- First Spiritual Exercises – First Spiritual Exercises invites Gonzaga Faculty and Staff into a four-week mini-retreat in daily life. This experience includes daily reflection and prayer complemented by weekly group sharing sessions. Seekers and people of all faiths (or no faith at all) are welcome to this retreat experience, which is rooted in the Catholic, Christian tradition and is adapted from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. Please click here for more information.
- Visio Divina – Offered several times per year, this guided prayer experience combines Scripture, music, and beautiful images from the St. John’s Illuminated Bible.
- SEEL (Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life) – Gonzaga supports and subsidizes the participation of faculty and staff in the SEEL Retreat, a 30-week experience of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. For more information, visit SEEL Spokane.
- Faith Sharing - Gather weekly (Mondays, 12:10-12:50pm) to pray and discuss scripture readings based on the lectionary. Feel free to drop in once or to make it a weekly practice.This is an opportunity to intentionally engage one’s work and faith with colleagues. Please email Beth Barsotti (barsotti@gonzaga.edu) to express your interest. We use a book titled Ponder: Contemplative Bible Study by Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, as a guide; Materials are provided.
- Our educational mission is rooted in the rich spiritual and religious tradition of the Society of Jesus, an Order within the Catholic Church. Jesuit spirituality is imaginative, reflective, and active. It begins with a personal, intimate relationship with a God of Love who invites us to participate in the healing and restoration of our communities and our world. For more information, and for online tools to help you deepen your spirituality, please visit our resources page.
Faber Seminars invite faculty and staff to a deeper exploration of particulars topic related to Gonzaga’s Catholic, Jesuit and humanistic traditions. These learning communities and book groups vary in topic, format and length and are often facilitated in collaboration with campus partners.
Faculty and Staff can participate in Faber Seminars as part of the multi-year mission programs or as stand-alone experiences. Some seminars may be open only to faculty and some may be open to only staff, to allow each constituency space to consider the mission in light of their distinctive vocations and expertise. Other seminars bring faculty and staff together to consider together how we might collectively live into our mission in new ways.
If you are interested in co-facilitating a Faber Seminar with Mission and Ministry or wish to propose a potential topic or text, please contact Lauren Hackman-Brooks.
Recent Faber Seminars include the following:
- “Mission and Racial Justice,” a semester-long seminar co-facilitated with the Office of Inclusive Excellence
- “Decoloniality and Justice,” a semester-long seminar co-facilitated with the Office of Tribal Relations
- “Anthropocentric Privilege and the Community of Creation,” an hour-long discussion with Daniel P. Horan, OFM, Ph.D., Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality and associate professor of systematic theology and spirituality at Catholic Theological Union, co-sponsored by Environmental Studies, Religious Studies, and Catholic Studies
- “Laudato Si’ and Integral Ecology,” semester long seminars run separately for faculty (co-facilitated with the Environmental Studies Department and the Catholic Studies Program) and staff (co-facilitated with the Office of Sustainability)
Potential future topics include but are by no means limited to the following:
- Imagination and the Jesuit tradition
- Ignatian Pedagogy in the Classroom
- Environmental Justice and the Jesuit and Catholic Traditions
- Gender, Justice, and the Jesuit and Catholic Traditions
- Economic Justice and the Jesuit and Catholic Traditions
Our team is available for mission consulting and support for various projects related to mission and identity. We relish opportunities to bring our expertise and experience to bear on the real questions and issues emerging in your area.
We can brainstorm, design, and facilitate conversations and experiences for teams and departments such as:
- Mission orientations
- Creation of learning outcome goals connected to mission
- Serving on panels or as guest presenters
- Retreats and mini-retreats
- Suggesting, creating, and/or leading reflections or prayers at events
- Facilitating sessions following the death of a colleague
Be welcome to contact Lauren Hackman-Brooks with inquiries.
Staff and Faculty Retreat
October 23-October 24, 2022 at Bozarth Mansion & Retreat Center
“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest awhile.” - Mark 6:31
In the Gospels, Jesus goes away several times to a deserted place as a way to be with God, to be nourished, and to be sustained in the work of ministry. Through Scripture, artistic expression, and time for prayer and reflection, this retreat is an opportunity for you to be away, be with God, nourish your spirit, and be sustained in the work you do at Gonzaga.
Register here or contact Lauren Hackman-Brooks with questions.
Faculty Writing Retreat
Hosted during Gonzaga’s Spring Break, the Faculty Writing Retreat supports the scholarly and creative work of faculty. Enjoy protected time to think, read, write and create outside of your regular setting and routine.
For more details, please contact Beth Barsotti.
We believe that knowing one another and having fun together is an essential part of the employee experience at a Jesuit university. Occasionally, Mission and Ministry hosts social events for staff and faculty.
Gonzaga’s work toward diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging is essential to our mission as a Catholic, Jesuit, humanistic university. The work led by the Office of Inclusive Excellence, calls the whole university to a greater realization of our mission as an institution that seeks to serve the common good through the realization of justice.
In our context, we recognize that living into our mission demands that we confront white racist supremacy, settler colonialism, patriarchy and sexism, Christian supremacy, xenophobia, racialized supersessionism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and heterosexism, among other intersecting structures of domination, including the ways they have been made manifest in the Catholic and Jesuit traditions. This entails not only dismantling those systems of oppression and the privilege they bestow on entire classes of people but also standing with persons and communities victimized by those systems in the struggle toward justice. The Eyes to See Antiracism Examen created by the AJCU is an excellent resource for individuals, teams and departments.
The Office of Mission and Ministry is proud to partner and collaborate with the Office of Inclusive Excellence in both in the development of mission integration opportunities for faculty and staff and in the development of administrative projects such as new proposals centered on hiring for mission.