By Virginia Herbers
“What exactly is your job?”
It’s a question I hear on a regular basis. My title, director of mission formation at Saint Louis University, is one that conceals more than it reveals about what my peers and I do – thus the question. But my role is of critical importance in any Jesuit educational institution.
When SLU was first founded over two centuries ago, the Jesuit mission and identity were ensured by the simple fact that Jesuits were leading, guiding and correcting course for the vision and direction of the work. Even then, however, the Society partnered with lay men and women to undertake the common endeavor of educating and forming young people in the Catholic tradition. These cooperative efforts – both historical and contemporary – continue to forge the path for a profound and lasting sense of a shared Jesuit mission.
Saint Louis University and other schools in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) commit to a collaborative process called the Mission Priority Examen (MPE) to ensure they maintain their Catholic and Jesuit identities. The Jesuit provinces, including the USA Central and Southern Province, help to oversee this periodic evaluation and follow up on any resulting recommendations. One part of the MPE focuses on how well the university orients new faculty and staff on the Jesuit identity and values of the university.
In the 1990s, the AJCU offered a program called Shared Vision: Jesuit Spirit in Education with the intention of introducing Jesuit university employees to the history and traditions of the Society of Jesus. It consisted of three 90-minute group sessions of instruction and dialogue, and it proved to be an extremely effective mission formation program in many universities, including SLU.
When I first arrived at SLU in late 2019, I realized early on that something akin to the Shared Vision program was needed. Just as I was able to devote time to imagining and planning possibilities, the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a completely different set of priorities. Upon returning to the office in 2021, designing, creating and launching such a program became one of the main initiatives for SLU’s Office of Mission and Identity. The result is now called SLU’s Shared Mission program.
Whereas Shared Vision entailed three sessions, each of which was centered on a 45-minute video presentation, Shared Mission is a series of six sessions, each beginning with a short video (6-8 minutes in length) that addresses a mission-centric topic, followed by small and large group reflection on the relevance of that topic for day-to-day work at the university. Over the course of the academic year, six Shared Mission lunchtime gatherings bring together small group cohorts to meet, learn, discuss and integrate the history, impact and lived reality of the Jesuit mission and Ignatian identity of Saint Louis University.
The topics for the six sessions are: St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesus throughout history, the Universal Apostolic Preferences, Jesuit higher education, the Ignatian pedagogical paradigm and the mission of Saint Louis University.
The videos for the sessions were created in-house, featuring current students and employees who provided their own insight into the six topics, particularly how they integrate those mission elements into their teaching, their work and their study.
We originally intended the program to be part of the orientation of newly hired employees, but what happened at SLU when we first advertised the program was truly marvelous. Current employees didn’t want to be left out of the opportunity and clamored for the program to be open to them as well. Colleges requested copies of the curriculum guide so they could incorporate the sessions into monthly department meetings. Administrative departments like marketing, admissions and student development adapted portions of the videos to a variety of audiences, including parents of current students, donors and trustees. Other AJCU universities asked for access to the videos to use in their own mission formation programs. These are just a few of the examples of how the Shared Mission project has grown and flourished – confirming that the choice of name for the program was apt indeed.
We have just concluded the first year of the Shared Mission program here at SLU, but we already have plans for expansion and deeper engagement. Due to the strong response of the community, we intend to add one new video to the series each year. Starting this fall, we will add a video on the history of Saint Louis University. We hope to produce videos on practices in Ignatian Spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises in the near future.
The Shared Mission program offers an in-depth, community-based, mission formation opportunity for all SLU faculty, staff and administration. Participants come from diverse academic, professional and religious backgrounds, demonstrating that the Ignatian “band of companions” formed by the program is based on a partnership in mission, building a community of belonging and a culture of inclusion.
This foundational program opens the door for deeper participation in the wide variety of mission programs offered by SLU’s mission office and offers just one way – albeit a beautiful one – of treasuring the gift that is our shared Jesuit mission.
Virginia Herbers is the director of mission formation at Saint Louis University. Learn more about SLU’s Office of Mission or watch the Shared Mission videos at www.slu.edu/mission-identity.
