{"id":312029,"date":"2026-10-22T17:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T17:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312029\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T17:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T17:02:09","slug":"jesuit-higher-education-leaders-meet-at-scranton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312029\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesuit Higher Education Leaders Meet at Scranton"},"content":{"rendered":"

The College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Scranton, led\u00a0by Carolyn Barry, Ph.D.,\u00a0welcomed academic leaders from across the nation as it hosted the three-day 2026 Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities College of Arts and Sciences Deans\u2019 Network Meeting.<\/p>\n

From Thursday, Oct. 8 through Saturday, Oct. 10, 35 deans, associate deans and other academic leaders, representing 21 Jesuit institutions, participated in their annual network gathering.<\/p>\n

Sessions explored career readiness and the future of liberal arts, faculty issues, artificial intelligence, student retention, fiscal challenges and advancement, as well as the Jesuit mission and how it may guide decisions affecting students, faculty and institutions.<\/p>\n

Rev. Joseph McShane, S.J. H\u201904, a former president of The University of Scranton and Fordham University and current Superior for the Scranton Jesuit Community, spoke to the delegation on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n

\"Audience<\/p>\n

Father McShane spoke about Jesuit institutions\u2019 commitment to \u201cbothered excellence,\u201d as he termed it, a calling to pursue world-embracing spirituality and living \u201cFor the Greater Glory of God\u201d even as it challenges students to live lives filled with \u201ca taxing but energizing restlessness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis restlessness ensures that our education is anything but dull, complacent or smug. Rather, it was, by design, always on edge, always on the lookout for new challenges, always on the verge of discovery,\u201d he said. \u201cBut how can this be? Easy. Exhausting but easy, at least in formulation. You see, Jesuit education believes so strongly in the transcendent power of a well-framed question that it places questions at the center of its pedagogy, the pedagogy of \u2018bothered excellence.\u2019 In our schools, our students are exposed to this without even knowing it. In our schools, our students experience the pedagogy of \u2018bothered excellence\u2019 as something of an intellectual chain reaction: wonder gives rise to curiosity, curiosity gives rise to questioning, questioning gives rise to exploration, exploration leads to discovery, which once again sparks curiosity that leads to even more questioning.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so, the chain reaction of discovery begins again and again and again. This, my friends, is the magic at the heart of a Jesuit educational experience and of the Jesuit approach to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scranton administrators participated throughout the program, including\u00a0Dr. Barry,\u00a0dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who moderated sessions on advancement, extramural funding and Jesuit mission. Daniel Marenda, Ph.D., associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, moderated a session on data-informed decision-making, and WeiDong Zhu, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, participated in a discussion on professional discernment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Scranton, led\u00a0by Carolyn Barry, Ph.D.,\u00a0welcomed academic leaders from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101941,127573,40112,178,180,179,274],"class_list":["post-312029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-ajcu","tag-association-of-jesuit-colleges-and-universities","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-the-university-of-scranton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}