Campus ministers at Midwest Jesuit universities help young adults explore faith

By Patricia McGeever

College is a life-changing and developmental time for young adults. They’re asserting their independence, exploring their interests and pursuing their own paths. With that comes questions, and sometimes uncertainty. At Midwest Jesuit universities, campus ministers are there to help.

“We just want them to know themselves more deeply, and that can be scary,” says Kathleen Sardon, director of campus ministry at John Carroll University (JCU) in University Heights, Ohio.

In recent years young people have been experiencing loneliness at unprecedented levels, and a sense of community, knowing there are people who will listen without judgment, can help transform an individual experience not only in college but in life.

Campus ministers reach students in different ways. Many collaborate with professors and go into classrooms. Some set up tables at campus events to share information. But every day, informal encounters in hallways or standing in lines can also start conversations. Food always gets students’ attention.

At JCU, campus ministry has a presence in a student center hallway and conference room, where students can talk or just relax and have a snack at tables or on couches.

“We have a buffet of stuff, and it’s open all the time,” Sardon says. “Students can come in after we leave. We always have coffee and tea in there, and chocolate.”

Free food was a draw when the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) held a welcome event for its new Muslim chaplain this past school year. The university is sponsored by both the Society of Jesus and the Sisters of Mercy, and about 60% of students identify as Christian. But UDM also has a significant Muslim population, approximately other Muslim leaders, and lead their own Friday Jummah prayer,” says Anita Klueg, UDM’s director of university ministry. “I realized they needed more than just social and community events. They really desired spiritual formation on campus.”

The pandemic complicated things because students weren’t attending events. In an effort to reach them, Anna Lawler, UDM’s university minister for faith formation, started a podcast called “What’s the Tea with Ministry?” It’s now in its fourth season, focusing on projects, students and events on campus.

Ministering to students of different faiths is especially challenging when it comes to service projects, immersion trips and retreats.

“Once we know who applies to a retreat or a trip, we rework it so it fits everyone’s perspectives,” Klueg says. “It’s challenging for us, but then we get to ask them to teach us.”

At Creighton University (CU) in Omaha, some retreats are so popular, they have waiting lists. The school has a large population of Catholic students, and Mass is available every day during the school year. A Sunday evening Mass draws up to 600 people. A Protestant chaplain also offers a weekly service.

“Part of our role is, ‘How do we help students deepen their understanding of our Jesuit Ignatian tradition and form them in that tradition?’” says Robby Francis, CU’s director of campus ministry.

This school year, CU begins a new program in which student peer ministry advisors will create ministry offerings in the freshman dorms. “So, from the moment students step foot on our campus and into our residence halls, our Jesuit mission is showing up,” Francis says.

Loyola University Chicago (LUC) offers two popular immersion trips—an annual pilgrimage to a Taizé community in France and a nursing school trip to Lourdes to assist with patients there. LUC also sends students to World Youth Day and to conferences that speak to their areas of study.

But there are also plenty of opportunities and services for students of all religious denominations to express their faith on the main Lake Shore campus.

“I think it’s really special that students who don’t have any obligation or family pressure to be in church, or in prayer, make a point to carve out time in their social or academic schedules for these moments of prayer or reflection,” says Steven Betancourt, the director of campus ministry.

On LUC’s Health Sciences Campus, west of downtown Chicago, students are a bit older, either in graduate studies or on a professional track. Campus ministers work with instructors to meet with those students in the classroom to help them reflect on their training and clinical experiences as they study to become doctors and nurses.

There’s also a Chaplain Mentor Program, a collaboration with the Stritch School of Medicine in which a first-year medical student shadows a chaplain in the hospital and reflects with them about what it means to give holistic patient care.

“We talk to them about living that Jesuit value of caring for the whole person, talking with them about what that looks like in a hospital setting,” says Ann Hillman, director of campus ministry at LUC’s Health Sciences campus.

Each October, on the feast of St. Luke, the patron of physicians and surgeons, students gather to have their stethoscopes blessed. There’s also an interfaith blessing in the anatomy course, in which the bodies of those donated to science are blessed.

“At the end of the day, the students are seeking faith, they’re seeking to be people of service, they’re seeking a meaningful, purposeful life, and that’s maybe the core of our accompaniment with them,” Hillman says.