Counselor education and the Catholic faith share an important core value: social justice. As a counselor education program within a Jesuit and Sisters of Mercy institution, the construct of social justice is a unifying value that is rooted in academic preparation and practice. To promote a lifestyle of social justice, the counselor education…

This paper proposes a new model for Catholic educational institutions in secular culture. This model is premised on the reality that secular cultures place considerable challenges before religiously-affiliated colleges and universities. Following Hunter's concept of cultural change, this paper proposes that the best way for religious institutions…

As gifts of the Holy Spirit, charisms serve as reference points and guiding forces for women and men religious. Charisms can be agents of stability, as well as vehicles for change within the Catholic Church itself. This article explores how the Church and religious congregations generally understand charisms and why they both believe in their…

This article shows how Merrimack College's Catholic heritage and Augustinian tradition provide intellectual and spiritual resources for the college to fulfill its educational responsibility to prepare students for virtuous citizenship in a religiously and culturally pluralistic society. It uses four major Vatican documents and several foundational…

Benedictine educational institutions all have their own particular character and culture. Yet, because of the universality of the Benedictine way of life, Benedictine colleges and universities also have a strong sense of connectedness with each other. In early 2005, this unique Benedictine quality of diversity within unity inspired the Association…

This paper was originally written to help colleagues at the University of Saint Francis to understand the concept of the Franciscan charism, a goal integral to part of our Strategic Plan in 2002. Many staff and faculty questioned why the Strategic Planning Steering Committee chose such a word for the core of its vision for the institution. Through…

Providence College is part of a nation-wide consortium of nineteen Dominican colleges and universities. Every two years, one of these schools hosts the Dominican Colleges Colloquium, a conference focusing on how the Dominican charism can be effectively embodied, lived, and promoted in higher education. I have attended two of these colloquia over…

This article advances the concept that the mission of a diocesan Catholic college / university is found in its geographic relationship with the local church and area community. Examples of this interaction and collaboration are cited.

In the past eighteen years, the Sisters of Mercy have undergone two major transitions in the structure of the congregation in the United States. In 1991, seventeen independent congregations formed the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, a single canonical entity with twenty-five regional communities. Between 2006 and 2009, another…

The nation's Catholic colleges and universities are recommitting themselves to making their founding visions come alive in increasingly effective and innovative ways. This article describes the Jesuit tradition of higher education, discussing its origins and how it is reflected in the reality and practice of Jesuit higher education today. This is…

Catholic colleges and universities (CCUs), particularly those of moderate selectivity, are especially vulnerable to changes in the external environment. In addition to external forces, values from the academic tradition as well as those from an institution's Catholic heritage contribute to change efforts at CCUs. This study uses the lens of…

This paper presents several reasons why mission-based values, in this case Catholic Social Teaching (CST), should be incorporated into a university business curriculum. The CST tenets include the sanctity of human life; call to family, community, and participation; rights and responsibilities; option for the poor and vulnerable; the dignity of…

As the nation's Catholic universities and colleges continually clarify their identity, this article examines academic freedom in classroom speech, offering a heuristic model for use as board members, academic administrators, and faculty leaders discuss, evaluate, and judge allegations of misconduct in classroom speech. Focusing upon the practice…

The current longitudinal study of the most successful Catholic universities in the United States identifies the prevalence of four advancement models of communication that have contributed to make those institutions successful in their philanthropic efforts. While research by Grunig and Kelly maintained that the two-way symmetrical model of…

Students who self-identified as activity leaders of one (n = 30), two or more (n = 21), or no campus extracurricular clubs (n = 34), completed measures on the institution's mission and values as well as its school sense of community ("SSOC"). Analyses indicated a main effect for race on "SSOC" and a subscale emphasis on diversity, such that…