Gonzaga MSN Degree Overarching Values
Social Justice
Social justice is at once an ideological and action-oriented commitment to service of the poor. The promotion of social justice is a concrete, radical, but proportionate response to an unjustly suffering world. A commitment to social justice calls our faculty and students to a sincere interest in several ideal characteristics, as manifest in three complementary dimensions of Jesuit higher education: in whom our students become, in what our faculty do, and in how our programs proceed (Adapted from Kolvenbach, 2000).
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership, an approach that links leadership and spirituality and that is consistent with nursing and Jesuit values, describes the individual who is servant first and who then responds to a call to lead. Servant leadership “manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served” and is evident when those served “grow as persons . . . and become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants” (Greenleaf, 1970).
Community
Community describes a group of people who interact with each other on a regular basis and share one or more common interests. Nurses form partnerships with communities in order to better understand their needs and the issues and plan ways to collaborate to meet their needs. Faculty endeavor to build community with students and colleagues in order to create a learning climate where each individual is valued as a person and where mutual learning is fostered, scholarship is supported and differing opinions are welcomed.
Reflective Practice
Reflective practice is a mindful approach that requires students develop new understanding and appreciation through a process of attending to and exploring their own physical, mental, and emotional processes and responses during ordinary, everyday tasks. This attention enables students to listen attentively to others, recognize their own errors, refine their own practice, make evidence-based decisions, clarify their values, and develop new perspectives so they can act with compassion, competence, presence, and insight. It places emphasis on the development and refinement of critical thinking that is anchored in theory, research, and practice. Although mindfulness and reflective practice cannot be explicitly taught, they can be modeled by mentors and cultivated in learners (Adapted from Epstein, 1999 and Longenecker, 2002).
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