September 14, 2010 | Marina Pastrana was an accounting major at Boston College when she decided to go on a service-learning trip to Nicaragua.

Her experience turned out to be more than just a summer diversion. She participated in the Arrupe International Program, which sends students to Latin America to experience and reflect upon poverty firsthand, witness the diversity of God’s creation and offer their abilities in creating a more just world. Participants meet weekly to learn about the country they will visit and to reflect on why they have chosen to join the group.

“It was my first close interaction with the Jesuits,” said Pastrana, who was raised Catholic. “I began to learn the Ignatian model of reflection, and to pursue a faith that does justice and seeks action.”

It changed her life.

“I asked myself, why am I doing what I’m doing? Is accounting something that will bring me joy?” she said.

This kind of experience is at the heart of the Boston College  education. It’s a school that has retained its religious identity in a city full of colleges where faith has faded in importance.

The Rev. Jack Butler, mission and ministry vice president at Boston College, is responsible for helping the school maintain, articulate and institutionalize its Jesuit identity.

“What makes us different is that we still operate out of our faith,” Butler said.

The Jesuit lens through which the college views its mission makes a difference in how the school forms its campus community and how it trains people to engage the world.

Butler said students are given an opportunity to explore three questions: “What gives you joy? What are you good at? What does the world need?”

Boston College, Butler said, is not neutral on how students live their lives.

“We offer value-based, value-laden education. We believe in justice, mercy and communal religious celebrations,” he said.

The Jesuit tradition

In the Jesuit tradition, it is not enough to be a well-educated human being, said John Hardt, assistant to the president for mission and identity and an assistant professor in the department of medicine at Loyola University Chicago.

“Education is for compassion and awareness of human suffering, so that one’s life is forever changed by those encounters,” he said. “One has to enter the world to understand the world.”

And Jesuit philosophy fits university life as well, said the Rev. Charles Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.

“It is the constant interplay of experience, reflection and decision. Then you repeat the process. This is good pedagogy.”

This method, first developed by the founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius Loyola, informs education at all 28 U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities. More than 200,000 students are enrolled in Jesuit schools in the United States, which include Georgetown University and Saint Louis University. Loyola University Chicago, the largest Jesuit school, has nearly 16,000 students, while Wheeling Jesuit University, the smallest, has just more than 1,400.

They all share roots in the Society of Jesus, a tradition set within the Roman Catholic faith. To understand what Jesuit education means, Butler said, one must see it in the light of Catholic education, which is built on three principles.

The first of these is that creation is good and worthy of study. Second, creation has a purpose, and those engaged in the intellectual life do so with a sense of meaning. And finally, Catholic education is Trinitarian, so “Catholic education fosters relationships and forms community,” said Butler.

For students at Boston College, the opportunities include the Arrupe International Program, as well as retreats, local Boston service opportunities and other programs to help students identify how God has called them to put their faith into action. The Intersections program offers credit for students who attend a weekly seminar that explores the transition from college to life outside the campus bubble.

“It’s a part of who Boston College is,” Butler said. “That’s driven by our philosophy. Instead of doing it in the abstract, we send you to the soup kitchen.”

But once students have that experience, they are then expected to reflect on it and learn from it, Butler said. “Ignatian education is to be attentive, to be reflective, and to be loving. You can’t say you love without doing anything.”

Institutionalizing the mission

Infusing the entire institution with these principles requires intention and effort on the part of its leaders.

While both Loyola and Boston College hire faculty who are not Jesuit or even Christian, Hardt believes that the classroom and the curriculum should reinforce the school’s identity, so that it is not relegated to an extracurricular activity.

“We can slip into a way of being in which we think our identity exists in our campus ministry and its liturgical life, but not at the heart of our intellectual life,” Hardt said.

Loyola has produced a paper, “ Transformative Education in the Jesuit Tradition,” that all job applicants receive; faculty must write a response to it.