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As Lane Center Faculty Fellows this year, we had the opportunity to collaborate around Jesuit traditions in generative ways that eased the isolation we felt during the pandemic. As faculty members in the Department of Art + Architecture, we wished to respond to the unique challenges of 2020–21 through an art-making project that would bring together the department’s five programs and its faculty, staff, and students in a shared and mutually supportive enterprise.
During the remarkable 2020–2021 academic year, as the USF community adapted to the rapidly changing and unfamiliar environment, it also returned to its roots and undertook the task of creating a new mission statement.
The mission statements of the University of San Francisco form a tapestry, whose threads stretch back to the sixteenth century when Ignatius of Loyola sent his followers throughout the world to establish educational institutions and to promote Jesuit ideals.
Among the most enduring Africanisms that animates African American culture is the concept of nommo, the generative power of the word. Derived from the Dogon people of Mali, nommo calls on ancestral spirits to bring into existence all that is seen and unseen.
AND God stepped out on space, And He looked around and said: “I’m lonely — I’ll make me a world.”
Published by The Joan & Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Social Thought & the Ignatian Tradition.
A perspective on the mission and work of the Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Social Thought and the Ignatian Tradition.
An Ignatian teaching and research fellow’s mission integration project.