.
To All
when I see a sentence start with:
“In all fairness”, and
“most Catholic Colleges”,
I know that neither “fair” nor “most” will be true.
Hey JC, could you explain your information resources regarding your statement, or is it just that: ‘everyone knows I am right about Catholic Colleges’ circular reasoning?
And do you have any specific information about Xavier that you would like to share or is this just your run of the mill slam?
Lurking’
.
University Philosophy Statement
The University’s Philosophy Statement and its Mission Statement are complementary documents. While the Mission Statement focuses on why the University exists, the Philosophy Statement, adopted in 2006, addresses how Saint Xavier seeks to fulfill its educational mission.
Statement
Saint Xavier University continues to build upon the ideals of its founders and sponsors, the Sisters of Mercy, who in 1846, inspired by their Catholic faith and the mandate of union and charity, established an academy defined by intellectual rigor in the tradition of the liberal arts, the encouragement of religious faith, and action in solidarity with the economically poor of the world, especially women and children.
Consistent with this tradition, the University offers challenging undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs, characterized by a collegial alliance of faculty, students, staff, administration, and community members who are committed to providing course work, resources, activities, and instructional facilities that support excellence in teaching and learning. While chiefly concerned with students’ intellectual development, the University also supports their moral and spiritual growth, and enhances their capacity for leadership through co-curricular programs.
At the heart of the academic mission is the University’s commitment to a strong general education program that introduces students to college life and learning, broadens their knowledge in the arts and sciences, helps them integrate learning and community concerns, and prepares them for success in their major fields of study and life after graduation. In all programs of study, the University encourages the examination of fundamental questions of human concern, respectful dialogue in the context of diverse points of view and experience, as well as the search for truth and justice.
In an atmosphere of intellectual rigor made possible by academic freedom, University faculty develop and teach courses in their areas of advanced study, extend research in their disciplines, produce scholarly and creative work, and serve the University and community. Faculty are also responsible for academic policies and the design and content of the University curriculum. In teaching, scholarship, and service, faculty represent one of the most visible examples of the intellectual life of the University.
Students at Saint Xavier encounter a wide range of course work, co-curricular activities, community experiences, and support services designed to enhance their learning at all levels and to help them develop more fully as confident, contributing citizen leaders of an ever-increasingly complex and global community. The University seeks students of diverse talents, experiences, knowledge, interests, and cultures who are willing and prepared to learn and to seek excellence in themselves and others.
Vital to the success of teaching and learning are the dedicated members of variously skilled academic support services and the administrative leadership charged with fostering strategic planning, institutional assessment, and effective stewardship and deployment of University resources.
The enduring fellowship of alumni, emeriti faculty, Sister of Mercy sponsors, trustees, and other friends and contributors in the community at large demonstrates their continuing faith in the central mission of Saint Xavier through various acts of giving, prayer, and support.
Infusing this community of shared concern are the distinctive qualities and values of Saint Xavier University, including the belief that faith and reason can interact in mutually fruitful ways. Therefore, the University membership encourages a full search for truth, including religious truth, while respecting freedom of personal expression. It also promotes a vigorous and compassionate dialogue among the various faith traditions, and between them and the academic disciplines. At its foundation, teaching and learning at Saint Xavier are premised upon and committed to the fundamental dignity and unique worth of each human person.
Accepted by the Faculty Senate – March 28, 2006
Approved by the Board of Trustees – May 10, 2006
Approved by the Corporate Member, Sisters of Mercy – May 25, 2006
Commentary
“The ideals of its founders and sponsors”
The statement highlights four ideals impressed on Saint Xavier’s character by the Sisters of Mercy – intellectual rigor, the liberal arts and sciences, the Catholic faith, and action in solidarity with the poor. These ideals continue to shape the University community, its academic programs, and its co-curricular offerings. They demand a holistic approach to the mission of higher education and a commitment to help students define success in terms of an integrated personal and professional life that is meaningful, relational, and productive. Such a commitment honors the liberal arts and sciences, supports a broad general education program, fosters respectful discourse, and promotes a sense of responsibility for the common good.
“An enduring fellowship”
Successive paragraphs of the Philosophy Statement highlight the distinctive roles and vital contributions of all those who are engaged in the University’s educational mission. Faculty scholarship and teaching, student engagement in the learning process, staff support of both students and faculty, administrative responsibility for the institution’s welfare – all are needed to enable Saint Xavier University to fulfill its purpose for being. Likewise, those who interact with the University community from a variety of other perspectives are important contributors to its mission.
“Distinctive qualities and values”
The statement concludes with an affirmation of the salutary effects of the interaction between faith and reason jointly engaged in a full search for truth, including religious truth. In this search, the University community strives to respect personal freedom and dialogue. This search and ethos, the bases for teaching and learning at Saint Xavier, derive from and contribute to human dignity and community.
WMSTU 140 - Contemporary Women Scientists (3)
Cross Ref: BIOL 140
Focuses on the integration of several fields of science, the significance of those fields in contemporary life, and some women scientists who made significant contributions to those fields.
WMSTU 207 - Collage: Alternative Expressions (3)
Cross Ref: ART 207
A cross-cultural study of designer/artists of the African Diaspora and the Americas, primarily women, with special attention to their influence on 20th-century modern art movements. Textiles, tribal and populist arts will be the focus of slide lectures. Hands-on collage project assignments will encourage creative response.
WMSTU 211 - Women in Modern European History (3)
Cross Ref: HIST 211
Offered alternate years
Explores the history of European women since the mid-18th century. Ideas about women, as well as the changing social and economic conditions of women's lives, will be examined. A central concern is the distinction between elite women and women of the popular classes. Major topics include women's work, sexuality, marriage and family, women's political activity, and feminism.
WMSTU 232 - Introduction to Women and Gender Studies (3)
Cross Ref: ENGL 332, HUM 232
Offered fall term
This course addresses the relationship between biological sex and the construction of gendered identities. As a result, this course deals directly with this relationship, as well as the historical conditions that give rise to this relationship, by examining writings about women and men and femininity and masculinity, from a range of disciplines that include the cultural, the sociological and the anthropological.
WMSTU 235 - Sex, Culture, and Society (3)
Cross Ref: SOC 235; ANTH 235
The sexual legacies of our primate heritage are examined. Human sexuality and gender roles are explored cross-culturally in their social, political and ideological contexts.
WMSTU 240 - Women and Literature (3)
Cross Ref: ENGL 240
Offered annually
A study of women's writings in all genres and from a wide range of historical contexts and ethnic groups. Writers studied may include Dickinson, Rich, Clifton, Jordan, Stowe, Jewett, Wharton, Hurston, Morrison, Woolf, Eliot, Drabble.
WMSTU 260 - Special Topics (3)
Topics for this course will vary. Previous topics have included: Arab women's literature in translation, feminism and ethics.
WMSTU 273 - Women in the Bible (3)
Cross Ref: RELST 273
A study of the Bible (both Hebrew and Christian scriptures) with the specific aim of recovering the place and role of women in this tradition of thought. Such study draws upon a multidisciplinary approach to critically selected texts in which women are explicitly remembered in a culture and tradition dominated by patriarchal values and systems.
WMSTU 275 - Women, Change and Society (3)
Cross Ref: SOC 275
Examines how gender is socially constructed across time and across cultures. Explores how gender impacts the lives and choices of women and men in settings such as the family, career, politics, the law and religion.
WMSTU 291 - Feminist/Womanist Perspectives on Religion (3)
Cross Ref: RELST 291
Explores select psychological and theological works concerned with critiquing Western, patriarchal culture from a feminist/womanist perspective. The feminist perspective is itself critically examined through the voice of African-American (womanist) and Hispanic (mujerista) woman writers.
WMSTU 309 - Gender and Globalization (3)
Cross Ref: SOC 309, ANTH 309
This course examines the economic, sociopolitical and cultural aspects of globalization within the framework of contemporary debates about the phenomenon. The main focus is on how globalization affects gender roles, ideologies and the experiences of men and women in transnational contexts. Our own discussion of the meaning of globalization addresses questions about the novel character of globalization, shifts in labor and production practices, and the contested relevance of the nation-state. These guiding issues help shape discussions about the formation of gender identities, the transformation of gender divisions of labor in host countries, in "home countries," and in transnational spaces, and organized responses to globalizing forces.
WMSTU 325 - Race, Class, Gender and the Law (3)
Cross Ref: SOC 325, CJ 325
This course introduces students to the complex and subtle ways social inequality is produced and reproduced in and through U.S. law and social practices. We will examine race, class, sex and gender hierarchies as interrelated systems, none of which can be fully understood without reference to the others. We will explore how any individual's multiple statuses (race, class, gender, sexuality) combine to produce sets of privileges and constraints. We will also examine the effects of social experiences on social perspectives. The course has a historical emphasis, examining 19th- and 20th-century roots of contemporary social arrangements in U.S. law and society. The course includes challenging abstract material about theories of race, gender, class, culture and power.
WMSTU 345 - Jurisprudence and Gender (3)
Cross Ref: SOC 345, CJ 345
The Rule of Law is meant to establish a system of rules founded on principles rather than personalities. In this course, we examine a system that is gendered, built on the story of men's lives. Our analysis takes us through at least three major strains of legal argument that begin with different assumptions and lead to different policy outcomes, all powerful, all persuasive, but none readily reconcilable. As a result, we are confronted with questions of gender equity and social justice. Can we produce fairness? Can we preclude harming citizens with the instrument of law?
WMSTU 360 - Special Topics (3)
Topics for this course will vary. Previous topics have included: African-American women's literature and women in American literature.
WMSTU 361 - Psychology and Gender (3)
Cross Ref: PSYCH 328
Pre-requisite: PSYCH 101
Explores ways in which gender impacts human development and social experience. Physical, cognitive, social and emotional aspects of gender are considered. Psychological theories and research pertaining to gender development are discussed.
WMSTU 376 - Issues in Women's Health (3)
Cross Ref: NURS 476
Explores current health care concerns of women. Focus is placed on the complex inter-relationship between women's health and their social, political, cultural and economic situations. The student will investigate methods to empower women to take more active roles in their health care, and the student will explore strategies for health care advocacy.
WMSTU 385 - Renaissance and the Healing Arts (3)
Cross Ref: NURS 485
Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing or consent of faculty. Addresses the myth, the magic and the mystery of healing methods considered alternative to modern medical practice. The history and the role of women healers and the current renaissance of the healing arts are explored. Emphasis is placed on the self as healed and healer. Students will be introduced to healing arts skills such as meditation, therapeutic touch, creative visualization, color therapy, music therapy, herbs, humor and aromatherapy.
What to get involved on campus? The following is a roster of current student organizations and organized groups on campus. For more information about student activities, the Student Activities Board, upcoming events or to offer suggestions of events you would like to see on campus, please e-mail Campus Life at campuslife@sxu.edu or stop by room L-103 in the Warde Academic Center.
If you are currently involved in a student organization or would like to start a new organization on campus and need a copy of current Campus Life forms, you can find them by clicking on the link to your left.
Choose from any of the types below to see their related organizations:
Academic/Honorary
Ethnic/Cultural
Faith/Spiritual
Social/Political/Special Interest
Club Sports
Student Media
Government/Programming
Leadership Groups
Do YOU have any specific information about Xavier that would convince anyone that it is Catholic in more than a vaguely peripheral way?
I suppose the real question is: What is the current definition of a "Catholic College" — how many times they have shown The Vagina Monologues?
The Muslim Students Association (MSA) at SXU, which shriveled under a lack of proper leadership some years ago, has bounced back this year with extraordinary vitality.
The student organization has been working tirelessly since the first semester to revitalize the Islamic community at Saint Xavier.
In an age when the "radicalization of Muslim Americans" has become a legitimate threat to our national security, the MSA could not have picked a better time to announce Islamic Awareness Week (IAW). From Apr. 4 to Apr. 8, IAW hosted events including speeches and discussion panels, some of which featured prominent Muslim scholars such as Sheikh Kifah and Rami Nashashibi.
Information tables, which were set up in the diner each day, presented information about Islam. Among topics discussed were the centrality of peaceful submission to God in Islam, women in Islam, and the basic tenets of the faith. Such engaging presentations helped to shatter repugnant stereotypes that abound about the religion.
Of particular interest to me was the program that taught about the meaning, purpose, and basis of the Hijab, or Islamic head scarf—information that so many of us sadly do not understand or choose to seek out. Part of the program was to allow female students to wear a head scarf supplied by the MSA for a week in support of Muslim women who make the Hijab a part of their everyday life.
I will admit that, at first, I did not see much value in a pledge by non-Muslim women to wear the Hijab for a week. I simply felt that, being that the choice to wear the Hijab is such a personal experience, one that is almost impossible to try and convey in meaningful words, I failed to see how it would promote understanding about the meaning of Hijab.
I was also concerned that enabling women who do not wear the Hijab to "pledge" to wear it for a week would be mistakenly interpreted as a chance for them to experience the stereotypical "plight" of veiled Muslim women. I feared that it would invoke a sort of sympathy for women wearing the Hijab, effectively portraying it as an impediment to modern living.
However, to my great surprise, more than 30 students and even one professor at SXU showed an interest in wearing the Hijab for the week. When I asked one sophomore student majoring in Biology, Rhiannon Hoagland, why she decided to participate, she explained that she wanted to help bash the stereotype that Muslim women are forced to adopt the Hijab as a form of restriction.
"By wearing it for a week, I show my support for the millions of Muslim women around the globe who are empowered by their decision to wear the Hijab as a symbol of their faith," said Hoagland.
I was quickly warmed to the idea of the weeklong Hijab pledge as countless other students showed similar sentiment and understanding toward the Hijab and Muslim women.
Many other universities in Illinois also participate in Islamic Awareness Week, like the one led by MSA on our campus. As a matter of fact, it was by other schools that the MSA at Saint Xavier was inspired to endorse the weeklong pledge to wear the Hijab.
According to the MSA board on campus, the week ended on a very promising note as students, faculty and staff were given access to information about Islam through a range of media, right here on campus.