Applicant Letter from Jesuit Pedagogy Organizers

To: Senior Teaching Fellows, Teaching Fellows and Teaching Associates
From: Special Task Force on Jesuit Pedagogy
Re: Jesuit Pedagogy Seminar for Senior Teaching Fellows, Teaching Fellows and Teaching Associates

We would like to inform you of the Jesuit Pedagogy Seminar that is being offered next semester to Senior Teaching Fellows, Teaching Fellows and Teaching Associates who have taught at the college level at least one year prior to spring 2025. Participating STFs, TFs or TAs should be teaching at least one course during the spring 2025 semester. Participation will include a $4,100 increase to your GSAS academic year merit stipend rate.

Jesuit Pedagogy: Characteristics and practical approaches

This colloquium will expose Fordham graduate students preparing for University teaching to the values and pedagogy that characterize the nearly five-century-old tradition of Jesuit education, and will invite participants to reflect collaboratively on ways that this tradition might serve as a resource for their own educational practices. While it is not assumed that graduate students will be pursuing their teaching careers in Jesuit institutions—so effort will be made to focus on the broad applicability of Jesuit pedagogy—the participants in this project, over the course of the semester, will participate in the large dynamic and history of Jesuit education.

This interdisciplinary colloquium in Jesuit Pedagogy works as a complement to existing training programs in Fordham University Graduate departments. The seminar itself will be limited to approximately 12 graduate student Senior Teaching Fellows, Teaching Fellows or Teaching Associates from diverse disciplines. Entry into the spring 2025 course will be selective. 

The spring 2025 colloquium will be team-taught by Professors Michael Baur (Philosophy), Moshe Gold (English), and Christine Firer Hinze (Theology). Enclosed please find a description of the colloquium and an accompanying syllabus. The documents listed in the syllabus will be provided to all colloquium participants.

In addition, we have provided you with copies of the two application forms that STFs, TFs or TAs need to complete and submit.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us:

Thank you.

Spring 2025 Jesuit Pedagogy Seminar Information

This special spring 2025 Fordham University graduate seminar has three main overlapping goals:

  1. an intensive exploration of, and reflection on, the context, history, ideals, goals, and practices of Jesuit education, particularly as they relate to issues of writing and ethics;
     
  2. a focused concern to make the principles of Jesuit education a reality in daily interactions between teachers and students and among students themselves;
     
  3. an acknowledgement and open discussion of the responsibilities one has to others, especially as these obligations impact the dynamic between teachers and learners.

Meetings
There will be six meetings over the course of the spring 2025 semester; each meeting will last three hours and will focus on readings, Ignatian Pedagogy and the students’ own teaching. Please note that the last meeting will be conducted as a Forum in which the Graduate students will present material as part of their professional development. 

Mentoring/Class observations/Working together outside the classroom
In addition to participating in the colloquium meetings and the end-of-the-semester Forum, students will be asked to sit in on classes in multiple disciplines (with the observed classes taught by different instructors). Each Graduate student will also work closely with a mentor, attending a mentor’s classes, grading (duplicate copies of) papers, discussing pedagogical strategies with a mentor, and creating instructive and engaging ways to focus on student writing and ethical concerns (such as academic honesty, the ethics of research, etc.). 

Texts (for this program, texts will be provided for participants)
Duminuco, SJ, ed. The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400th Anniversary Perspectives. Fordham University Press, 2000. Additional books to purchase on Rhetoric and writing will be announced (texts will include the standard Writing Handbook all Fordham college students own).

Reading
Many readings will come from The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, but there will be supplementary readings from diverse disciplines and fields of inquiry (such as rhetoric, writing, ethics, philosophy, etc.). In addition, to help students become aware of the complex history of Jesuit education, there will be large list of suggested readings on the history and contexts of the Jesuits and Jesuit education.

Writing
The students will be asked to write short responses to the readings, the class observations, and the mentoring process. In addition, there will be ongoing written reflections of class discussions and readings. At the end of the semester, students will be asked to present the specific relationships between Jesuit Pedagogy and their particular disciplines. The exact nature of these presentations will be discussed by the class.

The Six Meetings: Working Template

  1. Contexts and Histories of Learning. Discussion of students’ experiences (intellectual and affective), societal changes, schools, and teachers. Much of this first class will focus on an acknowledgement of where Ignatian Pedagogy comes from, and an initial foray into the important concepts of “experience, reflection, action, and evaluation” in Ignatian Pedagogy.
    Readings (prior to class): “Characteristics of Jesuit Education” (Appendix A) Excerpts from Ignatius Loyola, “Autobiography,” “Spiritual Exercises” 
     
  2. The History of Jesuit Education.
    Readings (prior to class): Ch. 3, John O’Malley SJ, “How the First Jesuits Became Involved in Education,” and Ch. 6, John O’Malley, SJ, “From the 1599 Ratio Studiorum to the Present: A Humanistic Tradition?” excerpts from Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations
     
  3. Eloquentia Perfecta. An in-depth exploration of rhetoric—oral and written—in the disciplines.
    Readings (prior to class): Patricia Bizzell’s “Rhetoric and the Tradition of Jesuit Education”; “Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach” (Appendix B); “The Ethics of Research” and other selections from The Craft of Research (by W.C. Booth, G.G. Colomb, and J.M. Williams).
     
  4. Truth in addition to Method. The notion of the “ideal person,” pedagogy beyond (or in addition to) methodology, keywords in Jesuit education, preparations for risk-taking and experimentation
    Readings (prior to class): Assembly 1989: Jesuit Ministry in Higher Education, Address of Peter Hans Kolvenbach, SJ. June 7, 1989; “Themes of Jesuit Higher Education,” a summary of the key ideas presented by Kolvenbach in June 1989; “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education,” by Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ. Santa Clara University, October 6, 2000. 
     
  5. Ethics and Social Justice; presentations in the disciplines—initial presentations, feedback, revisions.
    Readings (prior to class): “Communal Reflection on the Jesuit Mission in Higher Education: A Way of Proceeding”; AJCU, “Jesuit Education and Ignatian Pedagogy,” by Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, September, 2005; Loyola University Chicago, “Jesuit Education-Characteristics” 2003.
     
  6. End-of-the-semester FORUM: open to the larger public, this Forum will allow the graduate students to present their individual projects to the larger Fordham community, and will allow the students to hear feedback from people outside of the colloquium. 

In addition, we will use this last session to discuss what needs to be adjusted to create a more effective colloquium for the future.