Faculty Formation Initiative

Gonzaga’s Ignatian Mission Formation Program (IMFP) invites Gonzaga faculty-members to encounter the foundation of Jesuit Higher Education, Ignatian Spirituality, and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. The year-long program meets once per month, encouraging faculty to bring their own experience, expertise, grounding traditions, and deepest desires as educators into dialogue with the traditions that ground our mission. The IMFP does not require preparatory reading is centered on conversation with colleagues in response to presentations offered by colleagues and guest speakers on topics that are foundational to Gonzaga’s mission.

Topics discussed include the following:

• Gonzaga’s History and Context
• The Life of St. Ignatius Loyola and an Ignatian Way of Proceeding
• Encountering the Sacred in All Things: Ignatian Spirituality and a Sacramental Imagination
• Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm
• The Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the Dialogue between Faith and Reason
• Cura Personalis and Education of the Whole Person
• Jesuit Mission and Collaboration
• The Service of Faith and Promotion of Justice in Jesuit Contexts

A pilot cohort ran in the 2020-2021 academic year with 26 full-time faculty members in their first five years at Gonzaga participating. Another co-cohort for faculty members in their first five years at the university will run in 2021-2022. In future years we hope to facilitate cohorts for both newer and more senior faculty members.

Gonzaga’s Arrupe Faculty Seminar builds on the Ignatian Mission Formation Program. It is open to those who have competed the IMFP or who have demonstrated significant experience in with faculty formation in Jesuit contexts. The Arrupe seminar is a year-long program meeting once per month. It seeks to invite faculty into a deeper engagement and dialogue with the mission and traditions that ground it by critically reading and discussing both texts that are considered seminal to Jesuit and Catholic educational traditions and texts that critically and constructively engage them. Such texts include documents from the General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the Jesuit curia, major addresses on Jesuit higher education by General Superiors of the Society of Jesus, and work by theologians including M. Shawn Copeland, Kristin E. Heyer, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Monika Hellwig.

A pilot cohort of the Arrupe Faculty Seminar will run in the 2021-2022 academic year.

Faber Seminars are topical Seminars that may consist of a single meeting or a semester- or year-long discussion group meeting weekly or bi-weekly. They invite faculty and staff to read and discuss shared texts in light of Gonzaga’s mission and its animating and grounding Catholic, Jesuit, and humanistic traditions. While these seminars mark the final tier of faculty formation, the variety of forms they can take are meant to provide faculty with ongoing and continuing opportunities for formation and critical consideration of mission integration. These seminars provide excellent opportunities for collaboration with partners across campus. For example, recently Mission and Ministry co-facilitated seminars with the Office of Tribal Relations and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. While some seminars may be open only to faculty, in order to allow faculty space to consider the mission in light of their distinctive vocations and expertise as teacher-scholars, other seminars bring faculty and staff together to consider how we might live into our mission in new ways. If faculty or staff members are interested in co-facilitating a Faber Seminar with Mission and Ministry or proposing a potential topic or text, please reach out to Kevin Brown, Ph.D., at brownk@gonzaga.edu.

Recent Faber Seminars include the following:

• “Mission and Racial Justice,” a semester-long seminar co-facilitated with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion reading
• “Decoloniality and Justice,” a semester-long seminar co-facilitated with the Office of Tribal Relations
• “Anthropocentric Privilege and the Community of Creation,” an hour-long discussion with Daniel P. Horan, OFM, Ph.D., Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality and associate professor of systematic theology and spirituality at Catholic Theological Union, co-sponsored by Environmental Studies, Religious Studies, and Catholic Studies
• “Laudato Si’ and Integral Ecology,” semester long seminars run separately for faculty (co-facilitated with the Environmental Studies Department and the Catholic Studies Program) and staff (co-facilitated with the Office of Sustainability)

Potential future topics include but are by no means limited to the following:

• Environmental Justice and the Jesuit and Catholic Traditions
• Gender, Justice, and the Jesuit and Catholic Traditions
• Economic Justice and the Jesuit and Catholic Traditions
• Anti-Racist Pedagogy
• Decoloniality and the Jesuit and Catholic Traditions
• Tradition and Transformation