Author Archives: Robert Groves

This blog was started in September, 2012, as a way for a provost to comment on new developments at the university, higher education more generally, with a little social science commentary blended-in from time to time. At this point, there are over 600 posts on the blog, one a week, usually on a Wednesday night.

It has been an outlet to fill the need to do a little writing each week. It has kept me honest about deciding whether I was spending my time on important issues rather than minutia. It provided a signal each week that the week was proceeding and much remained to do.

Over the years we increased the number of awards given to faculty and staff, so one of the pleasures of writing the blog was announcing the current winners to the community. This included the Provost Distinguished Associate Professors, the Sonnenborn Chairs for Interdisciplinary Collaboration, the Provost Distinguished Faculty Fellows, the Provost Innovation in Teaching Awards, and, most recently, the Provost Distinguished Staff Awards.

Another series of posts concerned the status and future of higher education. Here much time was spent on issues involving the engagement of students in classrooms, the dialogues among person with opposing beliefs, and the value of experience-based learning. In the early years, when the hype phase of online learning was present, we spent a lot of time discussing internet assisted education, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and other developments that were being touted as the end of residential, in-person education.

Some of the discussion was about the life of the mind that is common to all faculty. Some observed the differences in research cultures across the fields. Others involved attempts to reduce the university’s bureaucratic impediments to research. Some others observed the crucial role that staff play in the operations of a modern university, making the work of both students and faculty more productive. We discussed the integrative role of graduate programs both for research productivity and for undergraduate mentorship.

Other posts focused on the changing landscape of human knowledge itself, the fact that formerly distinct fields of inquiry are being combined and blended in new ways. We observed that this was especially appropriate for Georgetown, given its mission to serve the common good. This led to many posts about how combining the strengths of multiple disciplines into centers, institutes, and new shared degree programs may increase the impact of higher education. It argued that networks of faculty and research centers may be a more productive organization than hierarchies, in which faculty have bosses who direct their research foci.

Finally, we spent a little time on social science issues of personal interest. This included worries about the increasing cost of measurements of large human populations (like that of the U.S.) threatening the loss of information about the welfare of the countries involved. It commented on what we used to call “big data.” It observed that trust in institutions and in science were experiencing notable declines over time.

I ended my provost service a few days ago, and, upon reflection, have decided to end posting on this blog. While all of these topics remain of interest to me, in my new role, I’ll find another way to share my observations. Thank you for reading these musings over the years.

The pandemic radically altered work life. Some staff continued to arrive on location, heavily masked and protected from close in-person interaction. Others shifted their workplaces to their homes.

Early on, there were reports that one-third of households experienced at least one member shifting their place of work. In short, this was a major change in work-life patterns.

The nature of the pandemic is very different now. But some of the job-shifting that occurred during the pandemic created quasi-permanent remote jobs. This is true both of the private sector and the government sector.

But changes were contemplated early. I remember a chat with an official of a nationwide bank who in August of 2020 ordered all staff to return to the office, only to change his mind after his staff objected. A recent report notes that on average 39% of employers have changed their policy two or more times since fall 2020. There seems to have been much shifting by employers over the past years.

The passage of years now allows us to ask the question of whether the move to “work at home” has stabilized.

In the last couple of years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the percentage of teleworked or worked at home hours among all hours worked . In 2024, this has stabilized to be about 16%. Be careful to note this is the percentage of hours worked by persons aged 16 years or older.

Gallup has a different measure – the percentage of persons working hybrid, remotely, or exclusively on site. Hybrid workers form 53% of all workers; remote workers, 27%; on site, 21%. The percentage of persons fully remote has been stable at around the 27% remote for the last years.

Another set of surveys uses less rigorous frame and sampling methods relying on data aggregators, but has consistent and interesting measures since 2021. It provides yet another statistic – the percentage of paid full days working at home. In the most recent 2024 release, 28% of paid workdays are worked at home among those employed. This statistic shows dramatic declines since 2021 but as with others, a flattening out in recent months. But the overall percentage belies variation – 33% of the workers are fully on site; 26% are fully remote.

Employers’ policies seem to be stabilizing. The surveys report that on average the number of days at-home permitted about 1.5 days. That number has been stable for about 2 years. (Interestingly, in the same survey, workers report that on average they would desire between 2.5 and 3 days working at home).

The survey also breaks out sectors of the economy. On average those working in education (I suspect not just higher education) spend about 1 day a week at home. In contrast those in finance and insurance spend between 2 and 3 days working at home. There are age correlates – proportionately more younger workers at home than older workers. There are also reports that at-home workers are doing more work outside of normal business hours than are fully on-site workers, who seem more likely to stop working once they leave the work site.

So what do we make of all this? Hybrid work seems to be an average state for many workers. The trends in at-home working seem to be stabilizing in the past year. So, while the dramatic drop in on-site working that occurred in 2020 was not maintained, there is much evidence that we have not returned to the dominance of on-site work prevalent for the pre-pandemic society.

I got interested for an admittedly geeky reason. A colleague discovered that the act of volunteering was predictive of agreeing to participating in surveys. The social psychological basis of this seemed, in retrospect, to be a simple transference from helping others by giving one’s time or resources, on one hand, to giving one’s time to help a stranger who is asking for information, on the other. There is also probably a precursor cognition, one of trust assessment when encountering a stranger, that is built into the decisions. So, since that research finding that volunteering is linked to survey participation, I’ve been tracking rates of volunteering in the US.

Every two years, Americorps sponsors a supplement to the Bureau of Labor Statistics/Census Bureau household unemployment survey, which asks adult respondents about volunteering and related behaviors. For example, it asks questions about giving time for any organization or association in the past year, about contributions greater than $25 to a charity, school, or religious organization; and about informal helping for a neighbor or friend. While response rates to this household survey are falling over time, about 70% of the households respond to the current survey.

The results of the 2023 survey were recently released with comparisons to the 2017, 2019, and 2021 editions. Roughly half of adults report charitable giving, roughly a quarter, some formal volunteering; and roughly half, informal helping of neighbors and friends.

But there are some interesting changes over time. First, many activities of helping were lower in the 2021 reports than in the other years. One suspects that the pandemic, with the radically reduced physical interaction among people, affected some volunteering behavior. This is clearly true of formal volunteering but less true of informal helping of neighbors and friends. Similarly, it makes sense that charitable giving was less impacted by the pandemic relative to volunteering.

Second, drilling down into the bounce back of formal volunteering between 2021 and 2023 reveals some distinct patterns. Among generation groups, millennials (aged between 27 and 42 in 2023) display the highest jumps in volunteering and informal helping between 2021 and 2023. This is a curious contrast because the millennials don’t seem to show distinctive jumps in other giving behaviors (e.g., charitable giving). This IS the generation that was dealing with closed schools for children and care for shut-in elderly parents. It could be discretionary time for other helping activities was limited during the pandemic but reappeared by 2023.

To return to my geekiness, the response rates of the household unemployment rate are falling over time. Falling response rates would portend higher volunteering rates among the respondents, so we need to be careful. Post survey adjustments attempt to correct for this bias, but we cannot have assurance of their efficacy. On the other hand, by the way, the response rates have been falling for some time and there is no discernable trend in increased volunteering estimates.

So, in short, there’s some reason to take the findings seriously. Despite our daily discussions about a society so fractured by disagreement that we have lost empathy for others, there is little support for that. As a nation we’re not deteriorating in tendencies to help one another; in fact, there’s evidence that such activity is showing a post-pandemic rebound.

There is wide variation in the nature of work within universities. Faculty and staff in academic programs use institutional funds with high certainty of continuity; they are hired through open searches, often extending over months.

Research units that depend on external funding have revenue that is determined entirely by the funding agency. Sometimes, research agreements require the completion of a project in a short time period. A 12-month project is not unusual. A three- to five- year project is coveted; a 10-year project is very rare.

Since the staffing of such projects is dependent on external funds, teams cannot be formed until the funding is somewhat certain. However, once the formal commitment of funding is given, the clock of the project begins ticking. On a one year project, spending two months to hire the research staff wastes 16% of the project time.

A related feature of research projects reflects how new research ideas occur. Often, collaborators and their teams discuss the opportunities for the next stage of their research. Grant proposals are written that describe a team makeup, whether or not the team members are currently employees. The peer review of the proposal depends partly on the naming of key staff who boost the likelihood that the project will be successful. Thus, whether or not the proposed team members are currently employed at the university, their membership on the team can be crucial to success in the grant competition.

This feature of assembling teams that compete for grant funding (whether or not they currently are employed at the university of the principal investigator) means that the logic of an open search for filling team positions makes little sense. The proposed research staff has already been vetted by the peer review process of the grant program.

Both the limited funding runway for grant-funded research and the pre-vetted teams justify the need for speed in hiring research staff.

For some months the Provost Office, in collaboration with colleagues throughout the university, has been trying to reform the hiring process for research staff. This focused on the “Research Fellow” titles.

Under the new policy, three levels of Research Fellows exist – Research Fellow, Senior Research Fellow, and Distinguished Research Fellow. The three levels correspond to increasing levels of responsibility and autonomous work duties. All three appointment types are term-limited by the nature of the external funding.

Under the new policy Research Fellows are not subject to the standard search procedures. Such appointments will made upon recommendation by the research unit and approved by the responsible Dean and Provost. Research Fellows hired under a yearly appointment can be hired without the need for an open search. (However, open searches will be required for hires and renewals to a multi-year contract.) The supervisor of the Fellow will be the Principal Investigator of the funded project.

If the external funding for his/her position is modified or canceled during the term of an appointment, a fellow can be terminated, or have his or her salary reduced or otherwise discontinued or terminated. Such is the nature of work on external funding.

So the newly designed research fellow framework does not solve all problems of employment in “soft-money” units. It does, however, address directly the speed with which research teams can be formed at the beginning of a project.

Our hope is that this will indirectly increase the research productivity of Georgetown faculty and staff.

All universities can function only with the good work of many staff that support students, faculty, grounds, and buildings. Georgetown is blessed with unusually strong staff throughout the university.

After wonderful work of the Main Campus Staff/AAP leadership, we were able to establish new recognition of extraordinary performance among these colleagues we work with every day.

The Provost Distinguished Staff Awards start with nominations from co-workers, to identify those who have demonstrated distinction in going above and beyond for another member of the community or the community at large. The kinds of actions that we sought to recognized were building community engagement, effectively supporting student success, bringing national recognition to Georgetown University, innovation in the university community, promoting inclusive and diverse equitable communities, promoting Jesuit values, generosity to another member of the community, and/or process improvements to the university

It is with great pleasure that we announce the inaugural recipients of the Provost Distinguished Staff/AAP Award, selected from more than 60 nominees who work on Georgetown’s Main Campus.

Briana Green, senior director of career development and alumni engagement at the McCourt School of Public Policy, and Justin Smith, associate dean for strategic initiatives and program development at the McDonough School of Business, will each receive a $2,500 award and a one-year designation as the Provost’s Distinguished Staff Member.

Briana Green has often been one of few African American women in her work groups. She is a strong advocate for increasing, supporting, and promoting diversity and inclusion. Within McCourt, she has served as an unofficial mentor and advocate for many of our National Urban Fellows and other students who do not see themselves represented in leadership roles or in the classroom.

Upon her completion of Georgetown’s Certificate in Leadership Coaching and Georgetown’s DEI Certificate, Briana has become even more effective in helping our students realize their potential. She presented to 250 first year students on Identity & Belonging and on Identifying Bias during orientation.

For the greater Georgetown community, she participates in the Georgetown Women’s Alliance Mentor program, First Generation Student ally, and a Marino Family International Writers’ mentor. Briana is also an integral part of the job readiness aspect of the Georgetown Paralegal Program within the Prisons Justice Initiative. Briana has helped fellows prepare resumes and practice job interviewing.

Justin Smith spearheads research initiatives for undergraduates in the McDonough School of Business (MSB). He has helped nurture the McDonough Undergraduate Research Program into a valuable part of the student experience. He developed a course that taught business students key elements of research and their application to different areas of business. He has also elevated the MSB summer research program with a symposium held during Family Weekend. This symposium has showcased original student research to faculty, other business students, the broader campus community, and their families.

Justin recently moved to a new position in the office where he does not directly advise students. Despite this he voluntarily supported a student who had taken multiple leaves of absence. She needed added support to finish her degree requirements. Justin offered to work with this young woman to help her get over the finish line. When she finally crossed the stage at commencement this spring, she noted how Justin’s support was so helpful in allowing her to achieve her educational goals.

Justin goes out of his way to support initiatives of the School. He helped design and analyze a survey that looked at belonging for McDonough students across programs. Justin is a problem solver who has a tremendous work ethic, and can be counted on to support not only his office’s initiatives, but the university’s initiatives as well.

Please join me in congratulating Brianna and Justin on their being recognized for their professionalism and effectiveness at Georgetown.

Friday, October 25, was a proud day for the Georgetown humanities community. Director Professor Nicoletta Pireddu and Arts & Sciences Dean Andrew Sobanet led the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the new location of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative. It is beautiful, classical, space in one of the iconic academic buildings at Georgetown. One floor below, on a portico and steps, twenty-two US presidents, including the first, George Washington, have given speeches. Large, historic, oil paintings grace the walls. The scene evokes a contemplative, scholarly, feel.

In a real sense this was a gift to the humanities community from the Capitol Campus, as space was formerly occupied by the McCourt School of Public Policy. The move out of that school was the first step of re-imaging the buildings surrounding the Dahlgren Chapel courtyard.

It’s easy to imagine the small rooms toward the director’s suite as soon containing colleagues helping one another on draft manuscripts, thinking through puzzles of next steps in a scholarly journey. One can envision undergraduate and graduate students meeting to discuss their own creative projects, each in their own way trying to learn how to live the life of the mind so central to the humanistic tradition. The rooms will also become temporary homes for visits of scholars from throughout the globe, the places where they stimulate new thoughts, new perspectives for the Georgetown community. Finally, they will be meeting places for Georgetown scholars from different fields who are seeking to understand perspectives held by different disciplines.

For many decades, Georgetown has suffered from too little space for humanities scholars to interact. Deans and provosts for some years have imagined a gathering space devoted to the humanities. Lack of space to engage across units is almost always a death knell to multi-disciplinary efforts. The default of staying in one’s department or programs is a strong force.

So, for years, those colleagues who sought interaction across units met in conference rooms for short moments and then returned to their offices away from one another. Finally, now, it’s conceivable that potential partners can “hang out” at the Humanities Initiative space. They can experience the by-chance creative instances spurred by thinking about their problem from a different perspective, and thereby advance their agenda more effectively.

The Humanities Initiative will achieve its gools through seed grants and student fellow positions, giving life to the space. The current set of student fellow were introduced to the crowd at the ribbon-cutting and reminded us why we do our work at Georgetown.

The space in the Humanities Initiative on the second floor of Old North is just a beginning of the renaissance of the humanities at Georgetown. Over the coming months and years the surrounding buildings of Healy, McGuire, Old North, and New North will become the Georgetown Humanities Quad. This will be a home for humanistic scholarship, one of the important roots of the university, occupying the very origins of the spaces built to nurture the small school of 1789 into the global research university of the 21st century.

So the ribbon cutting was a wonderful first step on a journey that will continue for some years. Onward!

• Kathryn Temple receives the 2024 Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award
• Andrew Zeitlin wins the 2024 Provost Distinguished Achievement in Research Award
• James Collins is awarded the 2024 Provost Career Research Achievement Award

Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award
This award, supported by the Bill (B ‘92) and Karen Sonneborn Innovation Fund, recognizes a faculty member, team, or department for exceptional creativity and innovative approaches that promote student-centered learning. The evaluative criteria include the extent of innovation, the impact on students and colleagues, and the potential for wider adoption of the approach.

Kathryn Temple, Professor of English, is honored with the award for her leadership in founding the Master of Arts program in Engaged and Public Humanities. The program bridges traditional graduate-level humanities education with experiential learning, preparing students for diverse career paths after graduation. A crucial element of the program is a practicum that allows students to apply their humanities training in real-world settings. Now entering its fourth year, the MA program has welcomed its largest cohort, reflecting its growing success.

Provost Distinguished Achievement in Research Award
This award highlights a significant recent achievement in scholarship and research, such as winning a prestigious book prize, receiving peer recognition, or obtaining a major grant.

Andrew Zeitlin, Associate Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy, is recognized for his groundbreaking research on pay-for-performance contracts in Rwanda. His study, published in the American Economic Review, explored the effects of these contracts on teacher recruitment, effort, and retention. Conducted under challenging conditions, this work led to a $3.1 million grant from USAID and Agence Française de Développement to implement his findings as national policy in Rwanda. This research is not only a significant scholarly contribution but also has the potential to improve the lives of millions in the near future.

Provost Career Research Achievement Award
This award celebrates a faculty member’s lifelong contributions to their field, honoring sustained scholarly excellence and influence that extends beyond the Georgetown community. Nominees are evaluated based on their long-term impact and career achievements.

James Collins, Professor Emeritus of History, is recognized for his profound impact on the study of the pre-revolutionary French state. Over a career spanning more than 45 years, Collins has reshaped historical understanding through his seven books and numerous articles. His innovative research, which focused on regional and local records rather than centralized archives, challenged long-held views about the French monarchy’s administrative capacities. His work has significantly influenced comparative history and political theory, with implications extending to the study of modern states. Collins has also mentored nearly 20 doctoral students, many of whom have gone on to distinguished academic careers.

Please extend your congratulations to these distinguished colleagues for their outstanding achievements.

Universities are complex organizations. The diversity of ongoing work, especially in liberal arts institutions, stems from the mission of extending and transmitting human knowledge in all its aspects. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the processes that are employed in this work, also, vary greatly across the organization.

Some academics do their work in solitary endeavors. They may have like spirits in their departments or on other campuses, but they are not in active collaboration doing shared work. Instead, they pursue their passion of their minds by themselves. Of course, the products of their work are disseminated and receive critique and commentary from others. But the production of their work is solitary.

Others work in teams. These teams often involve both faculty and staff, sharing goals of pursuing knowledge building or knowledge transmission. In these units, the distinction between faculty and staff often disappears. The joint work requires close ties and share work flow, such that joint dependencies between faculty and staff are constantly evident.

Since universities tend to be decentralized and knowledge is dynamic, new units of work may be desirable. This is a post about those who build such new units.

“Entrepreneurism” is too often associated only with new organizations whose goal is profit. Academic entrepreneurism involves actions by one or more academic staff who recognize a new goal in knowledge creation or transmission. Such work builds new undergraduate majors, new graduate programs, new research centers, or new collaborations among multiple units.

Unfortunately, the standard reward system among faculty does not explicitly recognize such work. In their formation as scholars, faculty must generally complete their dissertation by themselves; they pursue their pre-tenure activities in a manner to demonstrate that they by themselves are building a distinctive research portfolio of new knowledge; the reward system of professional associations honor individual achievement. Everything nurtures a self-oriented person.

Hence, the choice to build a new unit within a university requires unusual attributes. A conceptualization of a new structure must be created. Argument or evidence must be brought to bear that the new structure would advance knowledge or improve the educational enterprise over the existing structures.

Given that financial resources are scarce, critiques from existing unit members are natural. Dealing with financial implications of a new initiative is often a new task for academic staff. What source of revenue can be used to establish the unit? What risks exist that such a source will disappear in future years? Can the unit be self-sustaining financially?

So, it takes a special kind of personal initiative, the ability to see things as they could be, for those who build new units in universities. This is risk-taking behavior because it would be much safer to work within the existing reward system of one’s field.

The most successful new research and educational units appear to be those built by not just one person, but multiple faculty sharing a vision. They are often accompanied by staff who share the vision and work side-by-side to achieve it. While the leaders must successfully articulate the vision to those in authority or those with financial resources, in the early days, they also tend to be hands-on doers of the work. In that sense, they are less selfish, they are focused on the work, not on individual prestige. They derive their internal rewards from seeing the vision emerge.

The value of involving multiple faculty and staff is robustness. A group of diverse minds offers greater chance of success than one alone. Multiple people avoid the real threat that the unit is built around such a unique viewpoint that it cannot endure past the first leader. Small research centers built around a single powerful character rarely survive past the departure of that character. Multiple founders increase the likelihood of leadership succession and evolution over time.

In addition, the most successful new units are open systems. They build a culture of invitation that is attractive to many, both committed new members and those with partial affiliation. The joy of the work is a magnet for staff, students, and faculty. Hence, the leaders of such units are servant leaders, more selfless than most, interested in group achievement not just their individual achievement.

These are rare traits in any work organization, but especially so in academic environments with their emphasis on individual achievement. Without such academic entrepreneurship, however, universities struggle to evolve. Hence, those among us who conceptualize and build sustainable new units are precious colleagues.

José Andres, the restaurateur and social entrepreneur, yesterday gave the 2024 Tanous talk, which was organized around a set of questions posed to him. Most of the questions concerned his leadership of the World Central Kitchen.

The World Central Kitchen provides meals and nurturance in response to humanitarian crises. Sometimes the crisis arises from natural causes (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes); other times there are the results of human behaviors (e.g., forced migration because of conflicts, destruction of infrastructures in war). The Kitchen is working in Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon. He arrived in Gaston Hall fresh from work in Asheville, in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

In addition to being a great humorist, Mr. Andres (who can be referred to as “Dr. Andres” given his Georgetown honorary degree in 2018) was fully evident as a man of the people.

Part of his story was an immigration story, clearly part of his identity. A funny anecdote was an early arrival in New York City, when he observed the night sky and the stars, while seeing the US flag. He concluded that the stars on the flag represented the unlimited capacity of the skies with its stars, the unlimited ambitions of the country. (Only later did he realize that each star represented a different state of the union.)

He told his story as an immigrant to the United States in 1991. He described his early volunteering in helping in food service for needy individuals. It inspired the World Central Kitchen.

One of the attention-grabbing assertions that he forwarded was that the World Central Kitchen was the largest organization in the world. Larger than the US government. Larger than the United Nations. Larger than Walmart or Amazon. As the listeners’ skepticism grew, he then said “Yes, it’s the largest but many of the members of the World Central Kitchen don’t know about their membership. His point was elaborated by noting that the horrors of the situations that they enter almost always are accompanied by a rallying of people around the crisis. Restaurants and chefs are willing to drop everything to help. Transport groups volunteer equipment and staff. Requests for the World Central Kitchen are almost always granted, given the clarity of their mission to feed and care for those harmed by a crisis. In that sense, we are all members of the World Central Kitchen.

While José Andres did not use much of the nomenclature of the Jesuits, he enunciated their values clearly. One of his expressions, repeated several times, is that the measure of our values is what we would do for people we don’t even know. It’s too easy to help those in need in one’s family or neighborhood, but the greatest needs arise in people we’ve never met. Helping them is the true test of whether one is living their values.

He asserted that plans are not useful to his work. He sees that other service organizations become highly articulated structures, with operation manuals that specify the behavior of their staff. In Andres’ experience, those plans, when faced with a crisis and the chaos of disasters, threaten success. Speed and flexibility succeeds when plans are faced with unanticipated realities.

If the Kitchen arrives on scene and witnesses other groups serving a need that it might normally offer, the staff identifies gaps that still exist and tries to fill those gaps. They quickly change what they do. If they arrive as the first responding group, they may have to reset their expectations to the impediments that the situation presents. What the Kitchen does is dictated by circumstances in the locale in need.

Chaos is unpredictable. What is needed can rarely be fully predicted. If one is not nimble, one fails. The focus must be on the people one is helping, both to save them from immediate peril but then to consider how they themselves might build more enduring solutions. So he told stories of teaching cooking skills to those affected by crises, so that they could build job-related capacities for the post-crisis period. For example, the World Central Kitchen has built food producer networks to address chronic food insecurity.

Each story José Andres told illustrated a driving force to reduce suffering. It is difficult to have experienced this event without concluding that this is what “people for others” really means.

The Jesuits have a set of pairings of values that seem on the surface to be in direct tension. Some of these are displayed on light pole banners on the Hilltop Campus – for example, “Contemplation in Action.” The impact of the phrases is that they force a pause, to understand how one might combine such an unusual marriage of goals.

This is a post about another challenging combination — magnanimity and humility.

Universities are pretty good at half of this. In academia, the magnanimity part is second nature. Every feature of academia supports striving for new insights, creating new ideas, inventing new interpretations, discovering new facts. Go big; make a difference. Create your unique contribution. So, the magnanimity side is certainly a robust feature of knowledge production.

On the education side, the mission of universities seeks to form the minds and spirits of students striving to become better. That too drives toward magnanimity. The students are given the challenge of fixing all the things wrong with the current world. What bolder mission could there be than shaping the next leaders of the world?

But, there’s another notion that is forwarded on Jesuit campuses – the “magis.” The intended meaning is a continuous striving in our actions to become closer and closer to God. However, in high-powered academic environments, a misinterpretation that can easily slip into practice is that all “magis” means is to work harder. Strive for higher production levels. Create more work. Spur hyper-activity to become even more prominent in one’s field.

In short, in universities, there is the danger of avoiding the tension between “magnanimity” on one side and “humility” on the other.

Thus, when we turn to the humility side of the pair, there’s a bigger challenge. Much of academia is geared toward critical review of one’s work. A manuscript is reviewed and critiqued by others, often anonymously, yielding unbridled attacks both on the goals of the manuscript and the quality of its arguments. A proposal written for external funding of research is submitted to peer review, often by those who have rival ideas that they are seeking to fund. A seminar talk is followed by oral critiques of one’s peers.

Such external ongoing critical evaluation often produces the need/desire to promote one’s work vigorously, to aggressively establish one’s reputation within the field as a thought leader, and to actively seek the praise of the community. Correspondingly, success in a field brings with it personal rewards – membership in honorific groups, awards from professional organizations. The whole system is geared toward individual accomplishments.

Such is hardly a recipe for breeding humility.

Students we mentor and nurture are under great pressure to promote their “brand,” to build their resume with evidence of personal achievement, to construct networks that will increase their visibility. In short, their worlds entail the same threats to humility that their faculty mentors face.

It is, therefore, deeply refreshing to encounter academic faculty and staff who focus on their work and not their own place in the pecking order. Georgetown is honored to be home of many such scholars. It is they who build a community of truth seekers that achieve the true mission of a Jesuit university. Both magnanimity and humility, while always in tension, co-exist in their lives, to the benefit of all of us.