About Us
Our Mission
Each component of our mission reflects a core element of our work. Within each is an implicit parallel process at play in our work with educators: in essence, we work with our educators the way we encourage them to engage and interact with their students.
- The Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy provides Loyola educators with the opportunity to engage in the continual development of their perspectives, skills, and strategies in the service of Magis (or excellence) in teaching and learning and Cura Personalis (or care for the whole person).
- We promote equity, inclusion, social awareness and justice by utilizing a unique, integrative pedagogical approach - at the nexus of Ignatian Pedagogy, anti-oppressive pedagogy and student-centered teaching - to help educators implement innovative, evidence- and values-based educational strategies.
- We build relationships with educators as co-creators in the on-going formation of a supportive, authentically Ignatian community of practitioners and learners, which allows for the mutual educational transformation of faculty, staff, administration and students in our efforts to become persons for and with others and serve the greater good.
Values
In the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy, we believe that at the nexus of Ignatian Pedagogy, anti-oppressive pedagogy and student-centered teaching is an innovative model of best practices in education that can form and inform an approach to education distinctive to Loyola University Chicago.
When defining the term "educators" in a university setting, faculty may be the first group that comes to mind. However, the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy defines "educators" as all faculty, staff, and graduate students who teach. We have chosen this definition because these groups all perform the functions of educators by coming into regular contact with students to foster their learning, growth, and development at the university. Therefore, our center’s professional development resources — including workshops, seminars, reading series, and certificate programs — are available not only to faculty, but to staff and teaching graduate students as well. We encourage all of these educators to consult our center and reach out to us for assistance in their professional development.
As such:
- We believe that as one Loyola across many campuses, every member of our community is both an educator and learner;
- We believe in the power of mutually transformative educational experiences and culture over transactional ones;
- We believe transformative learning occurs in and outside the classroom, in curricular and co-curricular settings;
- We believe in the active role students take in working with instructors to create environments that allow both groups to be teachers and learners.
Our Vision
The Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy (FCIP) realizes a teaching and learning culture at Loyola where all educators are considered life-long students who are engaged in on-going development of meaningful, equitable, innovative, engaging, and communal pedagogical values and practices - in the Ignatian, anti-oppressive and student-centered teaching traditions - that lead to the reciprocal transformation of skills, values, and knowledge between educators and students, preparing us all to meet the evolving needs of our world.
The Loyola Way
FCIP's Framework for Integrating Ignatian Values and Inclusive Excellence
To better meet the needs of faculty and students in today’s world, the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy has arrived at an integrated pedagogical approach that amplifies interpersonal and societal humanization and justice.
The Loyola Way is a unique combination of three pedagogical approaches: Ignatian pedagogy, anti-oppressive pedagogy, and student-centered teaching. Its core components are continual critical reflection, responsiveness, inclusion, flexible accessibility, and transformation.
Our Acknowledgements
We at the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy endeavor to actively and justly acknowledge the privileges of our institution's status as resulting from the oppression of a number of marginalized groups, specifically those descendant of Indigenous/Native American/American Indian and enslaved African American groups.
FCIP Land Acknowledgment
As part of the Loyola community, the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy occupies the ancestral homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires. This Council was an alliance which formed based on the shared language, similar culture, and common historical background of its three historical members: the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe nations. The land that Loyola occupies, which includes the shore and waters of Lake Michigan, was also a site of trade, travel, gathering and healing for more than a dozen other Native tribes, including the Menominee, Michigamea, Miami, Kickapoo, Peoria and Ho-Chunk nations. The history of the entire city of Chicago is intertwined with histories of native peoples. The name Chicago is adopted from the Algonquin language, and the Chicagoland area is still home to the largest number of Native Americans in the Midwest, over 65,000.
It should be noted that the United States acquiring these native lands did not happen by chance. Instead, a series of land cessation treaties between the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe and the United States chipped away at the nations’ ability to reside on these ancestral lands. With the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe were forced out of Illinois and onto a drastically smaller stretch of land west of the Mississippi River. They ultimately ended up in what is now Kansas and Oklahoma. This treaty was part of the wave of forced migrations of many Native nations which happened in the wake of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, signed into law by President Andrew Jackson. Over a century later, with the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, Native people were relocated to urban centers, in a manner modeled after the forced relocation of Japanese-American citizens during World War II. Chicago became a major destination for relocated Native people, who, when they arrived, were faced with poverty, isolation, and discrimination.
The history of the lands Loyola occupies, and the history of Native Americans in Chicago and Illinois, is a history of displacement, conquest, and dehumanization. We at Loyola, in step with our Jesuit Catholic tradition, must commit to acknowledging this violent history by incorporating Native American texts and perspectives into our classes and working to keep this shared history alive in our study, conversation, and professional development.
FCIP Labor Acknowledgment
The Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy is dedicated to equity and access in education. We acknowledge how White supremacy, the exploitation of enslaved people, and systemic discrimination and oppression built and continue to inform the educational system in the US. We strive to dismantle the effects of these dynamics by co-creating professional and personal growth opportunities with and for all instructors. This is one way we enact our Jesuit values of continual reflection, respect for every individual person, and building a more loving and just community.
We center the voices, experiences, and expertise of historically marginalized individuals. We assist Loyola instructors in facilitating learning experiences for their students that promote social justice and work toward anti-oppression, thus creating a more holistic, accessible, and transformative educational experience for every Loyola student and instructor.
Our Mission
Each component of our mission reflects a core element of our work. Within each is an implicit parallel process at play in our work with educators: in essence, we work with our educators the way we encourage them to engage and interact with their students.
- The Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy provides Loyola educators with the opportunity to engage in the continual development of their perspectives, skills, and strategies in the service of Magis (or excellence) in teaching and learning and Cura Personalis (or care for the whole person).
- We promote equity, inclusion, social awareness and justice by utilizing a unique, integrative pedagogical approach - at the nexus of Ignatian Pedagogy, anti-oppressive pedagogy and student-centered teaching - to help educators implement innovative, evidence- and values-based educational strategies.
- We build relationships with educators as co-creators in the on-going formation of a supportive, authentically Ignatian community of practitioners and learners, which allows for the mutual educational transformation of faculty, staff, administration and students in our efforts to become persons for and with others and serve the greater good.
Values
In the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy, we believe that at the nexus of Ignatian Pedagogy, anti-oppressive pedagogy and student-centered teaching is an innovative model of best practices in education that can form and inform an approach to education distinctive to Loyola University Chicago.
When defining the term "educators" in a university setting, faculty may be the first group that comes to mind. However, the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy defines "educators" as all faculty, staff, and graduate students who teach. We have chosen this definition because these groups all perform the functions of educators by coming into regular contact with students to foster their learning, growth, and development at the university. Therefore, our center’s professional development resources — including workshops, seminars, reading series, and certificate programs — are available not only to faculty, but to staff and teaching graduate students as well. We encourage all of these educators to consult our center and reach out to us for assistance in their professional development.
As such:
- We believe that as one Loyola across many campuses, every member of our community is both an educator and learner;
- We believe in the power of mutually transformative educational experiences and culture over transactional ones;
- We believe transformative learning occurs in and outside the classroom, in curricular and co-curricular settings;
- We believe in the active role students take in working with instructors to create environments that allow both groups to be teachers and learners.
Our Vision
The Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy (FCIP) realizes a teaching and learning culture at Loyola where all educators are considered life-long students who are engaged in on-going development of meaningful, equitable, innovative, engaging, and communal pedagogical values and practices - in the Ignatian, anti-oppressive and student-centered teaching traditions - that lead to the reciprocal transformation of skills, values, and knowledge between educators and students, preparing us all to meet the evolving needs of our world.
Our Acknowledgements
We at the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy endeavor to actively and justly acknowledge the privileges of our institution's status as resulting from the oppression of a number of marginalized groups, specifically those descendant of Indigenous/Native American/American Indian and enslaved African American groups.