Georgetown’s Core

I spent the last week in a large number of commencement events. I saw thousands of undergraduates walk across the stage, receive their degrees, shake the dean’s and the president’s hands, and smile widely. The graduate student commencements had a more serious air to them, I found, befitting the older students’ maturity. There was a lot more hooping and hollering in the undergraduates’ affairs, to my ear; I interpreted this as celebration of a new degree but also the celebration of a more fully-formed individual.

As the thousands walked across the stage, I couldn’t help reflecting on the institution and how the different parts come together to make the whole.

It’s rather easy, I believe, to document the centrality of Georgetown’s elite undergraduate program on the image and prestige of Georgetown University. As President Degioia has noted, the key goals of a university include the formation of its students, the scholarship of its faculty, and the service to the common good of society.

I believe that much of the formation mission of the university is achieved through the undergraduate programs. The age group of typical undergraduates is often discovering and developing their true identities. These are the years when the deep unanswerable questions of life are intensely confronted.

The undergraduate life is also that most affected by the framework of a liberal education. What is taught to them in these years matters. These are the years when some attributes of the learning environment are key: the faculty’s devotion to deep dialogue with students, the skill of probing ever more deeply into the meaning of text, and the experience of being out of one’s comfort zone. These are also the years when higher education has its best chance to form a link between academic lessons and life values. These are the years when cura personalis, the magis, “women and men for others,” and the key lessons of reflection and discernment can have large impacts on lives. Much of this learning lies in the humanities-based curricular experiences of Georgetown undergraduates.

That Georgetown has established the reputation of doing this well is a result of devoted faculty who understand the principles above and live their lives devoted to the formation of their students. It’s a bonus to our faculty that Georgetown undergraduates often bring to their classrooms high energy, intellect, and commitment to learning. It’s fun to teach them (most of the times). But nothing can diminish the need to have faculty devoted to their central role in forming our students for lives well-lived.

The designing the future(s) initiative at Georgetown has challenged us all to identify what is central to the essence of Georgetown’s past and present success, on one hand, and what should be changed, on the other, to achieve equivalent excellence for the 21st century.

From my vantage point, nothing we do in the future should harm the deep impact that individual faculty have on the lives of individual undergraduate students. The moments they spend together in joint discovery and dialogue are the most precious resources we have. Those relationships appear to be unrivalled vehicles for formation. Every possible one of the “futures” of Georgetown that we explore over the coming months should place that attribute of the current Georgetown on the “must-have” list in the future.

None of the thousands of undergraduates who walked across the stage over the past few days could become the person they are becoming without the faculty who nurtured both their minds and spirits over the past four years.