Theme 5 - Advancing LMU’s Role as a Premier Catholic University in the Jesuit and Marymount Traditions

For more than a century, LMU has provided an outstanding educational experience in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions, with a commitment to the encouragement of learning, the education of the whole person, and the service of faith and promotion of justice.  At the beginning of our second century, we will continue to build on our commitments to learning, justice and faith, and will develop greater attentiveness to environmental stewardship.  We will strengthen existing efforts and establish new initiatives that will engage our learning and imagination “in service of the faith, of the Church, of the human family and the created world” (Nicolás, 9).

Objective 1:  Deepen engagement with the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Rationale: As a premier Catholic university, LMU both inherits and critically reflects upon the long Catholic intellectual tradition. This tradition both affirms its history and is open to dialogue across faith perspectives. To strengthen this tradition, LMU will develop a center and other infrastructure to enhance and promote interdisciplinary inquiry and dialogue that reflect Catholic intellectual thought in all its varied expressions. Activities and programming will involve various methodologies in the search for the beautiful, the true and the good. This search should yield important insights for contemporary challenges with respect to human dignity and social justice.

Actions:

1. Create an interdisciplinary center that will build collaborations with and serve as a coordinating hub for academic departments, centers and programs that promote research, study and dialogue on faith, reason, social justice and contemporary society.
2. Build the infrastructure to support scholarly research and opportunities for dialogue on issues involving the Catholic intellectual tradition and contemporary society.

Objective 2:  Engage the local, national, and global Church.

Rationale: The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the largest Catholic diocese in the United States and one of the largest and most diverse in the world.  LMU is the only Catholic university in the greater Los Angeles area, which takes in the dioceses of Orange and San Bernardino. The university is committed to enhancing its partnership with the local, national and international Church to provide a collaborative space for confronting opportunities and challenges facing our city and our world today.

Actions:

1. Provide excellent pastoral and leadership preparation and training of leaders and lay ministers for the local and national Church.
2. Promote and grow the work of the Center for Catholic Education as a resource to local Catholic elementary and secondary schools by training educators and leaders in Catholic education and providing a strong research rationale for the value of Catholic education, particularly for underserved students.

Objective 3:  Strengthen the university’s commitment to stewardship, ethical sustainability, environmental justice and human resilience.

Rationale:  LMU strives to infuse sustainability into all campus decision-making processes in order to promote economic, social, spiritual and environmental well-being. The lens of sustainability provides a powerful vision for community engagement in initiatives of equity, spirituality and stewardship.  Thus, the linking of our mission to environmental sustainability and resilience will be integrated into our curricular and co-curricular programs so that we can be a leader in best sustainable practices among universities and form new leaders in sustainable practices.

Actions:

1. Be a national leader among universities in sustainable practices by making progress on the implementation of sustainability objectives in LMU’s 2011 Master Plan and the Climate Action Plan.
2. Engage students, faculty, staff, and administrators in learning about, teaching to and celebrating the traditions of resilience and sustainability in the support of social justice, earth care and deeper understanding of human-nature interactions.
3. Partner with the broader community in sustainability and environmental justice efforts through interdisciplinary centers, programs in underserved neighborhoods, and off-campus facilities, such as schools, urban gardens and parks.