

be to become attentive to what one is experiencing, either the experi

ence going on in oneself or in the reality around one. The second step

in this process of knowing involves reflecting back on one’s experience

and on what has been triggered by way of questions that emerged from

such experience. The goal is always to grow in understanding about

the questions one is seeking to answer. One is going to have to come to

some conclusion about the matter being mulled, including a conclusion

about whether an insight that came from one’s understanding holds

up under further scrutiny. The third step in this process of knowing is

judgment: “yes, this is so” or “no, this is not so” or “I do not know yet

what to think.” Finally, the fourth step in the process of knowing seeks to

determine what this judgment might call for by way of choice or action

and commitment.

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IN THE JESUIT TRADITION 9

The value of sorting out the different moments in the process of

knowing is that this makes self-knowledge and self-transcendence

more likely. It also does justice to one’s subjectivity while also making

objectivity more likely. Another way of putting this is in the language

of conversion. Ideally, there are different kinds of conversion latent in a

greater advertence to these operations of consciousness: intellectual,

moral, and religious. In the first of these, one lets oneself be informed

by reality; in the second, one moves from acting on personal wants and

satisfying one’s own needs to acting on values and making responsible

choices. Religious conversion consists in being moved in one’s thinking

and choosing by love. Any one of these three conversions or transforma

tions can come first with the other two following.

MEDIATIONS

Jesuit education is well known for its clarity in matters of “means”

and “ends.” In great part, this insight flows directly from the Spiritual

Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola in which he begins with a clear presenta

tion of the purpose for which all people are called into existence (“to

praise, reverence, and serve God”) and then, based on that conviction,

he explains how “all other things” are valuable in relation to how they

foster or inhibit one’s essential purpose.

With this vision of transformative education before us, it is now

imperative to reflect on the principal mediations for all this to occur.

Many of the desired transformations happen in the classroom. But oth

ers take place in service-placements around the city, through activities

on campus, or in the library, chapel, retreat and ecology campus, or

residence hall. The transformative moments and contexts will vary from

student to student. What matters most is that students encounter with

in every component of the University community supporting a spirit of

transformation and a culture focused on learning, justice, and faith.

REFLECTION

MARIAN ALLEN CLAFFEY

MUND ’76, MED ’84, PHD ’08 • STAFF MEMBER

“Among the many outcomes emerging from my Jesuit

education and Loyola experience is a profound sense of

responsibility—an obligation to contribute to a greater

good and to challenge others to do the same. This is true

of my experience as both student and sta member.”

10 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

What are

the various

channels

for internal

and external

transformation

within the

University?

• LOYOLA EXPERIENCE: Our undergraduate program of learning is

the Loyola Experience—a sequential and developmental approach

to integrated academic, spiritual, and social activities. Students

use their gifts, talents, and ambitions to shape their own Loyola

Experience in partnership with faculty and staff who challenge

and support students through graduation and beyond. Cura

personalis (care for the whole person) is our common commitment,

and magis (striving for excellence) is part of our shared vision. Care

for self, others, and community are the pillars of a Student Promise,

which inspires students to live out core values that have shaped

our University since its founding.

Loyola’s Core Curriculum serves as the anchor of the Loyola

Experience, providing the breadth of learning that is foundational

for undergraduate education, in the Jesuit tradition. The Core is the

primary means by which our pedagogy’s goals are achieved and the

aforementioned strategic themes and our students’ ambitions are

integrated throughout the curriculum.

The Majors provide depth for students to explore, understand,

imagine, and create within a particular context or field of study,

developing the habits, disciplines, and skills that are needed to

succeed in that area. Within the major, training in a particular intel

lectual discipline or practice is paramount. Loyola provides a variety

of means to achieve this training: internships, service-learning,

capstone courses, etc. These forms of experiential learning are

organized from within each field or discipline in order to provide the

appropriate degree of specificity. The more discipline-specific they

are, the more likely they are to have a lasting impact.

If truly successful, the Loyola Experience should result in a radical

transformation not only of the way a student sees him or herself

but also in the way the student perceives, thinks, and acts in the

REFLECTION

JOYCE WEXLER, PhD

FACULTY MEMBER

“We ask prospective faculty members to read

Transformative Education in the Jesuit Tradition because

it explains what we do and why we do it. New faculty

members soon see how the Jesuit tradition strengthens

their teaching and research and makes the University

an incubator for meaningful and ethical lives.”

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IN THE JESUIT TRADITION 11

world—driven more towards justice. To accomplish this, a Loyola

education must be more than a set of degree requirements; it must

be an integrated curriculum designed to produce ever-deepening

reflection and new habits of heart, mind, and will. It should enable

students to develop the character and values that will guide them

throughout their lives.

• CAMPUS CULTURE: A critical component of the Loyola Experience is

student development that happens beyond the academic enter

prise. Certain units of the University, from Student Affairs to Mission

and Ministry, concentrate precisely on the quality of student life

outside the classroom and on building a vibrant community on

campus. This community is formed through clubs, athletics, service

opportunities, retreats and often simply by taking advantage of our

wonderful city together.

With the valuable help of faculty, staff, chaplains, and residence

hall assistants, a community of shared preoccupations and aspira

tions is formed. Such a community is essential to transformative

education because, in the end, there is very little that an individual

can do alone. We need to learn to form friendships and to build

alternative networks of belonging that are oriented toward the trans

formations we all desire. Therefore, on Loyola’s campus, we strive to

create a culture where students do not feel like isolated individuals

but rather members of a community that encourages respectful dis

course and debate, that celebrates hard work and accomplishments,

and that promotes social justice and responsible freedom.

As a Jesuit and Catholic university, Loyola firmly believes that

God’s grace is at work in each of the major religious traditions, which

is why we are pleased to serve as a home for all of the faiths. One

of the many beautiful features of Loyola is that it is a place where a

committed community can be formed among people from different

religious and ethnic backgrounds. This is precisely the kind of com

munity our world needs today: a community that can look beyond

the specifics of its own tradition in order to learn, study, celebrate,

and pray with all people of good will who are ready to rebuild and

renew our world together.

In order to sustain this transformative community, Loyola will

continue to create spaces on campus for purposeful living and learn

ing. All buildings, including residence halls, classrooms, and student

centers, as well as outdoor campus spaces, will be welcoming and

conducive to study and collaborative learning, with a measure of a

deep respect and care for the environment.

12 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

• GRADUATE EDUCATION: Graduate and professional education are

geared towards inculcating the mastery of specialized knowledge

and skills through which a student who has already identified his

or her vocation can attain the professional competence, leadership

skills and sense of responsibility that are needed to make a significant

impact in the world. While Jesuit universities began as undergraduate

institutions, they later applied the spirit and methods of transforma

tive education to graduate and professional education. Our graduate

and professional schools are very discipline-specific, but they embody

and employ the same Jesuit pedagogy, which is person-centered

and society-centered, and which empowers and transforms. Students

at this level are encouraged to refine and test their calling, and to

reflect continually on the questions “for whom” and “for what” as

they prepare for their careers. In their major projects or research, they

are encouraged to ask: How will this work contribute to or impact the

communities that it serves? How might it contribute to society and to

the struggle for peace and justice?

• RESEARCH: Loyola is committed to the personal transformation of its

students and faculty as well as to the creation of a just social order.

But real and lasting change is not achieved by direct action alone.

Many of the problems facing our world will never be adequately

addressed if we merely replicate former solutions.

It is important that we caution our students, at both the undergradu

ate and graduate levels, about the excessive pragmatism that can often

permeate the American culture. Our world needs longer-term solu

tions, not just quick fixes, and this requires careful, scholarly research.

Research needs to be evaluated not with the short term lens of imme

diate efficacy but within a larger and more generous horizon that both

enriches and transforms our lives as human beings and communities.

Therefore, Loyola fosters the kind of research that really matters for

making our world a home for all.

Furthermore, research at Loyola is informed by a characteristically

Catholic confidence in the unity of truth; that is, the conviction that

truths of reason are ultimately compatible with truths of faith. For

this reason, intellectual inquiry at Loyola is animated not by a fear of

error but by a love of truth and with a deep commitment to academic

freedom.

At the same time, research at Loyola is informed by an ongoing

engagement with a living Catholic intellectual tradition that serves as

a touchstone or point of reference. The point is not that researchers at

Loyola need to be working on a topic that is identifiably Catholic, nor is

the point that people doing research are under the obligation to agree

with every element of that tradition. But faculty researchers should be

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IN THE JESUIT TRADITION 13

willing and able to articulate how their work elaborates upon the

Catholic tradition and how it contributes to the common good.

Increasingly evident to scholars and others today is the necessity

of cross-disciplinary inquiry in the discovery of truth. Our institutes

and Centers of Excellence offer a privileged place for interdisciplinary

research, a space where faculty and students from different depart

ments or schools can converge and collaborate. They represent the

best in Jesuit education and provide an effective vehicle for the

University, by means of its research, to play an active role in deepen

ing our grasp of specific problems and in imagining alternatives.

• OUR FOCUS ON JUSTICE: A significant portion of our transformative

agenda is about helping students create lives of meaning and pur

pose. This isn’t possible without the University organizing itself as

more than a collection of schools, departments, and programs, but

rather as a “social project.” We must see Loyola as “a transformative

agent,” an institution that “seeks to insert itself into a society, not

just to train professionals, but in order to become a cultural force

advocating and promoting truth, virtue, development, and peace in

that society” (Nicolás, 2010:7). This is a vision that challenges us to

expand our understanding of the social realities of the poor and to

employ the vast treasure of our Judeo-Christian humanistic tradi

tion—along with our experience and expertise in accompaniment

with people in need—in a collective effort to improve the condi

tion of those people in our community and world. Our conversa-

tion is further contextualized by a sense of urgency, felt on the

national and international level, for an engaged pedagogy to guide

our teaching and for a renewed commitment to interdisciplinary

approaches to solving societal and environmental problems. We

believe there is a need for a new kind of university committed to

REFLECTION

JAMES PREHN, S.J.

JESUIT COMMUNITY

“At its best, one of the hallmarks of Jesuit education

is its embrace of innovation while retaining proven,

valuable practices. We teach students to explore ideas

without trepidation, to embrace responsibility for the

world without reservation, and to honor their deepest

desires as personalized gifts from God.”

14 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

going beyond its walls to include people needing support and

assistance as well as those seeking justice.

Our focus on social justice is long-standing, embodied in myriad

ways across the University—in the work of individual researchers,

pedagogical initiatives, academic programs, Centers of Excellence,

and more. In the words of Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., (2000) the

former Superior General of the Society of Jesus, “Every Jesuit aca

demic institution of higher learning is called to live in a social reality

... and to live for that social reality, to shed university intelligence

upon it and to use university influence to transform it.” Loyola Uni

versity Chicago is certainly grounded in a particular social reality—

its historic mission and role in Chicago; its Jesuit and Catholic iden

tity; its own history; its rich community of faculty, staff, students,

alumni; and the current cultural context in which it is immersed.

Given the many new challenges faced by this urban community and

the world in which we live, and the urgency of certain social and

environmental conditions, we ask ourselves if that mission needs to

be expanded and deepened, once more, for the greater honor and

glory of the Creator.

How do we, as a university, live for this social reality and use

our influence to transform it? Said another way, how might Loyola

become a beacon of hope for others and an instrument for prepar

ing young men and women for the project of creating a more just,

humane, and sustainable world? In what ways can Loyola’s vast

talent, its faculty, and its resources be of greater service to those

less fortunate and those on the margins of society, as well as people

who work for a more sustainable and just world? These are the criti

cal questions that will continue to shape our transformative agenda

that helps Loyolans lead extraordinary lives.

REFLECTION

ANTWAN TURPEAU

MSW ’11 • ALUMNI COMMUNITY

“Loyola’s mission, seeking God in all things and its

emphasis on learning, justice, and faith, really caught

my attention. This is a university that is not only about

academic learning; it’s also learning about life, learn-

ing from your mistakes, learning from your failures,

and how to build on those.”

TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IN THE JESUIT TRADITION 15

A UNIVERSITY CAN BE, and in many instances is, a mere composite

of vastly different departments and conflicting perspectives. But a

Jesuit, Catholic university hopes to move beyond these divisions into

a vital interchange that constitutes an academic community of com

mon question and purpose: What are we doing here for our students,

our human community, and our world? What kind of contributions are

we making with our research? How is our service making a difference

in the world? How are we acting more for transformative justice? And,

in the final analysis, how are we individually finding God in all things?

These are the questions we want to ponder and continue to answer

well into the future.

Still, we know this much for sure: that Loyola, as an academic com

munity, aims to:

• Educate in a manner that empowers our students to live moral

lives in the world today, assuming responsibility for their own well-

being and for that of their neighbor;

• Conduct research that sheds light on the major problems facing

our suffering world today, providing wisdom and insight into pos

sible avenues of solution; and

• Serve the city and beyond in order to build up the just and caring

community—acting more for transformative justice.

In summary, Loyola challenges its students to move beyond their

comfort zone, not only when initially entering the University but all

throughout their experience here, in order to see more clearly where

their own hungers and talents meet the urgent needs of our world. As

Frederick Buechner says, “The place God calls us to is the place where

our deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Students who have completed their degree with us will not only

have the skills appropriate to their training but also will be people of

moral integrity, grounded in faith, and motivated to give back to soci

ety what they have generously received. They will be ready to face the

enormous challenges of our times with faith, hope, and love: faith as a

vital dimension of human life, hope as a realistic human stance toward

the world, and love as the supreme mission of human life in this world.

In short, they will be prepared to lead extraordinary lives.

Concluding reflection