A New School Year Begins
Vocation, Mission, and Mercy
It’s the start of a new school year. Classes started on Monday here at the University of Iowa, and so the campus—the whole of downtown, really—is alive with students walking, running, and scootering. For the faculty, syllabi have been prepared, the first few lesson plans or lectures are ready, and the cycle of teaching, grading, and seeking a minute or two for research begins again.
Since I’m no longer a professor, the transition from summer to fall is not quite as dramatic for me—I continue to write reports, crunch numbers, and meet with department chairs as usual—but even so, the rhythm of my week still changes now that faculty are back in the classrooms and offices—weekly committee meetings start up again, new course proposals land in my email inbox, and so on.
The beginning of the school year is a busy time, but it’s also a good time to reflect on our vocation as educators and the vocation of our educational institutions, whether we work in K-12 schools or in higher education. That’s especially true if we are Catholic or if we work at Catholic institutions, although perhaps I need to work even harder at keeping my vocation in mind now that I work at a public institution.
Speaking of vocation, Mark Pattison at the National Catholic Reporter has an interesting story about St. Mary’s South Side Catholic High School in St. Louis, Missouri, which began an elective pre-apprenticeship program at the school last school year. Students enroll in a one-semester course that exposes them to fifteen different trades. Representatives of each trade visit the class and discuss their fields with the students, while the students go on site visits where they can gain hands-on experience in each of the trades. Students who complete the course are eligible to enroll in an apprenticeship program in one of the trades which usually lasts four years, according to Pattison.
One of the most notable aspects of the program, especially from a Catholic perspective, is the crucial role played by labor unions. Jake Hummel, a member of St. Mary’s Board of Directors, is the president of the Missouri AFL-CIO and helped build the partnerships between the school and local union affiliates that makes the program possible. Different local affiliates coordinate both the class visits and the site visits and manage the apprenticeship programs students can join after completing the course. The course likewise uses the North America’s Building Trades Unions’ (NABTU) Multi-Craft Core Curriculum (MC3) as a foundation for the class.
Pattison opens with a joke about the dual meaning of the word “vocation”—both a religious calling and a trade or profession—but the article left me wondering if St. Mary’s integrates the pre-apprenticeship program with its Catholic identity. Do the students learn about the important role of labor unions and the rights of workers in Catholic social teaching? Are they led to reflect on the dignity and theological significance of work? I hope so.
The pre-apprenticeship program and the school’s Catholic identity are linked in at least one way. Until 2023, St. Mary’s was run by the Archdiocese of St. Louis, but during the 2022-23 school year, the archdiocese announced that it would be closing the school, which is located in the predominantly African American Dutchtown neighborhood. The school’s president, Mike England, instead insisted that the school would remain open as an independent Catholic school, and it is now affiliated with the Society of Mary, the Marianists, whose U.S. provincial headquarters are in St. Louis. The pre-apprenticeship program was started as part of this new life for the school, and significantly, Valerie Todd, the principal of St. Mary’s, notes that the program may not have been possible if the school was still run by the archdiocese.
Although apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs are nothing new, with the high cost of college and the lack of decent-paying job opportunities with just a high school diploma, students are seeking viable career paths and educational institutions are attempting to provide them. For example, at the community college where I have taught as an adjunct off and on as a side gig, I was surprised to find that a handful of students in my online courses were high school students elsewhere in Iowa taking part in a dual-enrollment program where they can earn college credit towards a two-year or certificate program. Pattison reports that in the past St. Mary’s had participated in a similar dual-enrollment program with a local technical college. Catholic high schools, guided by a mission that emphasizes providing opportunities for the less privileged and the dignity of work, could play a vital role in developing pre-apprenticeship, dual-enrollment, and other similar programs, and indeed Pattison also mentions the Cristo Rey Network of schools’ well-known work study program.
Another area where Catholic high schools can play a unique role is regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Carlos Jiménez, Amanda Montez, and Deena A. Sellers, all directors of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Jesuit high schools, make this case in a recent cover story for America. In the past few years there has been a backlash against DEI efforts in educational institutions as well as in the corporate world. As the authors note, there have even been several bills proposed at the state level, with some being passed into law, curtailing DEI efforts at public educational institutions and even limiting discussions of controversial subjects related to race and gender. It would be quite the twist if Catholic institutions became the defenders of DEI efforts on campus.
Jiménez, Montez, and Sellers make the case that Catholic doctrine can provide a foundation for authentic DEI efforts. They point to Catholic principles such as the dignity of the person and the preferential option for the poor, but also to the example of Jesus’ ministry, which often focused on the inclusion of the ostracized, the marginalized, and the poor while demonstrating compassion. They also point to the Jesuit Schools Network of North America’s DEI framework, “What Great Love! An Ignatian Framework for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” as a more developed articulation of a Catholic approach to DEI, one which centers around the theme of developing a “culture of encounter.”
What I found particularly brilliant about the authors’ perspective is their insistence that Catholic educational institutions in the United States, and in particular Jesuit institutions, have embodied the values and practices of DEI long before those terms were in widespread use. The first Catholic schools were built to serve European immigrant populations who were often poor, culturally and linguistically marginalized from their neighbors, and often the victims of anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic sentiment. Although since then Catholic educational institutions have often served primarily white, middle and upper-class students, since the 1960s Jesuit schools have increased their efforts to serve diverse populations and to work for racial and socioeconomic justice. In other words, DEI is not a fad or something foreign to Catholic schools, but rather something that has been part of the U.S. Catholic tradition all along, however imperfectly, and that is now being better articulated through dialogue with secular institutions and practitioners.
Although I agree with the authors, I think a Catholic approach to DEI will be distinct from secular approaches, and not just in terms of the language used to ground it. Efforts to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging grounded in the practice of Jesus and hope for the coming Reign of God ought to look different from DEI efforts at a public high school or at the University of Iowa, even if there are many commonalities. And that’s not to say that Catholics can’t learn from secular institutions or from secular thinkers on questions of race, gender, and sexuality. Far from it. It’s simply to say that the way of life of the community of followers of Jesus gives a particular shape to our conduct that ought to be reflected in everything we do.
In the July issue of the Journal of Moral Theology, I have a book review of Bernard G. Prusak and Jennifer Reed-Bouley’s edited volume Catholic Higher Education and Catholic Social Thought. As I noted in the review, “This volume comes at an opportune time, offering a defense of campus DEI efforts grounded in Catholic teaching at a time when the former are under assault.” State legislators have taken aim at campus DEI offices and even curricula at public universities, and efforts at Catholic universities have also been challenged by alumni, donors, and community voices.
I won’t repeat the whole review, but several essays explore the shortcomings of how Catholic colleges and universities have served certain marginalized populations or failed to address structural racism, while also proposing strategies grounded in Catholic social teaching for how Catholic institutions can better provide opportunities for these groups. For example, Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado discusses “the mismatch between the growing proportion of US Catholics who identify as Latina/o/x and the fact that the latter only make up 13.7 percent of students” at Catholic colleges and universities. The essays also raise questions regarding the leadership of Catholic colleges and universities. One data point that made me raise an eyebrow came in Reed-Bouley and Catherine Punsalan-Manlimos’s essay on women’s leadership; they point out that the increasing lay leadership of Catholic higher education institutions has led to a decline in the number of women in positions of leadership as religious women disappear from presidents’ offices and board rooms.
The essays in the volume also address economic questions, including how Catholic colleges and universities can better serve socioeconomically underprivileged students, but also how these institutions can live out the principles of Catholic social teaching while dependent on the seemingly opposed world of finance capitalism for their economic well-being. For example, Laura Nichols points out that many of the more prestigious Catholic institutions of higher education also serve disproportionately low numbers of low-income and first-generation students, while those institutions that serve larger numbers of these groups often struggle financially and have lower profiles.
Earlier I mentioned that the beginning of the school year is a good time to reflect on institutional mission. Catholic Higher Education and Catholic Social Thought is an excellent resource for institutions, or individual faculty and staff, who want to engage in this reflection. The book forms a well-integrated whole, but each essay can be read on its own, and each also has helpful discussion questions. The book would be ideal for workshops and Faculty Learning Communities (FLC), in addition to individual reading.
On a related note—the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is best known for producing the Carnegie classifications, that is, the system of classifying colleges and universities based on the type of degrees granted and their focus on research (for example, “Baccalaureate colleges” or “Research 1 [R1] Doctoral universities”). Carnegie also provides other types of classifications, as well, such as the Community Engagement classification, with which I’m familiar from my days as a coordinator of service learning. In 2025, Carnegie is completely updating this system of classifications, but more importantly for the topic at hand, they are introducing a new Social and Economic Mobility classification. This classification will be designed to analyze institutions of higher education in terms of the numbers of students from marginalized or underprivileged backgrounds admitted to the institution, but also in terms of outcomes—retention and graduation rates, as well as post-graduation career placement and earnings. This is a complex undertaking, and the details of how it will work are not yet clear. But this could be a powerful tool for Catholic colleges and universities to self-assess how well they are fulfilling the commitments that arise from their Catholic identity.
Finally, one of my regular podcasts is Teaching in Higher Ed by Bonnie Stachowiak, which amazingly has published more than 500 weekly episodes over the past ten years, although I only started listening a few months ago. In an episode from back in March, Stachowiak interviewed Robert Talbert, a professor of mathematics at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and the co-author, with David Clark, of Grading for Growth: A Guide to Alternative Grading Practices that Promote Authentic Learning and Student Engagement in Higher Education.
The conversation, which is worth a listen, centers on the pitfalls of traditional approaches to grading and how instructors can engage in grading in a way that will help create more positive attitudes toward learning in students. But what struck me, and what I want to share with readers, is an exchange early in the conversation. Talbert shares an incident from his own time as a college student forty years ago that had a profound impact on the course of his life. He explains that in his senior year of college, he was struggling in an Advanced Calculus class, and even felt like he may have been the only student who was struggling. One day he was sitting in the hallway working on a problem before class, and the professor walked by and asked him what he was working on. He explained to her that he was struggling with the problem, and, he tells Stachowiak, her response has stuck with him the rest of his life: “Well, Robert, the good students aren’t struggling with this.” He goes on to explain that the discouragement, hurt, and anger experienced as a result of that comment ultimately motivated him to devote himself to studying pedagogy and alternative forms of grading and feedback.
That was a powerful moment in itself—many of us have probably been impacted by the hurtful words of a teacher or mentor, even in ways that shaped our life’s path—but then the conversation goes in an unexpected direction. Stachowiak raises the possibility that, just as Talbert has carried that hurt with him throughout his life, perhaps the professor’s response in that moment had come from a place of pain and insecurity arising from past experiences in her own life, either as a student or a professional. Talbert then sheepishly admits, “I never actually tried to understand it from her point of view,” and he then immediately realizes that her experience as a female professor in the male-dominated field of mathematics at a school of engineering in the 1980s may have shaped her identity or self-image in a way that made it difficult for her to appear “soft” toward a student or to admit to having failed to reach a student.
It is such a moment of recognition and grace. A story meant to emphasize how teachers should have mercy and compassion for students, and rightly so, leads to the recognition that those who hurt us are also often in need of mercy and compassion. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
As we begin the new school year, then, let’s try to practice mercy and compassion toward our students and our colleagues, but also toward ourselves.
Of Interest…
A more recent episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast features an even more radical approach to grading in a conversation with Josh Eyler, the author of Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do about It. Stachowiak has also recently hosted a number of episodes on using AI in higher ed. The most insightful for me was “Toward a More Critical Framework for AI Use,” with guest Jon Ippolito.
Readers know that I’ve tried to offer extensive coverage of the Synod on Synodality, starting with the preparations for last year’s gathering in Rome and most recently with my commentary on the working document, or Instrumentum Laboris, prepared for the second gathering this October (here and here). Church historian Massimo Faggioli has likewise provided a helpful preview of the upcoming meeting (which he also refers to as “Round Two”!) at Commonweal. Faggioli puts into perspective just how much has happened in the Catholic Church since the first gathering—a number of newsworthy Vatican documents and the responses to them, a primetime interview of Pope Francis on CBS, the excommunication of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, and the ongoing tension over the German Synodal Way, among other things. Looking at the big picture, Faggioli also notes that the synodal process has contributed to the revival of an ecclesiology of the “People of God,” promoted in Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium but discouraged after the 1985 Synod of Bishops, which promoted an ecclesiology of communion. Faggioli also discusses several of the issues to be discussed at the synodal gathering or by the working groups established by Pope Francis, but the last thing I found noteworthy was his point that, by design, the synodal process will not end when the synod ends. If the Instrumentum Laboris is any indication, the purpose of the synodal meeting is to devise ways to create more synodal structures throughout the Church, both universally and locally, or in other words to ensure that the “synodal process” is not a one-time event but rather a permanent dimension of the life of the Church.
Crux has had some of the best coverage of a story I’ve been highlighting off and on for the past several months: the dispute over the liturgy in India’s Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic Church centered in the state of Kerala. In 2021, the Syro-Malabar Church’s Synod adopted a liturgical reform in which the priest faces the congregation during the Liturgy of the Word and faces the altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, a compromise between those who favored the more traditional practice of facing the altar and Westernizers who favored facing the congregation. Most of the priests, and a significant part of the laity, in the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Algamany, the primatial see of the Syro-Malabar Church, however, have resisted this compromise, insisting that the priest should face the congregation throughout the liturgy, despite the urgings of the leadership of the Archeparchy and even of Pope Francis. This month, the Fifth Syro-Malabar Church Episcopal Assembly gathered, and the bishops re-affirmed their support for the Synod’s compromise liturgy, despite continued opposition in Ernakulam-Algamany.
Coming Soon…
Season 1 of the Window Light podcast is nearly finished, which just means I’m almost finished re-publishing all the great interviews I’ve included in the newsletter in podcast format. That means it’s about time for me to start planning new interviews for Season 2! Stay tuned!
Lots of great insights on Catholic Education and upward mobility here. Let's hope the history of the Labor Movement is taught.