O N J E S U I T H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N

Spring 2013 • Number 43

Eloquentia Perfecta

Writing and Speaking Well

We are

not made

for ourselves

alone.

SPRING 2013NUMBER 43Members of the National

Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education

Laurie Ann Britt-Smith University of Detroit Mercy

Lisa Sowle CahillBoston College

Susanne E. FosterMarquette University

Patrick J. Howell, S.J.Seattle University

Steven MaillouxLoyola Marymount University

Diana OwenGeorgetown University

Stephen C. Rowntree, S.J.Loyola University New Orleans

Alison RussellXavier University

Raymond A. Schroth, S.J.America Magazine

Sherilyn G.F. Smith LeMoyne University

William E. Stempsey, S.J.College of the Holy Cross

Conversations is published by theNational Seminar on Jesuit HigherEducation, which is jointly spon-sored by the Jesuit ConferenceBoard and the Board of theAssociation of Jesuit Colleges andUniversities. The opinions statedherein are those of the authorsand not necessarily those of theJC or the AJCU.

Comments and inquiries may beaddressed to the editor ofConversations Edward W. Schmidt, S.J.Institute of Jesuit Sources3601 Lindell BoulevardSt. Louis, MO. 63108Phone: 314-633-4622e-mail: ESchmidt@jesuits-chi.org

For information about subscriptions to Conversations:Stephen C. Rowntree, S.J. Secretary to the National Seminaron Jesuit Higher EducationLoyola University New Orleans1575 Calhoun Street New Orleans, LA 70118Phone: 504 865 2781e-mail: Rowntree@loyno.edu

Conversations back issues areavailable online at http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/

Design and layout by Pauline Heaney.Printed by PeacockCommunications, Lincoln Park, N.J.

O N J E S U I T H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N

Eloquentia PerfectaWriting and Speaking Well

2 Vincent O’Keefe, S.J., R.I.P. LEADER AND FRIEND

Features3 “Not for Ourselves Alone,” John W. O’Malley, S.J. 6 The Best Training for Public Life, Paul Lynch10 A Good Person Speaking Well, Steven Mailloux14 Eloquentia Perfecta and the New Media Landscape, Diana Owen

writing across the Country | Progress Reports on How to Teach and Do It18 Why Students Don’t Write, Kristine Johnson20 Spread Out, But Close, Laurie A. Britt-Smith, Lisa Zimmerelli, Cinthia Gannett,

and John Kerrigan21 A Course to Blog About, Laura Davies and Erin Mullally22 Round-Up, John C. Bean23 Writing-Across-the Curriculum and the Promise of Something More,

Joseph Janangelo

Student Piece25 The Art of the Medical Interview, Francis DeMichele

How to do it | Four Jesuit Alumni Share their Experiences26 How to Write About Crime, Mike Wilson27 How to Write About Television, Hank Stuever 28 How to Cover the World, Loretta Tofani29 The Managing Editor’s Job, Rene Sanchez

Media and Citizenship30 “Eloquent” Film and TV | How to Quicken a Heart Rate, Mark P. Scalese, S.J.31 From Class to Community EP 2.0 and the New Media Legacy of Jesuit

Education, Allen Brizee and Jenn Fishman33 How To Talk Ethically | Cultivating the Digital Citizen through Eloquentia

Perfecta, Morgan T. Reitmeyer and Susan A. Sci

Book Reviews35 R. Emmett Curran on Loyola Marymount University, 1911-2011: A Centennial History. 38 Paul Soukup, S.J., on Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J.

Talking Back41 How We Might Move On From Here: A Hope, Claude N. Pavur, S.J.

Photo Collages 24 Saint Peter’s University • 34 Gonzaga University• 43 College of the Holy Cross

Front cover photos, clockwise from top left: St. Ignatius Loyola, Joan Didion, Aristotle, George Orwell, Loretta Tofani, Walter Ong, S.J., Edward R. Murrow, Cicero.

Conversations 1

From the Editor

My Last Lecture

My first encounter with eloqentia perfecta was thetap tap tap of my newspaperman father upstairstyping with two fingers his editorials on hisUnderwood.

Every day he wrote all the editorials for the TrentonTimes, plus others for the Brooklyn Eagle, New York HeraldTribune and Philadelphia Record. This overtime sent mybrother Dave and me to St. Joe’s Prep, Fordham College andsummer camp, plus piano lessons. Because the TrentonAmerican Legion baseball team was named after him, myfather had an annual team dinner at which everyone at thetable, including Dave and me, had to stand up and speak.Dad was a distinguished public speaker, and before bigevents I could hear him up in his third floor room memoriz-ing his remarks in front of the mirror.

Every step of my life I learned to write and speakbecause an older person — parent, Jesuit, or lay teacher —took the initiative and challenged me to do something diffi-cult and different.

In fifth grade, I wrote a composition from the point ofview of a horse galloping across the prairie. My teacher, aFranciscan nun, told me, “You can write.” At the Prep myscholastic English teacher, John F.X. Burton, S.J., in front ofthe class, told me to compete in a speech contest.

My father recommended memorizing David LloydGeorge’s “Shall We Not Sing the Eisteddfod?,” a traditionalconcert in Wales during World War I. I lost, but learnedsomething about George. Burton named me yearbook editor.At Fordham Fr. Joe Frese, S.J., whose daily Mass I served,told my parents at the dinner table, “Raymond should go toFrance.” In Paris an American Jesuit philosopher, J. QuentinLauer, later at Fordham, tore my writing apart, convinced methat “such” had no meaning and thus should never appear.From Europe I wrote reports for the Fordham Ram. Ireturned named editorial editor and columnist. In senior yearthe Ram’s moderator, Edward A. Walsh, told me I shouldpublish articles beyond the campus. Two years later, at 23,my first article appeared in America.

After my army service in Germany and teaching journal-ism at five Jesuit and three secular universities, my formulafor eloquentia perfecta boiled down to three steps: read, risk,write and rewrite.

The Jesuit formula in those years was based on imita-tion. — read the best and write and speak like the best do.Asked by a young writer how to improve his novel, Faulknerreplied, “Read Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, and AnnaKarenina.” In “Monologue to the Maestro,” (Esquire,

October 1935) Ernest Hemingway told a young writer to“read everything” — so you know whom you have to beat.His list included Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Flaubert, Mann, HenryJames, Twain, and Joyce.

Good writing is true writing, he stressed, and the moreexperience the truer it will be. For Hemingway, the writer’slife was like an iceberg — the nine tenth under water wasthe experience feeding the one tenth prose above the sur-face. That’s where risk comes in. For years I traveled aloneto places in trouble — Vietnam, Cuba, Peru, South Africa,and Iraq — to test myself, in search of that detail that movedmy emotions and would thus move the reader, and comeback with a story.

I built my writing classes around Virginia Woolf, for therelationship between memory and detail; George Orwell for“Why I Write” and political courage; E.B. White for memory,observation, and wit; James Baldwin for eloquence inspiredby anger ; and Joan Didion because she writes to find outwhat she is thinking.

The best writers, especially war correspondents, aremoralists. I think of Richard Harding Davis’ pictureof the German army marching into Brussels andburning Louvain in 1914: he had witnessed wars

where both sides followed some rules, but, “At Louvain itwas war upon the defenseless, war upon churches, colleges,shops of milliners and lacemakers; war brought to the bed-side and fireside; against women harvesting in the fields,against children in wooden shoes at play in the streets.”What would he say today about drones?Your papers are due tomorrow in the first minute of class.

After editing Conversations for ten happy years, enjoying thefriendship of the seminar’s members, forged in all day discus-sions, including dinner and the pub, and listening to facultyand students at all 28 Jesuit colleges and universities, I am pass-ing the editorship to an admired colleague, Fr. Ed Schmidt, S.J.During these years as Conversations became more pleasing tothe eye, credit goes to Pauline Heaney, a great artist and dearfriend. When I left Saint Peter’s College two years ago I missedteaching; so it is an extra joy that five authors in this issue arefriends from my teaching years. ■

RASsj

2 Conversations

Vincent O’Keefe, S.J.

R.I.P.

LEADER AND FRIEND

‘Hello. I’m Vinny O’Keefe. I’m a friend

of Joe Frese [a Jesuit Fordham histori-

an] and he told me to look you up.” I

was only a scholastic in studies and

O’Keefe was a distinguished theologian, but

because he and I had the same friend, he and I

were friends too. Named president of Fordham in

1963, he took the initiative in making Fordham

fully co-educational by starting Thomas More

College for women. The provincial said he had

gone too far and told him to call it off. O’Keefe

told the provincial that if he canceled Thomas

More he’d have to find a new president. He won.

In 1965 he was pulled to Rome as an assistant

general for the Society of Jesus and a confidant

of the general Pedro Arrupe. Following Fr.

Arrupe’s stroke in 1981, O’ Keefe most likely

would have been elected general of the whole

Society; but Pope John Paul II, apparently misin-

formed about what Jesuits do and what they

were doing, intervened and placed his own rep-

resentative, a conservative Jesuit who had been

a confessor to Pius XII, to run things — until the

Pope realized two years later that he had miscal-

culated. During all this O’Keefe kept his cool,

helped hold the Society together until its origi-

nal governance was restored in 1983.

O’Keefe’s genius was high intelligence com-

bined with a leadership style by which he drew

you in by listening and really taking you serious-

ly. He wrote a memoir now waiting to be pub-

lished. To the historian’s delight, until his death

in July 2012, he had no hesitation telling his fel-

low Jesuits — in lectures, conversation, inter-

views at the Murray-Weigel Hall Fordham infir-

mary, and a series of DVDs — what was really

going on.

Ray Schroth, S.J.

Conversations 3

For most people rhetoric means vapid, insin-cere, or manipulative speech, a prejudice thatgoes all the way back to Plato’s critique of theSophists in fifth-century Athens. Educators likeourselves, however, use the term neutrally toindicate forms of effective communication,especially verbal. There are a few of us, final-ly, who use rhetoric in the specific and techni-cal sense that was developed by the great the-oreticians of the “classical tradition” -Isocrates,

Cicero, Quintilian, Erasmus, and many others, includingJesuits. That is how I will use it here in relating it to the edu-cational enterprise we are engaged in today in Jesuit schools.

Jesuit education has traditionally had two aspects to it.The first is the strictly academic, technical, or scientificaspect, inspired by the training Ignatius and his first compan-ions received at the University of Paris in the 1530s. It hasintellectual problem-solving and the acquisition of profes-sional skills leading to career advancement as its two goals.It took on its firm institutional form in the thirteenth centurywith the founding of universities, which to this day haveretained those same goals as the very definition of what theyare about.

The second aspect is student-centered. It looks to thephysical, social, ethical, and emotional development of thestudent qua human person. That aspect originated in ancientGreece and Rome in the humanistic philosophy of educationin which rhetoric was the determining discipline. It did notget its institutional form until the Renaissance, that is, untiltwo centuries after the universities were founded. As an insti-tution it has been known by different names, such as Latinschool, lyceum, academy, and, in the Jesuit system, college.

Although the Jesuit school began almost as a rival to theuniversity, it soon developed into a partner—of sorts. Fromthe beginning the Jesuits believed the two systems werecompatible and that they complemented and completedeach other. If, however, it had not been for the student-cen-tered philosophy of the humanistic tradition, it is highlydoubtful the Jesuits would ever have committed themselvesto engage in formal schooling for lay students.

Literature as core

In this student-centered system as it developed historically,literature in all its forms, which included history, was thecore of the curriculum. These “humane letters” were subjectsnot taught in the universities. The humanist educators of theRenaissance saw them as crucial to true education becausethey treated questions pertinent to human life—questions oflife and death, of virtue and vice, of greed and redemption,and of the ambivalence in human decision-making. Theydealt with such questions not so much through abstract prin-ciples as through stories, poetry, plays, and historical exam-ples that illuminated moral alternatives and, supposedly,inspired students to want to make choices leading to a satis-fying human life.

In this tradition a satisfying human life was seen not asself-enclosed and self-absorbed but as directed, at least in

“Not for Ourselves Alone”

Rhetorical Education in the Jesuit ModeWith Five Bullet Points for Today

By John O’Malley, S.J.

John O’Malley, S.J., is a university professor at GeorgetownUniversity and author of several books on Jesuit history andWhat Happened at Vatican II.

4 Conversations

some measure, to the common weal. That finality, whichis what made the tradition appealing to the Jesuits, wasimposed upon the system by rhetoric, the culminatingand defining discipline in the curriculum. The rhetor wasa certain kind of person.

For Renaissance educators, as for their fore-bears in antiquity such as Cicero andQuintilian, rhetoric meant the speech-act.Although it included effective communi-cation in all forms, it primarily meant ora-tory. As speech-act it took place, there-fore, in public space—the courtroom, the

senate, assemblies of various kinds where the goal wasto persuade to a specific course of action. In such situa-tions speakers’ whole person and personality were ondisplay and played into the effectiveness of the wordsthey uttered. As the old saying goes, what you are thun-ders so loud I can’t hear what you say.

The discipline of rhetoric, we must remember, first gotcodified in the grass-roots democracy of fifth-centuryAthens. Citizens had to be able to speak well to make theirvoices heard. They had to speak well if they wanted toplay an effective role in ensuring the well-being of theircity. In time, therefore, rhetoric became known, aptly, as“the civic discipline.” It looked beyond one’s personaladvantage to the good of others. No one put this aspect ofthe rhetorical tradition more forcefully than Cicero:

We are not born for ourselves alone…We as

human beings are born for the sake of other human

beings, that we might be able mutually to help one

another. We ought therefore to contribute to the

common good of humankind …There are some

people who claim that all they need to do is tend

to their own business, and thus they seem to them-

selves not to be doing any harm. But this means

they become traitors to the life we must all live

together in human society, for they contribute to it

none of their interest, none of their effort, none of

their means. (De officiis, 1.7.22 and 1.9.29)

After Plato’s scathing criticism of the Sophists’ indif-ference to ethical questions, theoreticians of rhetoricbeginning with Isocrates, Plato’s younger contemporary,have through the ages insisted that the good speaker, thegood practitioner of rhetoric, the good leader had to bea good person. As Quintilian put it, vir bonus, dicendiperitus—“a good person, skilled in speaking.” Almostfrom its inception, therefore, the rhetorical tradition hada moral center. According to its best theorists, rhetoricwas the very opposite of vapid and ethically unprinci-pled speech.

The program of student formation in this system

began, however, not with study of oratory but with otherforms of literature. Until more recent times that literatureconsisted almost exclusively in the classics of Greek andRoman antiquity—Sophocles, for instance, andThucydides, Virgil, and Livy. These authors were studiedbecause they were assumed to be the “best,” whose styleset the standard for all time, an assumption we certainlydo not share today. But what such authors in fact didwas stretch students’ minds and imaginations by intro-ducing them to cultures not their own—in this case,pagan cultures—and by thus giving them a sense of thewide possibilities of the human spirit.

Bolt, not bug

This study was more immediately directed to developingin the students a high standard of excellence in writtenand oral expression, which was honed by paying atten-tion to words and their effective use. It was directed, thatis to say, to the cultivation of eloquence. Mark Twainonce said that the difference between the right word andthe almost right word was the difference between alightning bolt and a lightning bug. Eloquence consists inknowing that difference and being able to choose thelightning bolt.

Furthermore, the theorists realized, at least implicit-ly, that thought and finding the right word to express itwere not two acts but one. Without the right word onedid not have thought but, instead, a musing or rumina-tion. They believed that “ya know what I mean” meantyou did not know what you meant. At the very headwa-ters of the rhetorical tradition Isocrates himself said, “Theproper use of language is the surest index of soundunderstanding.”

That brings me, finally, to the Jesuits. Just eight yearsafter the order was founded in 1540, they opened theirfirst school in Messina in Sicily. That school was ahumanistic school, engaging the same curriculumhumanists like Erasmus had laid out and doing so withthe same goals in mind. Most attractive to them was therhetorical goal of helping form young men dedicated tothe common good of church and society at large, a goalthat well correlated with the evangelical precept to loveand serve one’s neighbor.

I call special attention to the fifteen goals for Jesuitschools that Juan Alfonso de Polanco, Saint Ignatius’sbrilliant secretary, produced for members of the Societyof Jesus just a few years after the opening at Messina.The list could have been written by Erasmus himself.The last goal sums up the rest: “Those who are now onlystudents will grow up to be pastors, civic officials,administrators of justice, and will fill other importantposts to everybody’s profit and advantage.”

Conversations 5

What about today? The tradition has undergone andhas needed to undergo many transformations.Nonetheless, I believe that its basic goals remain validand in fact are central to what we are trying to achieve.Here are the five bullet points promised in my sub-title.I am sure they will not be unfamiliar to you:

1. “The fly in the bottle.” I adopt the well-known metaphorof the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. What the rhetor-ical tradition is meant to do is help the fly out of the bot-tle, that is, to help students escape the confines of theirexperience up to this point, to expand their thinkingbeyond the comfort zones of the assumptions with whichthey grew up, to exposethem to other cultures andto other modes of thought,to lift them beyond the quo-tidian. To help them expandthe areas in which they candare to ask questions notonly in the areas in whichtheir trade or professionmoves but about life itself.2. “Heritage and Perspective.”This goal or value is closelyrelated to the first. It is basedon the truth that we are theproduct of the past and thatwe cannot understand our-selves and the situations inwhich we find ourselvesunless we have some ideaof how we got to be wherewe are—as individuals andas a society. If we forgetwho our parents were, wedon’t know who we are. Ifwe don’t know who we areor where we are, how can we make our way and helpothers make their way? This goal also looks to the cul-tural enrichment of the student, to goad them, forinstance, beyond considering texting the highest form ofliterary expression.3. “We are not born for ourselves alone.” Beginning inancient Athens the imperative of directing one’s skills andtalents not only to one’s own advancement but also to thebenefit of one’s neighbors and fellow citizens has been acentral and consistent element in the rhetorical tradition.It means fostering in students a sense of agency.

In the 1970s Father Pedro Arrupe, then superior gen-eral of the Jesuits, asserted that turning out graduates whowould be, in his expression, men and women for othershad to be a fundamental aim for Jesuit schools. I am surehe did not realize how profoundly his words resonated

not only with the Jesuit tradition of spirituality but as wellwith the rhetorical philosophy of education.4. Eloquentia perfecta, perfect eloquence. This expres-sion took hold in the Jesuit tradition as capturing themost immediate goal of rhetorical training. The goal wasachieved through the study of great literature in one’sown language and in the languages of other cultures.Eloquence, a word sadly out of fashion in most quarterstoday, is the skill to say precisely what one means andto do so with grace and persuasive force. It is the funda-mental skill needed by anyone in a leadership position,however humble. It is a skill, as well, that helps one “getahead” out in the marketplace, and sometimes get far-

ther ahead than those withnothing more than the tech-nical skills of the trade.5. “The spirit of finesse.” Manydecades ago Henri Marroucoined this term to describewhat the rhetorical traditiontried to accomplish for theindividual, and he distin-guished it from the “geomet-ric spirit.” The spirit of finesserealizes, unlike the geometricspirit, that in the murky dark-ness of human interactionand motivation two plus twodoes not equal four. Humaneletters when properly taughtsharpen student’s aestheticsensibilities, but, more to thepoint, in their authenticdepictions of characters andsituations they mirror theambiguities of our own life-experiences and invite reflec-tion upon them. They weave

webs with words that reflect the webs we weave with ourlives, which are not neat geometric patterns but broken inplaces and filled with knots and tangles.

The virtue the rhetorical tradition especially wants toinculcate is prudence, that is, good judgment, the wis-dom that characterizes the ideal leaders and makes themsensitive in assessing the relative merits of competingprobabilities in the conflict of human situations. It hopesto turn students into adults who make humane decisionsfor themselves and for any group they might be leading.It fosters a wise person, somebody, that is, whose judg-ment you respect and to whom you would go for per-sonal advice, rather than to the technocrat, the bureau-crat, and the zealot. It tries to instill a secular version ofwhat we in the tradition of the Spiritual Exercises ofSaint Ignatius call discernment. ■

University of Detroit Mercy.

6 Conversations

In Jesuit Child, Britishjournalist MacDonaldHastings offers the fol-lowing anecdote aboutthe Jesuit education hehad received atStonyhurst in Britain. Arenowned correspon-dent during the SecondWorld War, Hastings had

been asked to participate on apanel on current affairs. After theprogram ended, he wasapproached by one of his co-pan-elists, who asked Hastings whichJesuit school he had attended.Having said nothing about hisschooling during the evening,Hastings asked how his co-panelisthad guessed. “Everything you saidon the platform tonight made mesuspect it. Your attitude on anyquestion, whether it concernedintensive farming, town planning,

loneliness and whatever that sillyquestion was about sex we had toanswer in ten seconds, was pre-dictable.” Does this mean that hisanswers had been Jesuitical?Hastings inquired. “I wouldn’t saythat,” replied the discerning col-league. “People only call a manJesuitical when they are beaten inan argument.”

It should not be surprising thata certain style of argumentationwould mark the graduate of aJesuit school. From its earliest days,Jesuit education put argument atthe center of its basic curriculum.The Ratio Studiorum—the pro-gram that organized the Jesuits’worldwide system of schools for

Paul Lynch is an assistant profes-sor in the English department atSaint Louis University.

The BestTraining forPublic Life

ReconcilingTraditions:

Jesuit Rhetoricand Ignatian

Pedagogy

By Paul Lynch

Conversations 7

almost two centuries—required deep study in the classi-cal arts of persuasion, more commonly known as rheto-ric. Day after day, students in the humanities coursewere drilled in rhetorical practice. They delivered ora-tions, wrote and rewrote compositions, and engaged inendless debate with their peers and their professors.Students worked through sequences of written rhetoricalexercises: letters of petition, eulogies, descriptions, nar-rations, and poems. They also practiced all of Aristotle’srhetorical genres: deliberative, forensic, panegyric—thatis, speeches for public deliberation, for judicial proceed-ings, and for ceremonious occasions. The goal of all thiswork was eloquentia perfecta, or perfect eloquence,which, according to Ratio, “includes two most importantsubjects, oratory and poetics (out of these two, howev-er, the leading emphasis should always be given to ora-tory) and it does not only serve what is useful but alsoindulges what is ornamental.”

For the modern educator, the most striking aspect ofthe Jesuit rhetorical curriculum is likely to be its empha-sis on contest and competition. The Ratio repeatedlycharges Jesuit educators to engage their students inrhetorical agonism, a term derived from the Greek agon,meaning not only “contest,” but also “assembly” or“gathering.” Agonism essentially means a “strugglingtogether.” Just as we cannot produce a game without thestriving of opposing teams, agonism assumes that we can-not produce a community without the striving of opposingarguments. It is therefore different than antagonism. Ratherthan seeking to destroy the opponent, agonism assumesthat struggle will strengthen and improve both opponents.This assumption animates Jesuit rhetorical education in theRatio. Students were assigned rivals, or aemuli, and theserivals not only debated and corrected each other, but alsowere responsible for each other’s progress. The faults of agiven student’s oration were the responsibility of hisaemulus, as well. So intense was public argumentationthat the Jesuit instructors were charged during disputationsto “forcefully press the arguments being presented to heatup the competition more.” In other words, it was often theteacher’s job to stir the pot.

Why this emphasis on rhetorical contest? Jesuit edu-cators assumed that it would provide the best trainingfor public life. Cypriano Soarez, the author of an earlyand influential Jesuit textbook, offered the followingrationale for rhetorical training: “The excellence of elo-quence can be understood from the fact that it hasalways especially flourished and ever held sway in everyfree people, and most of all in undisturbed states.” Thisjustification directly links eloquentia perfecta and com-munity participation. The Jesuit graduate would eventu-

ally take his place of leadership through his practice ofrhetoric. In our day, however, rhetoric has lost this nobleassociation. The word “rhetoric” is now more likely toelicit suspicion than support. It is all-too-common tohear statements like, “Hey, let’s tone down the rhetoricand just say what we think” or “don’t let his rhetoric foolyou; let me tell you what he really wants.” Most ironical-ly, our campaign seasons are filled with accusations ofrhetoric, as in “My opponent has got nothing but rheto-ric” or “He’s all style while I’ve got substance.” Rhetoricis always what the other guy is selling.

The art of persuasion has suffered such accusationssince its Athenian beginnings, when Plato accused thesophists of being peddlers in deceit. Even the Jesuits,who were sometimes perceived as the sophists of theirday, suffered scruples about the using “the spoils ofEgypt,” as Ignatius put it, “for the honor and glory ofGod.” In spite of early misgivings, however, the JesuitRatio made eloquentia perfecta the ultimate end of itshumanistic curriculum. In contrast to the Socratic andPlatonic tradition of skepticism toward rhetoric, theJesuits adopted the Ciceronian tradition that saw rheto-ric as training in public service. For the Jesuits—as forAristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian—rhetoric was the art ofargument in the public sphere. Rhetoric, as Aristotle putsit in his famous definition, is a means of discerning, inany situation, the “available means of persuasion.” Itoffers a way of deliberating over important practicalquestions, of producing good reasoning and avoidingbad reasoning.

There are many reasons why rhetoric eventually lostits central curricular seat in Western education: the emer-gence and eventual dominance of print culture, theEnlightenment’s emphasis on scientific method and anoften rigid rationality, the invention of the modernresearch university. Despite their commitment to classi-cal humanism, Jesuit schools were not immune to thesedevelopments, and their curricula eventually came toresemble the curricula of non-Jesuit institutions. Yetthere is another potential challenge to the revival of rhet-oric, and ironically enough, it comes from the Jesuit tra-dition itself: Ignatian pedagogy, which offers the mostcontemporary vision of Jesuit education.

Ignatian pedagogy was articulated in two documentsproduced by the International Commission on the

Today, “rhetoric” is what the

other guy is selling

8 Conversations

Apostolate of Jesuit Education(ICAJE). The first, Characteristicsof Jesuit Education, appeared in1986 (exactly four hundred yearsafter the first official draft of theRatio Studiorum). Seven yearslater, the ICAJE published IgnatianPedagogy: A Practical Approach,whose title reveals the document’spurpose and contents. Whileteachers at Jesuit schools hadembraced the ideals ofCharacteristics, they had asked formore specific guidance on how toimplement those ideals.(Interestingly, this was the samerequest that had prompted the1599 Ratio Studiorum, which wasessentially a more practical versionof the 1586 Ratio. Then, too, Jesuitteachers had applauded the idealsof the 1586 Ratio but wonderedhow they were to make it work.Thus, we have the 1599 Ratio, orwhat we now know as “the” Ratio,which is practical in the extremeand anticipates every detail ofeducational administration, cur-riculum, method, and discipline.)Characteristics and Ignatiantogether rearticulate the distinctivenature of Jesuit education, but theydo so for a modern world, a worldof coeducation; lay leadership;advances in science and technology;and racial, ethnic, and religiousdiversity. Characteristics is the visionstatement and offers “an inspirationthat can make the day-to-day strug-gle have greater meaning and beargreater fruit.” Ignatian, on theother hand, offers “a paradigm thatspeaks to the teaching-learningprocess, that addresses the teacher-learner relationship, and that haspractical meaning and applicationfor the classroom.

Unfortunately, both documentsalso eschew the rhetorical heritageof the Ratio. Characteristics, forexample, makes only a couple ofshort references to eloquence, and

Conversations 9

Ignatian reminds us that the fourth section of the JesuitConstitutions (the section dealing with schools) “appearsto place teachers’ personal example ahead of learning orrhetoric as an apos-tolic means to helpstudents grow in val-ues.” Both documentsalso reject the com-petitiveness thatmarks the Ratio.Characteristics doesso explicitly: “Jesuiteducation today facesa different reality: aworld of excessive competitiveness reflected in individ-ualism, consumerism, and success at all costs.” Ignatian,meanwhile, describes a paradigm that implicitly rejectsagonism. The Ignatian model offers pedagogy basedupon the “interplay of experience, reflection, andaction.” Learning is not the public struggle of argument,but rather an engagement with meaningful experiencethat bears some relation to the students’ actual lives andthat, through reflection, leads students to a new courseof action. The reflection called for in Ignatian pedagogyfollows Ignatius’ spiritual habit, enshrined in theExercises, of paying attention to what moves him in agiven situation. In this model, the teacher is more like aspiritual director and less like a debate moderator.

Obviously, there is much to recom-mend the Ignatian model, whichreminds us that Jesuit education hasalways been about something morethan the accumulation of knowledgeas the basis for a lucrative career. Italso is easy to see why the designers

of Ignatian pedagogy would be wary of the endlessargumentative contest of the Ratio. Five minutes of cablenews is enough to convince anyone that the last thingour culture needs is more argument. And surely weshould discourage the kind of competitiveness that leadsstudents to see a grade of B as nothing more than theend of their (or their parents’) dream of the right lawschool or the right medical school. Yet if we are to jointhe pursuit of justice articulated in Characteristics andIgnatian, we would be unwise to ignore the rhetoricalheritage of the Ratio. Characteristics specifically calls fora “critical analysis of society” [emphasis in original] andIgnatian hopes that students will students will “have apowerful and ever growing sense of how they can beeffective advocates, agents and models of God’s justice.”To encourage analysis and advocacy without any meansof persuasion is to send students into battle with no

weapons. This martial metaphor will likely seem unper-suasive to many, as will any call for a return to theRatio’s agonism. Yet we know that the world is unlikely

to thank our studentsfor being men andwomen for others, justas we know that thepursuit of justice oftenattracts more enemiesthan friends. If we saythat we wish studentsto pursue justice, weare also saying thatwe wish to prepare

students for struggle. Rhetoric, as the authors of theRatio understood, is the art of struggle, and Western cul-ture’s oldest pedagogy of advocacy.

Of course it is neither desirable nor feasible to thinkthat we could simply graft Renaissance humanism ontoour current curricula. Jesuit education has always beentoo sensitive to the particularities of time and place toattempt such a simplistic revival. Yet without some ver-sion of rhetorical training, the commitment to serviceenshrined in Ignatian pedagogy seems equally implausi-ble. The moral leaders Jesuits admire—Arrupe, Ellacuria,Romero, Day—all shared a talent for persuasion. Toemulate them, we need not assign students aemuli (oreven Cicero in the original). But we do need to consid-er how we might fashion a contemporary rhetorical ped-agogy. That project should begin with the idea that rhet-oric can be taught through the Ignatian triad of experi-ence, reflection and action.

First and foremost, rhetoric is an experience, onethat engages mind and heart; indeed, rhetoric is some-thing our students experience all the time. Rhetoric isalso something they do all the time. They write papers,request extensions, discuss politics and sports and music(and occasionally the material we assign). They applyfor scholarships and jobs and further schooling. Theyperform a great deal of community service, around ourcampuses and around the world, and these projectsdemand constant communication. In other words, ourstudents are already immersed in both the experience ofreceiving rhetoric and the action of producing it Asteachers of perfect eloquence—no matter our disci-pline—our job would then be to lead students throughthe reflection that makes rhetoric intentional. Ignatianpedagogy thus offers the perfect vehicle for crafting aneloquentia perfecta appropriate to our moment, shapedby deep erudition, manifested in a range of communica-tion media and, most importantly, unwaveringly commit-ted to justice. ■

Learning is not the public struggle

of argument, but rather an

engagement with meaningful

experience …

10 Conversations

The Rhetoric Class “instructs to perfect elo-quence.” This eloquentia perfecta forms basisof a Jesuit rhetorical tradition spanning fourand a half centuries, a tradition that encom-passes all of the Jesuit ministries of the Word,from preaching and teaching to running for-eign missions, hearing confessions and

directing the Spiritual Exercises. In each of these min-istries, Jesuits adjusted their words to the capacities oftheir hearers and readers, practicing a rhetorical sensitiv-ity to audience needs, historical exigencies, and spiritualaims. During educational formation, Jesuits traditionallyspent a year studying as “rhetoricians,” and, as theyopened their schools to lay students, the rhetoric classbecame central to the humanist liberal arts curriculumdescribed in their Ratio Studiorum of 1599.

The Ratio’s “Rules for Professors of Rhetoric” requireteaching language arts combined with an eruditiondirected at both practical utility and cultural enrichment.Erudition comes from studying the history and customsof nations, scriptural authority, and church doctrine. Fora rhetorical textbook, the Ratio recommends the JesuitCyprian Soarez’s De arte rhetorica, primarily a synthesisof the classical rhetorical theory of Aristotle, Cicero, andQuintilian, which was reprinted in various forms over200 times from its first publication in 1562 through the

late eighteenth century when the Society was temporar-ily suppressed. Describing eloquence as “wisdom speak-ing copiously,” Soarez argues for the educational princi-ple of combining Christian morals with secular learningand follows Cicero declaring that rhetoric must be joined“with probity and prudence. If we bequeath the powerof speaking to people without these virtues, we would notbe making orators but would just be giving weapons tomadmen.” For Soarez and later Jesuit rhetoricians, the idealrhetor unites the language arts with wisdom and virtue.Jesuit eloquentia perfecta can thus be characterized as aninfluential form of Christian rhetoric, a pedagogical elabo-ration of the classical ideal of the good person writing andspeaking skillfully for the common good.

Quoting Quintilian’s definition of the perfect oratoras the good person speaking well, many Jesuit rhetori-cians developed his thesis that virtuous character wasrequired for true eloquence. The seventeenth-centuryFrench Jesuit Nicolas Caussin, for example, distinguishedthree types of eloquence: human, divine, and heroic.There is an admirable human eloquence, powerful andbeautiful, like that of Cicero and Demosthenes. Greater

Steven Mailloux is president’s professor of rhetoric atLoyola Marymount University.

A Good Person

Speaking Well

Eloquentia Perfecta in U.S. Jesuit Colleges: A Brief Genealogy

By Steven Mailloux

Conversations 11

still is a divine eloquence, impossible to be taught butperformed by such figures as Isaiah and St. Paul. Toillustrate, Caussin retells the story of the Apostle’s trialbefore Antonius Felix, the Roman procurator of Judea,when Paul was attacked by the prosecuting rhetoricianTertullus. Paul successfully defends himself and Caussindraws the lesson: “In this incident appears how weak andmeager is human eloquence, compared with the divine;here the theorhetor Paul demolished the machinations ofthat rhetorician with a crushing blow of the spirit.”

Other theorhetors exemplify the third type of elo-quence, the heroic, which joins human skill and divineinspiration, a practice developed by church Fathers likeJohn Chrysostom, who from the time of their youthstrived to improve their rhetorical abilities. Consistentwith this tradition of heroic eloquence, Jesuit educatorsadvocated teaching rhetoric combined with informedthinking, moral discernment, and civic responsibility.

This eloquentia perfecta remained a part of theJesuit rhetorical tradition into the nineteenth centuryafter the official restoration of the Society in 1814. Theterm still appears in the Ratio Studiorum of 1832, arevised version that was promulgated but never official-ly adopted as the universal standard by the Society as awhole. Differences in national practices and institutionshad led to a diversity that resisted global standardiza-tion. In the United States at midcentury, Jesuit collegescontinued to be guided by the Ratio; however, theexplicit rhetorical theory promoted differed little from

that in non-Jesuit schools. In both, the classical theory ofthe Greco-Roman tradition (Aristotle, Cicero, andQuintilian) was often combined with the belletristiceighteenth-century British tradition (especially HughBlair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres. After theAmerican Civil War, as U.S. Jesuit colleges continuedemphasizing a classical course of study centered onLatin and Greek, they also continued requiring Englishrhetoric textbooks similar to those in non-Jesuit schools.

This textbook situation changed in the last quarterof the century, as Jesuit colleges adopted new rhetoricswritten by members of their Society. The most popularJesuit rhetoric textbooks in English were A PracticalIntroduction to English Rhetoric (1880) and The Art of

Oratorical Composition (1885), written by a Belgium-born Jesuit, Charles Coppens. Father Coppens taughtrhetoric at St. Louis University, St. Mary’s College, andthe St. Stanislaus Novitiate as well as other subjects atseveral American Jesuit colleges and universities, includ-ing Detroit, Creighton, and Xavier. During the 1880s and1890s Coppens’s rhetorics were required at Jesuitschools across the country. A Practical Introduction toEnglish Rhetoric became the standard textbook for

Virtuous character was required

for true eloquence

Priests preparing for mass, Gonzaga University. Photo by Rajah Bose

12 Conversations

writing in the poetry and humanities class years, whileThe Art of Oratorical Composition was required in therhetoric class teaching oratory. The latter book contin-ued the earlier nineteenth-century combination of clas-sical and belletristic rhetorics, but it also gave the tra-dition a more recognizably Jesuit character as well asadding a more specifically American dimension.

Coppens often quotes Aristotle, Cicero, andQuintilian along with Blair, but he also cites theGerman Jesuit Joseph Kleuten’s Ars dicendi andincludes Jesuit orators as examples. Americans areprominently represented in rhetorical practice withspeeches by Daniel Webster and in rhetorical theorywith quotations from the Lectures on Rhetoric andOratory by John Quincy Adams, Harvard’s firstBoylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. Coppens’suse of Adams’s lectures is somewhat surprising giventhe particular way the Boylston Professor explicitlyrejects Quintilian’s definition of the perfect orator, writ-ing that the Roman’s arguments “in support of hisfavorite position, are not all worthy of his cause. Theydo not glow with that open, honest eloquence, whichthey seem to recommend; but sometimes resemble thequibbling of a pettifogger, and sometimes the fraudu-lent morality of a Jesuit.” Nevertheless, Adams’s argu-ment for continuing the classical tradition no doubtappealed to Coppens in developing his version ofJesuit rhetoric.

Coppens distinguishes among the terms rhetoric,oratory, and eloquence. Rhetoric is “the art of invent-ing, arranging, and expressing thought in a manneradapted to influence or control the minds and wills ofothers,” whereas oratory is “that branch of rhetoricwhich expresses thought orally.” To define eloquence,Coppens simply relies on Webster’s Dictionary: elo-quence is “the expression or utterance of strong emo-tion in a manner adapted to excite correspondent emo-tions in others.” Jesuit rhetorical strategies oftenappealed to strong emotions, beginning at least withthe rhetoric of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. Alsotypical of the Jesuit rhetorical way, Coppens notes thateloquence applies to writing as well as speaking. Hedescribes oratory as “a noble art” and, like manyrhetoricians before him, quotes from the first book ofCicero’s “De Oratore”: “On the influence and the wis-dom of a perfect orator depends not only his own dig-nity, but also, to a very great extent, the safety of mul-titudes and the welfare of the whole republic.”Coppens discusses “national variations” in rhetoric,asserting that “American eloquence aims at the perfec-tion of the Latin,” which emphasizes “the beauty of

Rules for Professors

of Rhetoric(Ratio Studiorum of 1599)

I. Grade.—The grade of this class cannot be easily

assigned to certain definite ends: for it instructs to

perfect eloquence, which embraces the two highest

faculties, oratory and poetry (of these two, however,

the preference is always given to oratory); nor does it

serve only for usefulness, but also nourishes culture.

Nevertheless it can be said in general that it is con-

fined to three great fields, the precepts of oratory,

style, and erudition.

As to the precepts, Quintilian and Aristotle may be

added to Cicero. Although precepts may be looked

for and noted in other sources, still in the daily

prelections nothing is to be explained except the

rhetorical books of Cicero and the rhetoric of

Aristotle, and, if he likes, the poetics of Aristotle.

Style is to be learned only from Cicero (although the

most approved historians and poets may be tasted);

all of his books are well adapted for the study of

style; but let only the orations be given as prelec-

tions, so that the principles of the art may be seen as

practiced in the speeches.

Let erudition be derived from history and the cus-

toms of tribes, from Scriptural authority, and from

all doctrine, but in small quantity as benefits the

capacity of the students.

“The Ratio Studiorum of 1599,” translated by A.R. Ball, in St. Ignatius and the Ratio Studiorum,edited by Edward A. Fitzpatrick (New York:McGraw-Hill, 1933), pp. 208-09

Conversations 13

eloquence, without, howev-er, ignoring its usefulness.”

The Art of OratoricalComposition includes majorsections on the invention,arrangement, and develop-ment of thought as well ason memory, elocution, anddifferent genres of oratory.Coppens precedes all ofthese divisions with a sec-tion, “Sources of Success inOratory,” which givesprominence to moral virtuesalong with natural talent andlearned knowledge. “But farmore important than anyphysical power in the ora-tor,” he writes, “are themoral virtues with whichnature and his own efforts, with the help of God’s grace,have adorned his soul.” To be truly eloquent or persua-sive the speaker must be a virtuous person. Coppensadds emphatically: “It is the chief duty of education tomake men virtuous; any system of training which doesnot put virtue in the first place is a false system.” Amongthe virtues “most necessary for an orator,” he lists: pro-bity, temperance, public spirit, compassion for the unfor-tunate, benevolence, modesty, confidence, self-com-mand, and a habit of application and industry.

The intimate connection maintained between elo-quence and virtue throughout the Jesuit rhetorical tradi-tion effectively advanced the long-standing educationalgoals of the Society. The 1599 Ratio urges that “impres-sionable minds” be trained “in the classroom and out-side… in the loving service of God and in all the virtuesrequired for this service,” and these same ends contin-ued to beemphasized inthe course cat-alogues of U.S.Jesuit collegesand universi-ties through-out the nine-teenth centu-ry. One typicalformulation stresses the value of a “liberal education” inthe tradition of the Ratio, which aims “to develop themoral and mental faculties of the students, to make goodChristians, good citizens, good scholars.”

Similar rhetorical traditions continue today at severalJesuit colleges as they reform their curricula and devel-op their pedagogical practices. For example, LoyolaMarymount University recently adopted a new core cur-riculum that begins with a required two-coursesequence, a “freshman seminar” followed by “rhetoricalarts,” which replaces the old freshman compositioncourse and works to train students in oral and writtenrhetoric in various media. According to the adoptedcourse description, rhetoric arts “teaches an integratedset of skills, competencies, and knowledge that enablesstudents to engage in public debate with persuasiveforce and stylistic excellence.”

Noting that Jesuit rhetoric emerged out of theRenaissance, the description focuses on how Jesuit elo-quentia perfecta built on “the classical ideal of the goodperson writing and speaking well for the public good

and promotes the teaching of eloquence com-bined with erudition and moral discernment.Developing this tradition in light of moderncomposition study and communication theo-ry, the rhetorical arts course complements theother foundation courses with topics such asethics and communication, virtue and author-ity, knowledge and social obligation.” In sum,the class aims “to foster critical thinking, moralreflection, and articulate expression.” Courses

like LMU’s rhetorical arts bear witness that the Jesuit tra-dition of eloquentia perfecta remains alive and well inthe twenty-first century. ■

“…the quibbling of a

pettifogger, and

sometimes the fraudulent

morality of a Jesuit.”

Jerry Hess instructs law students, Gonzaga University. Photo by Rajah Bose.

14 Conversations

The ability to judiciously apply eloquentia per-fecta to new situations has been a hallmark ofJesuit education. Steven Mailloux of LoyolaMarymount University stated in an address atFordham University that “ … rhetoric is goingto be embedded in the media of the day.”

Consistent with the aims of eloquentia perfecta, heargued, the digital revolution can be used to promotethe greater good. Students can be provided with theintellectual tools to engage responsibly and eloquentlyin the digital realm.

The complexity and cultural underpinnings of the cur-rent media landscape present challenges for Jesuit collegesand universities seeking to adapt the tenets of eloquentiaperfecta to the modern-day curriculum. Students are bom-barded with information from a constantly evolving arrayof platforms that require increasingly specialized skill setsto navigate successfully. The questionable quality and vit-riolic tone of much of the content disseminated via mediarun in direct opposition to the fundamental principles ofeloquentia perfecta. A tradition of well-reasoned, carefullyarticulated arguments is more difficult to achieve in amedia environment that encourages an abundance ofinformation expressed in brief. In these times, rhetoricaltraining that emphasizes substance, civility, and responsi-bility is vital.

The New Media Landscape

The American media environment has been undergoinga significant transformation since the 1980s. Broadcastmedia which disseminate information of general societalinterest to large geographically dispersed audiences havebeen joined by platforms that narrowcast content to spe-cific individuals. The media landscape now consists of acomplex, multi-tiered system that accommodates tradi-tional mass media, novel digital media, and hybrid formsincorporating elements of old and new media.Traditional forms of entertainment programming, liketelevision and radio talk shows, have gotten into thenews business. New technologies have given rise to avast array of media options, like blogs, social network-ing sites, and video sharing sites. Established media areadapting to the shifting environment, as traditional for-

Tumblr, Vilmeo, Pinterest,

Wikis, Mashups

Eloquentia Perfecta and the New Media Landscape

By Diana Owen

Diana Owen, associate professor of political scienceand director of American Studies at GeorgetownUniversity, teaches in the graduate program in communication, culture, and technology. She is editorof the journal, Electronic Media and Politics(http://www.emandp.com).

Conversations 15

mats incorporate current innovations. The websites ofmainstream media organizations have become multi-media resources that feature content produced by pro-fessionals as well as citizens.

Well-established broadcast channels continue toform the backbone of media system. The majority ofpeople still rely heavily on television for news, entertain-ment, and sports even as new media formats, and thedevices for accessing them—cell phones, tablets, net-books—proliferate. A 2012 Pew Research Center studyindicates that over 70 percent of the public gets most ofits information from television news programs. Furtherevidence of television’s popularity in the new media ageis found in a Pew report indicating that 73 percent of thepublic watched the 2012 Olympics on television, com-pared to 17 percent who followed the games online and12 percent who tracked the action via social media.

Traditional print media have fallen on difficult times, astheir budgets have been slashed, staffs have been cut,and investigative journalism has fallen by the wayside.Print newspapers have witnessed a significant decline inreadership over the past two decades, but maintain adedicated following of 31 percent of the population. A2012 Rasmussen Report finds that only 28 percent ofreaders prefer the online to the print version of theirfavorite newspaper.

The new media first emerged in the 1980s when tra-ditional entertainment media became deliberatelyinvolved in the distribution of news. Radio and televi-sion talk programs, comedy shows, tabloid newspapers,celebrity magazines, and music television increasinglydisseminated content related to legal issues, electioncampaigns, public policy, and societal events.

Gonzaga University. Photo by Rajah Bose.

16 Conversations

Presidential candidates seeking to gain more favorablecoverage than they were getting from the mainstreampress courted entertainment media. Candidates now gainmore publicity by appearing on the front cover of PeopleWeekly magazine than through stories in Time orNewsweek. They routinely make the rounds of televisiontalk shows, like Ellen and The View, where they face most-ly supportive audiences. This type of new media/old tech-nology has resulted in the rise of infotainment, an obses-sion with gossip and scandal, and the degradation of newsstandards. At the same time, it has made news more acces-sible and palatable to more people.

The second phase in new media’s evolution isinspired by technology. The arrival of the Internet andthe World Wide Web enabled the creation of entirelynew communication platforms. Advances in digital tech-nology continually push forward the boundaries of com-munications possibilities. Innovations emerge rapidlyand haphazardly. Digital media run the gamut from for-mats that resemble offline counterparts or perform simi-lar functions to traditional media, such as the websites ofmainstream newspapers, to truly novel formats that facil-itate new ways of relating. In the 1990s, early forms ofdigital media—email, websites, blogs, and discussionboards—afforded users unprecedented opportunities tomonitor, comment on, create, and distribute information.Social media that make sophisticated use of the interac-tive capacity of digital tools came to prominence in themid-2000s. Wikis allow people to work collaborativelyon projects and documents. Social networking sites, likeFacebook and Pinterest, help users to make and main-tain contacts, share information, connect with otherswith similar interests, debate, and organize events.Microblogs, like Twitter and Tumblr, and text messagingservices let people share snippets of content with othersin their networks and follow events as they unfold.Content-hosting sites, like the video-sharing platformsYouTube and Vimeo, serve as widely accessible reposi-tories of material that can be immediately retrieved.Virtual games and social worlds, like Second Life, notonly allow players to make friends and have fun, butalso are used for teaching through simulations thatrequire students to do research and develop decision-making skills.

New media are distinct from traditional media in anumber of ways. They have robust interactive capabil-ities and readily facilitate the development of networkconnections. They can supersede temporal, geographi-cal, and socioeconomic boundaries. They are able tosubvert mainstream media organizational hierarchies,and offer average people enhanced opportunities tobecome engaged. Mainstream news organizations

increasingly rely on citizen-produced content to fill thevoid created by budget and staffing cuts. Amateur new-shounds from across the globe report on events and pro-vide analysis. New media can enable civic activism byempowering people who lack the resources to engagethe political process meaningfully through conventionalmechanisms. Voters use social media to take part in cam-paigns, creating their own candidate ads, recruiting vol-unteers, and organizing campaign activities outside ofthe official candidate and party organizations.

The proliferation of offerings has prompted shifts inaudience media preferences. Individuals negotiating thelabyrinth of choices are turning to specialized outletsthat best suit their needs. For some people, social mediahave become an integral extension of their daily lives.According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project,82 percent of the American population was online as ofApril 2012. Over 40 percent of the public gets newsabout national and international issues from Internetsources. The audiences for digital media are dispersedamong numerous sources. This audience fragmentationis illustrated by the fact that one-quarter of the electoratefollowed the 2012 presidential campaign on CNN.com,10 percent on FoxNews.com, and 9 percent onMSNBC.com. The majority of voters used a plethora ofother news sites, blogs, and social media sites, eachdrawing 2 percent or less of the population.

Eloquentia Perfecta in the DigitalAge: Challenges and Opportunities

The information age media system thrives on a steadyinflux of content that is produced by a wide circle ofproviders. Little of that content, rises to the level ofrhetorical excellence. Professional information producersin the new media era have shunned textbook journalis-tic norms defiantly in favor of entertainment values. Thepublic service imperative that once guided media organ-izations commanding the public airwaves has taken aback seat to profit-making in a competitive marketplace.Average citizens often lack the appropriate training tobecome purveyors of quality information.

Audience members have difficulty sorting throughthe glut of information available through so manymedia sources. Distinguishing fact from fabrication andthe important from the trivial can frustrate even the mosthardy information consumer. The desire to simplifychoices can lead people to seek channels that reflecttheir own personal viewpoints while ignoring those thatoffer alternative perspectives. This “echo chamber” effectidentified by University of Pennsylvania Professors

Conversations 17

Fr. Ray Schroth, S.J., concludes his ten-year run aseditor of Conversations with this issue.Characteristically, he is not gearing down or tak-ing it easy. Just the opposite. His added respon-

sibilities at America as literary editor will keep himbusier than ever.

Because of his talent as a journalist and his breadthof knowledge about Jesuit universities, Fr. Schrothbrought great suggestions, skilled editing, and creativelayouts to Conversations.

Conversations began shortly after the GeorgetownConference on Jesuit higher education in 1989 at whichFather Peter-Hans Kolvenbach gave a major address.Afterwards, an urgent need was felt to have greater com-munication among the Jesuit universities, to shareinsights and best practices, and especially for lay col-leagues to delve into, understand, embrace, and takeresponsibility for the Jesuit mission.

No one has been more central, more committed, and

more skilled for advancing this mission on our NationalSeminar for Jesuit Higher Education than Ray Schroth.Our seminar members hold him in great affection, andwe are consoled by knowing that he is just a phone callaway for recommendations about articles, writers, or“hot’ topics. He himself embodies the EloquentiaPerfecta, which we explore in this issue. ■

Patrick J. Howell, S.J., is chair of the Jesuit Seminar onHigher Education and rector and professor of pastoraltheology at Seattle University.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph Cappella thwartsmeaningful dialogue and hampers civil conversation. Itcontributes to increased political polarization that pre-cludes cooperation. Political commentators dubbed the2012 presidential election the nastiest and ugliest theyhave ever seen, as attacks by and against the candidateswere flamed by a new media system that rewards nega-tivity with publicity. That new media allow people tolodge attacks under the cover of anonymity does nothelp matters.

These developments present opportunities for edu-cators seeking to institute the principles of eloquentiaperfecta into the curriculum as the need to teach stu-dents proper rhetorical practices is great. LoyolaUniversity of Maryland specifies undergraduate learningaims related to eloquentia perfecta that are well-suited tothe digital age. These are: “the ability to use speech andwriting effectively, logically, gracefully, persuasively,and responsibly” and “critical understanding of and com-petence in a broad range of communications media.”

The first of these goals acknowledges the need to count-er the unfortunate norms of digital age discourse thatdevalue the quest for truth and accuracy in reportinginformation, undermine accountability, foster incivility,and fail to promote the public good. The second aimseeks to generate awareness of the constantly shiftingplatforms and changing modes of conversation that arethe reality of today’s media environment. It implies theneed to broaden the curriculum to encompass noncon-ventional formats, such as 140 character limits, audioand video presentations, and mashups.

Young people are at the forefront of innovation withnovel platforms and applications. They are attuned to thecharacteristics of new media and proficient in their use.They have been instrumental in building the informationarchitecture that underpins the new media system and ele-vating its use. With proper guidance, our students caninevitably play an active role in the adaptation of eloquen-tia perfecta for the new media age curriculum. ■

A Word on Our

Departing Editor

Pat Howell, S.J.

Photo by Kerry Weber.

18 Conversations

In 2005, the SpellingsCommission declared a cri-sis in American higher edu-cation: at the same time thatcolleges and universities arebecoming less accessible and

less accountable, they are failing toprepare the workforce and strug-gling to maintain international sta-tus. Extending the national focuson educational accountability intohigher education, the SpellingsReport called for information aboutthe quality and cost of collegedegrees. Policymakers and govern-ment officials are questioning howmuch undergraduates learn and, inthe interest of greater accountabili-ty, are urging colleges to publicizedata about student success.

Richard Arum and JosipaRoksa’s Academically Adrift:Limited Learning on CollegeCampuses (University ofChicago Press, 2011) has gained

great capital in this crisis narrative.The authors claim that Americanstudents are learning very little—atbest—during their first two yearsof college. Although the book maybe criticized on methodologicalgrounds, it is helpful reading forfaculty and administrators at Jesuitcolleges and universities, institu-tions with aims that Richard Arumand Josipa Roksa argue have beenlost in American higher education:educating with intellectual rigorand a commitment to society.

Academically Adrift reportson a study of 2,322 studentsenrolled at twenty-four four-yearAmerican colleges and universi-ties. These students were national-ly representative of traditional-ageundergraduate students in terms of

Why StudentsDon’t WriteEducating in the Era of Credentialing

Kristine Johnson teaches writing atXavier University in Cincinnati.

AcademicallyAdrift: Limited

Learning onCollege

Campuses

By Kristine Johnson

Conversations 19

racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds; high schoolgrades; and scores on standardized college entranceexams . Arum and Roksa used the Collegiate LearningAssessment (CLA) to measure learning during the firsttwo years of college; students were tested in Fall 2005 asincoming freshman and in Spring 2007 at the end of theirsophomore year. Through a performance task and twoanalytical writing tasks, the CLA claims to measure gen-eral skills such as critical thinking, complex reasoning,and writing rather than specific content knowledge. Themean gain in CLA scores was seven percentile points,and the authors conclude that “many students are onlyminimally improving their skills in critical thinking, com-plex reasoning, and writing during their journeysthrough higher education.” Yet the top ten percent ofstudents improved forty-three percentile points, andthese high-performing students came from all familybackgrounds, academic preparations, and racial/ethnicgroups. Because some students did indeed makeremarkable gains during their first two years of college,Arum and Roksa go on to ask how “specific collegeexperiences and contexts can shape” growth after stu-dents enter college.

Three factors emerged as significant for learninggrowth: spending time studying alone, taking classesfrom faculty with high expectations, and taking classesthat require more than forty pages of reading per weekand more than twenty pages of writing during thesemester. For those who teach college writing and rhet-oric courses, the last finding—that writing positively cor-relates with growth in learning—is certainly not surpris-ing because it confirms decades of compositionresearch. However, Arum and Roksa found that fifty per-cent of students reported not taking a single courserequiring more than twenty pages of writing in a semes-ter. This finding is especially troubling if we assume thatmore than fifty percent of students take a writing courseduring their first two years of college, and it may alsoindicate that opportunities to undertake substantial writ-ing projects have dissipated in postsecondary classroomsas they have in secondary classrooms.

Moral authority, or just a credential?

Though Arum and Roksa ultimately draw narrow conclu-sions, their work suggests a broader claim: higher edu-cation has shifted from an institution that embracedmoral authority for student development to an institutionthat simply credentials workers. They identify a shift inthe way faculty and administrators view their roles:“Many higher-education administrators and faculty todayhave largely turned away from earlier conceptions of

their roles that recognized that providing supporting forstudent academic and social development was a moralimperative worth sacrificing for personally, professional-ly, and institutionally.” Students leave college not onlyacademically adrift but perhaps morally and sociallyadrift, without the virtues to become engaged citizens.Arum and Roksa do not argue for a return to these val-ues, but they contend that envisioning American highereducation as credentialing neglects the moral, social, andintellectual factors that are integral to thinking, reason-ing, and writing—to eloquentia perfecta in the classroomand in the world.

Within the discipline of rhetoric and composition,Academically Adrift has received significant criticism forits bold claims about student writing. The entire study isbased on results from the CLA, which assesses writing inways that are neither authentic nor perhaps valid—aninety-minute test that now scores analytical writing bymachine. Composition scholars argue that the authorsmanufacture an educational crisis by interpreting theirresults quite negatively and citing only studies that foundsimilarly discouraging results. Though the sample groupas a whole and each subgroup recorded statistically sig-nificant gains, they nonetheless conclude the gains werelimited, overlooking other studies that show improve-ment throughout the undergraduate years. Arum andRoksa use these results to call for deeper dedication toundergraduate education: more rigorous classes, morecontact between faculty and students, and more facultytime devoted to teaching. These goals are certainlyadmirable, but they also obscure economic and materialrealities. Many of the courses students take during thefirst years of college are taught by teaching assistants orcontingent faculty, and the credentialing model directingAmerican higher education may not allow for this dedi-cation to undergraduate education.

Academically Adrift calls attention to the wide-spread perception—one held by faculty, administrators,and students—that a college degree is simply a creden-tial to be deployed in the economic market. Policy state-ments such as the Spellings Report reinforce this percep-tion, focusing on student learning as a way to assignvalue to the credential. In this educational landscape,faculty and administrators from Jesuit colleges and uni-versities may reflect on the ways in which their workchallenges this perception by aiming to educate studentsethically, morally, and intellectually. Although standard-ized assessment instruments cannot measure these ethi-cal and moral goals, Academically Adrift highlights theirimportance not only for student learning but also for thecontinued existence of American higher education as apublic good. ■

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Spread Out But CloseConversations andCollaborations:Eloquentia Perfecta on21st Century JesuitCampuses

Laurie Ann Britt-Smith, Lisa Zimmerelli, Cinthia Gannett,and John Kerrigan

How can the tradition of eloquentia per-fecta still animate our current sense ofrhetorical education? The JesuitConference on Rhetoric andComposition, an association of interest-ed writing faculty from the 28 AmericanJesuit colleges, was founded over adecade ago, prompted by the need torecover and re-imagine what is vitalabout Jesuit rhetorical education for the21st century. In this Jesuit-lay collabora-tion, faculty in rhetoric-compositionmeet and communicate regularly tosponsor colloquia, summer institutes,presentations, published scholarship,and pedagogical reform. Our voluntaryassociation promises to help create andsustain a new version of eloquentia per-fecta across curricula, programs, andinstitutions aligned with current views ofJesuit mission and identity which joinacademic excellence and social justice.

As one example of this work, weteacher-scholars at four distinctly differ-ent and geographically-dispersed Jesuitinstitutions, all partners in the Jesuit

Conference on Rhetoric andComposition, responded to a call forpapers at the European Association ofTeachers of Academic WritingConference in Ireland (2011). Weworked together to prepare a presenta-tion, “The Spiritual Life of Writing” onjoining the reflective/ spiritual and aca-demic uses of writing. This drew fromour own institutional approaches, buttransformed to a unified whole as weworked online, met in Limerick, pre-sented together, and responded to theuseful questions and thoughtful feed-back of our international audience.

As fellow travelers exploring theextension of the Jesuit rhetorical tradi-tion into the 21st century teaching ofwriting, we learned as we taught, firstfor our international presentation, andthen as we have worked on this articleand other projects together and on ourown campuses. This primarily digitalcollaboration (email, Skype, googledocs) is one means by which we enactand model eloquentia perfecta. Wechallenge ourselves to generate writingthat reflects all our individual voices,yet also forms a larger whole. Thisprocess can be arduous, requiring moretime to complete a project than if weattempted to keep the conversationsmaller. Yet we find real value in mak-ing the effort to understand eachother’s and our own imperfect (unfin-ished) efforts. We have discovered thatwe need to mind the gap between ouraim of eloquence and our (and eachother’s) daily scribbles, maintaining adelicate balance of magis and cura per-sonalis in our companionship in order

for the collaboration to be successful. But beyond the writing itself, our

work evokes the Jesuit notion of thecollaborative process of learning andacting, “nuestro modo de proceder”—listening, sharing, and attending towhat is common and unique about ourcontexts, then moving forward throughlanguage together. Our collaborationhas led us to better appreciate andshare the features of eloquentia perfec-ta that our programs strive to enact.That is, what is distinctive about ourcollaboration is the way it forges aninterrelationship between/ among usand our work on campuses. We realize,for example, that we are all interestedin synthesizing the role of rhetoric andreflection as central program aims andin identifying ways to teach languageas a means of forming “men andwomen for others.”

These initiatives take very differentforms, given institutional histories,structures, and resources, but they eachhave important contributions to maketo our conversation. At RockhurstUniversity, we learn, discussionsbetween first-year writing faculty anddisciplinary faculty, noting the conver-gence of reflection as a “best practice”in teaching writing and Ignatian peda-gogy, developed ways to infuse andassess a reflective pedagogy. Similarly,Fairfield University’s developing corewriting course sequence supports itscore pathway, Rhetoric and Reflection,and it is sustaining institution-wideinterest by engaging the faculty broad-ly as “a community of writers” throughthe Center for Academic Excellence.

Reports

Writing Across the CountryProgress Reports on How to Teach and Do It

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Like Fairfield, the University of DetroitMercy (UDM), has also revised its writ-ing program, improved its writing cen-ter, and adopted new learning out-comes in the soon to be implementedcore curriculum which focus on thedevelopment of ethos, language ascivic action, and other enduring rhetor-ical competences. At Loyola UniversityMaryland (LUM), the writing depart-ment enacts the centrality of writingand rhetoric by bringing together thecore writing course, a writing majorand minor, writing-across-the curricu-lum support (including a Loyola writ-ing handbook with contributions fromevery department), and the writingcenter into an integrated ensemble ofinitiatives. Their writing center extendsthe ideal of social justice into the larg-er Baltimore community through itshigh school peer tutoring program.

As we confer across campuses, ourmutual commitment to eloquentia per-fecta bears a transformational capacity.Accompanying each other in the Jesuitsense, with humility—not appropriat-ing each other’s projects, but being indialogue with each other as we choosehow to proceed, cultivates our sense ofself-awareness and criticism, and hasopened avenues of possibility that haveenhanced our individual work. Ourongoing collaborative work will contin-ue to focus on Jesuit rhetorical practicefor discernment and action in service ofthe common good, grounded in bestpractices in contemporary compositionand rhetoric. And when we grow frus-trated by the pace and complex nego-tiations of group writing and the longtrail of drafts, emails, and conversa-tions, we remind ourselves that the firstgreat Jesuit educational document, theRatio of 1599, was the result of count-less iterations, reports, revisions. Wehave to laugh and ask, Why should itbe any different now?

Laurie Ann Britt-Smith is an assistant professor of English and director of thewriting program and center at the

University of Detroit Mercy; LisaZimmerelli is an assistant professorand writing center director at LoyolaUniversity Maryland; Cinthia Gannettis an associate professor of English,director of core writing, and CAEcoordinator of writing across the com-munity at Fairfield University; andJohn Kerrigan is an associate professorof English and chair of the humanitiesdivision at Rockhurst University.

A Course to Blog About

Laura Davies and Erin Mullally

A few weeks ago, Laura stumbled upona blog one of her writing students kept.To her surprise, the student caredenough about what they had talkedand wrote about to post her essaysabout critical writing and Ignatian spir-ituality on her very non-academic blog.In one post, she wrote: ‘Though I amnot even halfway through the semester,I feel like this course has alreadyhelped me to grow a lot and come toterms with who I am …’

We believe that this student foundher critical writing course meaningfulbecause of the nature of the course.For fall 2011, we designed a pilot first-year writing course at Le MoyneCollege that enacted Ignatian peda-gogy: teaching writing through a holis-tic pedagogical framework that empha-sized 1) care of the individual stu-dent, 2) individual reflection and self-evaluation, and 3) a concern for theethical ramifications of rhetorical acts.

We had five sections of freshmancomposition, approximately one hun-dred students. We wanted students toapproach writing through Ignatian ped-agogy. We also wanted them to seewho the man behind the curtain was,naming for them the processes wewere following, so they could contem-plate our classroom practices and writ-

ing prompts as arguments themselves.The assignments and classroom activi-ties were all selected to stage teachingas a rhetorical activity.

The course was organized arounda progression of three questions: Whatis Jesuit higher education for? Whatdoes it mean to be a college writertoday? What does it mean to get a col-lege education in the 21st century?

First, the students explored the450-year history of the Jesuit order andread about Ignatian spirituality, theworldview of Ignatius of Loyola, andscholarship about the Catholic intellec-tual tradition (including selections byJohn Paul II, John Henry Newman,Adolfo Nicholás, Peter-HansKolvenbach, James Martin, MonicaHellwig and Kevin Clarke). Theseworks gave the course a foundationupon which to explore contemporarymerits of liberal arts education and thepros and cons of campus life in authorsincluding Mark Edmundson, LouisMenand, Mary Eberstadt and DonnaFrietas. The specific shared vocabularyalone allowed for nuanced conversa-tion as the students noted the frequentuse of these same terms throughouttheir campus.

Then students read scholarship incomposition and rhetoric (selections byGerald Graff, Lester Faigley, Mike Rose,Rebecca Moore Howard, DonaldMurray and Walter Ong), challengingthem to find connections betweenIgnatian pedagogy and the theoriesthat inform our understanding aboutinquiry, rhetoric and digital technology,the writing process, collaborative writ-ing with sources, and academic argu-ment as conversation.

Although we found the courseengaging, we noticed some limitations.We designed the course with the tradi-tional first-year, first-semester collegestudent in mind. Many of our studentsfit this category, but not all. The older,non-traditional students found thecourse meaningful, but in differentways than we expected. One, an Army

22 Conversations

veteran wounded in Iraq, wrote abouthow he saw his life intersecting withthe story of Ignatius. Other students,returning to college, added to our dis-cussions of the worth and cost of a col-lege education today.

Additionally, although we used thesame major assignments and many ofthe same readings, our courses werenot identical. It’s important that thecourse remain flexible so that it canadapt to teachers’ individual expertise.We developed a shared vocabulary anda core set of texts, while retaining theautonomy to tailor the courses to ourown interests. Finally, our pilot projectwas supported through an institutionalgrant, which gave us the resources todo extensive curricular developmentthe previous summer.

In one assessment, students wereasked to define academic writing, aquestion previously asked on the firstday which most could not answerclearly. Now, however, all gaveanswers that included terms like “argu-mentative,” “support,” “back up yourclaims,” “include opposing view-points,” “prove a point.” Additionally,when asked to reflect on what theyhave learned about themselves as writ-ers, the overwhelming response mimicsthis one student’s response: “I’velearned that my writing needs work.”

We were delighted by the over-whelmingly positive response becausewe had feared that students wouldreject any prolonged engagement withIgnatian ideals in a required course.During an in-class reflection early inthe semester, Erin’s students consideredthe links between that day’s readingand the college mission statement.Their responses noted how both thestatement and the author’s argument onthe nature of Jesuit ideology affirm thenecessity of individual freedom of con-scious and the importance of living afull life. As one student, skeptical ofthe “Catholic” element of the Le Moynemission, notes: “It is comforting toknow that the Jesuits and Le Moyne

College give me the freedom to dowhat I feel is my own path and thatthey will be supportive ofthat.” Another student notes that “As aJesuit Institution Le Moyne has specificgoals set out for its students includingeducation of the mind and body, adualism at the heart of the Jesuit tradi-tion, critical reasoning and eloquence,skills necessary for students to go intothe world, and a dedication to serviceand learning, which lies at the center ofJesuit spirituality.”

These two responses—one sur-prised by the nature of Jesuit educa-tional ideals that do not conform tonegative assumptions of Catholicismand one that sees positive linksbetween academic and non-academicgoals—are typical. Erin felt that thesestudents understood the implicationsbehind why one should attend a Jesuitcollege. All private colleges mustdemonstrate to their students why theirparticular institution is worth attending;even early on, these students seemedreceptive to the distinctive nature of thecollege they had chosen.

Laura Davies and Erin Mullally teachin the English department at Le MoyneUniversity.

Round-UpWhat’s New in Writingacross the Curriculumat Jesuit InstitutionsToday?

John C. Bean

“So, while John Carroll (JCU) doesnot have an official Writing Across theCurriculum (WAC) program, we do anumber of WAC-type things,” says TomPace, the director of writing at JCU.Like John Carroll, most Jesuit collegesand universities do a lot of WAC-typethings. What’s new are cross-discipli-

nary commitments to eloquentia per-fecta that help students understand thepower of writing to promote deeplearning, civic engagement, and dis-cernment of beliefs and values.

“WAC-type things”: Three quickexamples include GonzagaUniversity’s pilot initiative in readingacross the curriculum; the day longworkshop that Tom Pace and col-leagues at John Carroll conduct for fac-ulty teaching writing-intensive courses;or Rockhurst University’s discus-sions of eloquentia perfecta across thecurriculum.

A different “WAC-type thing” is thewriting fellows program by PaulaMathieu at Boston College. Unlike adrop-in writing center, a writing fellowsprogram pairs trained graduate-studentfellows with an interested faculty mem-ber on a specific course. The fellowswork with the professor and consultthroughout the semester with studentsduring draft stages of assignments.

Also, at least two Jesuit universitieshave WAC websites providing supportinformation for both students and fac-ulty. The Marquette website includesa “department-by-department” refer-ence guide as well as writing tips forstudents. Loyola Maryland has alsoproduced a writing handbook availableon-line.

WAC via core initiatives:.Fordham University’s eloquentiaperfecta seminars, taught by facultyacross the curriculum, were featured ina recent article in America (“How toBuild a Better Student” May 16, 2011).Students must take four EP seminarsduring their undergraduate years. St.Joseph’s University also requires awriting-intensive course during each offour years. Seattle University’s newfour-year vertical core requires writingin every core course and specifies thatparticular courses must require a writ-ten or oral assignment.

WID (writing in the disciplines)initiatives: In Seattle University’swriting-in-the-majors program, each

Reports

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major identifies a capstone project thatrequires “expert insider prose” in thediscipline. Disciplinary faculty, usingthe process of backward design, devel-op instructional modules and assign-ment sequences needed earlier in themajor to prepare students for capstonework. (For a bibliography of peer-reviewed articles on Seattle University’suse of assessment to sustain WAC,email jbean@seattleu.edu)

Reflection across theCurriculum:. Whereas “reflection” inwriting instruction has typically focusedon metacognition, Jesuit universitiesare increasingly using reflection in theIgnatian tradition of discernment, ask-ing students to wrestle with questionsabout meaning and value. Fairfield’snew core has a pathway entitled“Rhetoric and Reflection.” SeattleUniversity’s new Core also requiresreflection in a number of courses,including social justice.

John C. Bean is professor of English atSeattle University.

Writing-Across-theCurriculum and thePromise of SomethingMore

Joseph Janangelo

Writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC)courses represent a nexus of what isnew and renewed for students at Jesuitcolleges and universities. Three recentdevelopments illustrate this combination. 1. Students compose digital texts

across the curriculum.For years, students and teachers

have used web sites and databases tofurther their research. ContemporaryWAC instructors are moving from sim-ply using existing online texts to help-ing students create new ones in con-temporary professional genres.Students receive mentored practice in

composing texts designed for onlinepresentation and circulation. These proj-ects prepare students for careers design-ing company web sites, maintainingtheir social media presence, and creatingonline databases and reports. This helpsstudents create texts of encapsulated elo-quence with a few well-chosen wordsand a menu that is clear and inviting.Instructors also help students incorpo-rate visuals (e.g. still and movingimages) and sounds (e.g. music).2. Students write in scholarly and

professional genres. Genres include lab reports, case stud-ies, brochures, and teaching portfolios. 3. Undergraduates publish their

research.

Numerous journals sponsor under-graduate research. For example YoungScholars in Writing publishes work inrhetorical theory and practice. The con-cept of audience is writ large whenundergraduates write for hundreds ofreaders.

More and MoreThe more students write and revise

their work in carefully mentored WACcourses, the more attentive, rigorous,and capable they become as readersand writers. Learning to write well is alife-long project. First-year compositioncourses lay a strong foundation.

Joseph Janangelo teaches English atLoyola University Chicago.

24 Conversations

Saint Peter’sUniversity

Conversations 25

Any doctor can order tests,examine vitals, and ana-lyze charts, but to possessthe skill to interview apatient well requires noth-ing short of perfect elo-

quence. A doctor must show confi-dence without arrogance and mustbuild trust while placing the patient atease. At any point during the interview,especially when meeting a patient forthe first time, this process can go horri-bly wrong and become awkward forboth the patient and physician.However when done successfully, agood interview will be the foundationfor quickly reaching the correct diagno-sis and providing optimal care. Thisinterview process used by physicians isnot unlike that used by journalistsinvestigating complex societal issues.

After observing many senior physi-cians interview patients in the hospitaland subsequently attempting to imitatetheir example with my own patients, Iquickly understood the difficultyinvolved in mastering this skill.Multiple obstacles must be overcome inorder to professionally interact withpatients. Some patients are sufferingbecause of their conditions and do notwish to be bothered while others comewith preconceived aversions to medicalprofessionals. Nonetheless, by askingthoughtful questions and sincerely lis-tening, this process gives patients con-fidence in the care they receive.

Learning to conduct interviews, Ihave found myself drawing from myexperience as a former editor of mycollege newspaper. The key to gather-ing information for a story dependedon my ability to conduct successful

interviews. I needed to ask direct ques-tions which would give me the infor-mation that I needed without everseeming offensive. Sometimes peoplewere apprehensive when answeringquestions from fear of having theirwords manipulated or turned againstthem. Once I built a rapport with themand demonstrated my willingness toonly report the truth in an unbiasedmanner, the people I interviewed werewilling to cooperate and help me towrite an accurate article.

The nature of medical school oftenallows students to disregard the valueof polished communication skills. Inorder to build an understanding of thehighly technical scientific principlesapplied in the medical field, the med-ical school curriculum necessitates afast paced teaching and learning envi-ronment. Students must commit mas-sive data banks of interdisciplinary sci-entific and clinical information to mem-ory and take standardized board examsto prove their knowledge. To add to

the stress and importance of learningthe material, a low score can often limita student’s career options followingmedical school. Thus, most of the timespent preparing to be a doctor centersaround building a strong scientificfoundation. Even though making clini-cal decisions requires a masteredunderstanding of this scientific materi-al, doctors cannot lose sight of the factthat treating the human spirit requires

the skills of an artist.Loyola understands the value of

human connections in the medicalprofession and balances their medicalcurriculum with classes which focus ontreating the whole patient. According toan article from the Journal of GeneralInternal Medicine by Dr. Mack Lipkin,Jr., a patient’s diagnosis can be made bythe medical interview alone 80 percentof the time. Because a successful inter-view can be such a valuable asset in clin-ical medicine, we begin learning how tonavigate patient interviews during ourfirst year of medical school. We aretaught to consider each individualpatient’s circumstances beyond simplythe disease or its symptoms. We contin-ue to practice these skills frequently,which prepares us for seeing patients ona regular basis during our third year.

The ability to clearly articulate andcommunicate is indispensable whetherin the field of journalism or medicine.When writing for the newspaper, jour-nalists need to analyze all of the infor-mation obtained and present only theuseful and relevant parts in a logical,organized and straightforward article.Similarly, a clinician must consider all ofthe factors of a patient’s condition anddistill what was initially many looselyconnected statements into a clear clini-cal assessment and plan of treatment.When physicians combine scientificexpertise with the interviewing skills ofpertinent questioning and attentive lis-tening, they can then practice medicinein the ideal way. Like a journalistic inter-view, a medical interview requires ayearning for the truth tempered by arespect for human autonomy. ■

Francis DeMichele, former editor of theSaint Peter’s University Pauw Wow, is amedical student at Loyola UniversityChicago.

The Art of the

Medical Interview

By Francis DeMichele

26 Conversations

HOW TO WRITEABOUT CRIMEBy Mike Wilson

“Excuse me …” These two words remain the most difficult part of my

workday. Approaching complete strangers and asking themto answer questions — often, in crime reporting, on whathas suddenly become the worst day of their lives — nevergets easier. No improvement in technology, no iPhone app,no social network will change this eternal, analogpart of the job: sticking a notebook in your backpocket and a pen in your front and walking out ofthe door to talk to people.

The great ones I studied at Loyola University inNew Orleans made it look easy. Gay Talese’s “FrankSinatra Has a Cold,” which I first read at age 19, torethe roof off what I understood journalism to looklike, to be able to do, and it let in fresh air and color.It read like a novel, which I did not know wasallowed. The complete immersion into the life of asubject — to do this for a living? I was hooked.

To this day, I tell everyone to read “FrankSinatra Has a Cold.” I had dinner with Mr. Talese lastyear and struggled, star-struck, to explain the impactof the piece on my life. He cut me short, with ques-tions about my work. Always asking questions. Hecarries around strips of cardboard from the dry cleaner in hiscoat pocket, for taking notes. Always working, always look-ing for a story. You can’t teach curiosity, but you can teachhow the good writer channels curiosity into art.

In journalism classes at Loyola, we were assigned towrite profiles of one another, and as a reporter at the week-ly campus newspaper, The Maroon, I interviewed my fellowstudents about everything from sorority recruitment policiesto a car wreck down the block. But one assignment, on trav-el writing, required us to go to a neighborhood that weknew little or nothing about and get a feel for the place bywalking around and talking to people.

I borrowed a car and drove to an area called Mid-City,parked, got out, and froze. Now what? Whom do I approach,and what do I say? These were not fellow students withwhom I shared a lot in common. To this day, 20-plus years

later, I can still remember the people — a woman in line ina convenience store, a man on his front porch — who werekind enough to pause and chat with an earnest, self-con-scious stranger about the place where they lived.

It was an important day because it was uncomfortable.No one hiring college graduates for jobs in journalism islooking for someone to sit in an office, “using up Mr. (insertname of publisher)’s air conditioning,” as a former colleaguein Alabama liked to say.

At the New York Times, I’ve sought pedestrian wisdomand reaction to everything from an attempted car-bomb inTimes Square to an accumulation of slush in the streets. I’mstill self-conscious. It hasn’t gotten any easier, but I’ve gottenfaster. New Yorkers are far too accustomed to being

approached by strangerscarrying a petition to besigned, or shaking a cup ofloose change, or, yes, hold-ing a reporter’s notebook. Crime reporting can be veryuncomfortable. Interviewingthe relative of a murder vic-tim is something you don’tever get good at doing, butyou hope, you become lessbad at it. An editor at myfirst job threatened that ifshe ever heard a reporterask someone, “How did itmake you feel?” she’d firehim right there on the spot

with his pen in his hand. I never asked that question. I offer the honest truth: I never met the victim, and I’d

like to say something about him besides just the way hedied. The same approach holds for the family of the bad guy.My favorite crime journalism is David Simon’s “Homicide: AYear on the Killing Streets,” the fruit of a reporter’s frustra-tion with the emptiness of his routine daily stories about thisor that murder.

The journalism class with no classroom is no less impor-tant. Go Out and Interview People: 101. For some, it will bethe toughest part of the semester, and the most valuable.

Mike Wilson, a graduate of Loyola University New Orleansand former editor of the Loyola Maroon, is a regularSaturday morning New York Times columnist on crime.

HOW TO DO ITFour Jesuit Alumni Share their Experiences

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HOW TO WRITE

ABOUT TELEVISION

By Hank Stuever

When school groups and other visitors take the tour of theWashington Post newsroom, they often make a brief stopnear my dimly lit office in the corner of the Style section. Ihave some idea of what the guide says: See that man there?His job is to watch TV all day and then write what he thinksabout it. Can you imagine being paid to watch TV? The jobsounds cushier than it is, of course – and it still sounds trag-ic to my mother, who always begged me to shut the televi-sion off and go outside, play.

My first two decades as a journalist were spent in thenewspaper equivalent of a raucous and occasionally upset-ting playground, as a features writer who sought out peopleand stories that spoke to some theme of the human condi-tion. I followed a bride-to-be through the self-manufactureddrama of wedding planning. I followed a family of morti-cians who owned a discount funeral home in a strip mall. Itraced the story of one acoustic guitar back through its fiveowners, each of whom dreamed of mastering it and being acampfire troubadour – and never really did. I wrote aboutrock bands and Dairy Queens, dilapidated roller rinks anddead shopping malls. I covered two Miss America pageants,six Oscar nights, White House dinners, a space-shuttle crash,a Winter Olympics, the events of September 11th and theOklahoma City federal building bombing. I wrote about peo-ple who were mentally ill or just crazy in love. The point ofit all was to write about people as they are, to get at thedeeper truths we all sense in our everyday lives but cannever quite articulate.

It’s not the important journalistic work performed by mycolleagues up in the investigative department. I always didbetter on the margins of the news. What I did – what myJesuit-flavored education taught me to do – was listen topeople talk about their lives. Listen and then listen and thenlisten still. Listen to the citizens of a millennial era – a timewhen nobody seems to listen anymore.

We have a moral obligation to listen to one another butwe also have a moral obligation to ask questions, includingthe questions people would rather not answer. That was mymain takeaway while studying journalism at LoyolaUniversity in New Orleans. It’s about intellectual rigorapplied to everyday life. It’s about engaging the communityand having the courage to ask critical questions. Being a stu-dent journalist is no route to collegiate popularity, I learned;when I think back to time spent at the campus paper, I most-ly remember someone always being mad at the editors –

deans, Greek organizations, theater directors, my own pro-fessors. The questions we asked and the way we wrote was-n’t always perfect, but no one questioned our motives andour work more than we did. This, to me, has always beenthe point of it all, to think critically and actually criticize, toquestion authority even when they won’t answer, to enter adebate you might not win, and to write clearly about anevent or an idea – but most of all to question yourself.

There’s a lot of noise about popular culture now. Anyonecan dash off something about a TV show or a celebrity, andeveryone does. I became a TV critic a few years ago notbecause it looked easy, but because it looked difficult andclamorous, and because it is another way that I can write aboutsociety and culture in the present tense. The difference now isthat I’m looking at it through the distorted prism of our flat-screens and iPads. I watch and listen to its content and theninterrogate it, to a degree, with intellectual passion.

A few days ago, I reviewed a new reality show on NBCthat features C-list celebrities and military special-ops veter-ans playing war games in quasi-combat scenarios. All in fun,you see. One of the military men, a Navy SEAL sharpshoot-er, boasted that he had 160 confirmed kills. His co-starsseemed thrilled to hear that. Once the show aired, variousanti-war groups and a handful of winners of the Nobel peaceprize voiced their disgust to the network.

But the TV critic is the one who gets to see it first. That’smy job as a lifelong student of our mass-media culture. Listenclosely and ask why.

Hank Stuever (Loyola University/New Orleans, B.A.,’90) hasworked as a reporter at newspapers in New Mexico, Texas,and, for the last 13 years, at The Washington Post. He is theauthor of Off Ramp a collection of essays and articles aboutmodern American life, and Tinsel a nonfiction book aboutthe emotional and economic impact of Christmas. This fallhe taught at the University of Montana School of Journalismas the 2012 T. Anthony Poliner Professor.

28 Conversations

HOW TO COVER

THE WORLD

By Loretta Tofani

Fordham University’s newspaper, The Ram, was my basefrom 1971 to 1975. The various jobs I practiced there as astudent — reporter, features editor, editor-in-chief — gaveme many of the skills I have used as a journalist during thelast 35 years.

I worked as a staff writer for The Washington Post fornine years, and for The Philadelphia Inquirer for14 years. Currently I’m a free-lance writer.

At The Washington Post, I began feeling somefrustration. I kept seeing types of stories that didnot seem to “fit” into newspapers. They were sto-ries about social problems overlooked by govern-ment. These types of stories did not seem particu-larly interesting to my colleagues. Maybe I hadjudgment problems? I had my share of self-doubt.

I persevered. In 1983 I won a Pulitzer Prizefor local specialized (investigative) reporting for aseries called “Rape In The County Jail: PrinceGeorge’s Hidden Horror.” (Receiving the prizehelped me get over my doubt.) The series docu-mented that rapes were occurring routinely in acounty jail. The victims were innocent, awaitingtrial on misdemeanors; they were in jail becausethey did not have enough money for bond. Therapists were convicted armed robbers and murder-ers. As a result of the series the jail changed itspolicies, separating violent from non-violentinmates. Fewer rapes occurred.

I became aware of the jail rapes while cover-ing the courthouse beat. I did not know all the necessarytechniques to report and write such a story, but that turnedout not to be a barrier. I learned techniques as I neededthem. (Need jail medical records? Visit the jail medical tech-nicians at their homes at night, for many nights.)

What was important at the time was that I had a socialconscience. All those years in Catholic grammar school,Catholic high school, and Fordham College had given me amoral compass.

My editor wasn’t interested in stories about men gettingraped in jail. I might have deferred to him. But my sense ofoutrage was high. And I could still hear the words of myjournalism professor from Fordham, Ray Schroth, S.J. “A jour-nalist’s job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfort-able.” So I reported the rape story anyway. I did the work

during nine months, during my off-hours and while report-ing other stories my editor did want.

There was something else guiding me as well: AtFordham, in a course called Books That Changed America, Ihad read the investigative journalism of Lincoln Steffens,Upton Sinclair and Rachel Carson. Journalism, I knew, couldprompt government officials to correct policies that hurt peo-ple. I thought that was a worthy goal. At various times, I pur-sued that goal.

In the 1990s, I was based in China as a staff writer forThe Philadelphia Inquirer. My husband, John White, M.D.,and infant daughter, Nicole, now 20, shared my Beijingapartment. I wrote many hundreds of stories from China, aswell as from Japan, North and South Korea, Myanmar,Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, India and Nepal. Most of my

work was more similar to afirefighter’s (chase the crisis)and an air traffic controller’s(requiring logistics skills)than to a journalist’s with asocial activist heart.Nevertheless, I am proud ofmy series on Tibetans whowere arrested and tortured inprison by Chinese authoritiesfor their loyalty to the DalaiLama. To report part of theseries, I covertly scrambledwith fleeing Tibetansthrough the Himalayas atnight. One night, at 18,000feet, I broke my leg. Myfriends called my stories“Tibet Your Life.”

More recently, in 2007, Ireported and wrote a seriescalled “American Imports,Chinese Deaths” that was

published in The Salt Lake Tribune. The series won severalnational awards, but it had little impact. (It can be read athttp://extras.sltrib.com/china.) Chinese factory workers stillare getting fatal occupational diseases and limb amputationswhile making products for America.

I have learned that journalism has impact in democra-cies, not in totalitarian regimes. Although some of my inves-tigative stories – particularly in China — have not broughtabout positive change, I feel privileged as a journalist to bea witness. And for that I am grateful to my Catholic schooleducation and my professors at Fordham.

Loretta Tofani now lives in Idaho. A newspaper series shedidn’t mention is her long investigative piece on how AIDSis communicated all over Africa.

Conversations 29

It’s 6 p.m.,deadlines arefast approach-ing, and anotherrough-and-tum-ble day insidethe StarTribune news-room inMinneapolis isreaching its

usual climax —- with stories suddenly emerging, othersfalling apart.

The website needs a fresh jolt of news, and the frontpage we’re building is still hostage to a display photo thatshould arrive any minute. Unless it doesn’t.

Tick, tick, tick.Exactly as I predicted when I walked into the office nine

hours earlier.In newspaper journalism, as an editor presiding over the

daily news, you learn to expect the unexpected, no matterhow meticulously you plan. You learn that the credibility ofthe stories you publish, and thus your credibility as an insti-tution, pivots on even the smallest of facts — so you have tobe very careful, even in haste. And in this journalistic era,even on constant deadline, you learn that you always haveto be innovating and adapting to our dynamic new digitalworld. But, just as importantly, you have to do that withoutever forsaking the principles or priorities that define the bestnewspapers and the role they still must play as fearlesswatchdogs of the public interest.

It’s quite an adventure. No two days are alike. And it’sgood for the soul —- you’re rooting out the full truth ofissues that really matter in the lives of a community.

So, how do you prepare for life editing a daily newspa-per and website?

First and foremost, I’ll say something that you might findsurprising: Do not aspire to be an editor, at least for a while.The best editors usually have had sustained, successfulcareers as reporters. They’ve lived that work and all its chal-lenges and nuances — from learning how to cover manysubjects, to cultivating sources, digging for records, and mas-tering the craft of reporting and writing.

One of the most important aspects of an editor’s life is

strong news judgment. You need it every day. The best wayto acquire it is on the front lines of the profession. Throughthe trials of your own stories, you learn over time aboutwhat’s most worth reporting and what’s mere spin, you getthick skin and learn humility, and you discover that you real-ly can be both fair-minded and relentless pursuing stories thepublic needs to know.

Good editing also demands an unflinching commitment toethics. That must be part of your daily DNA. Anyone aspiringto be a newspaper editor, or teaching students how to be edi-tors, ought to spend a lot of time scrutinizing seminal journal-ism cases in which editors either showed moral courage andupheld high ethical standards — or failed to do so.

Another necessity: Know your history. And not just journal-ism history, although that’s essential, too. As an editor, super-vising coverage of vital subjects such as politics and govern-ment, or education and poverty, you need to grasp howthey’ve evolved not just recently but over decades or more.Understanding the long arc of stories allows you to coach yourreporters to think and write with depth and sophistication.

Lastly, no editor really succeeds without understandinggood writing. It’s the lifeblood of our work. On my office wall,I have a quote from an old New York newspaper editor: “Ifyou don’t hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with yourfirst sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.”

Editors can have reporting experience, high ethical stan-dards and good news judgment, but they won’t have muchimpact unless they can also bring the daily work of a news-paper to life with writing that has authority, clarity or emo-tional force.

Too many newspaper stories are listless, dull or dense -— and the pressure of daily deadline is not a good excusefor tolerating it.

Mediocre writing puts the vital mission of what we do asjournalists in peril: If the writing is not compelling to read-ers, what’s the point?

A good editor has to insist on good writing. But thatcause is doomed, especially amid the swirl of daily dead-lines, unless anyone aspiring to be an editor studies the bestwork in journalism, reads great books, and makes sure he orshe knows first-hand the joys and rigors of the craft.

A graduate of Loyola New Orleans, Rene Sanchez is managing editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

THE MANAGING

EDITOR’S JOB

By Rene Sanchez

30 Conversations

The Jesuit tradition of teaching students “perfect elo-quence” developed during an era when printed texts— and the thought-patterns they fostered — domi-nated Western culture. As Walter Ong, S.J., oncepointed out, such communication is linear and based

on propositions that can be verified by facts and subjected tologic. But in his classic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985),Neil Postman made clear that we no longer live in such a text-based world. What he wrote about television during the 1980sis equally true about the Internet today: they are non-linear andnon-hierarchical media whose contents appeal more to aesthet-ics and emotion than to logic or facts.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration ofIndependence, he felt compelled to enumerate the abusesKing George III had imposed on his American colonies(things that could be verified by factual events), whereas TeaParty activists protested “Obamacare” in 2009 with signscomparing the President to Hitler. What the PatientProtection and Affordable Care Act had in common with theFinal Solution wasn’t very clear, but equating PresidentObama with the German dictator was a rhetorical appeal tothe emotional gut, and in our day and age, such tactics canbe very persuasive.

While fluency with words and grammar is essential for“perfect eloquence” in speeches or printed texts, what kindof mastery is necessary to communicate effectively in theaudio/visual media that dominate our culture and which forall intents and purposes, ARE our culture? At FairfieldUniversity, that’s what we teach in our film, television, andmedia arts program. While our major is relatively young withabout 100 students, our curriculum requires a dozen coursesthat give equal emphasis to hands-on media production aswell as historical and theoretical analysis of film or television“texts.” The very first course introduces students to aestheticconcepts like space, rhythm, or color. For example, theylearn that images composed primarily of reds or yellows areconsidered “warm,” with all the literal and symbolic mean-ings associated with that term, and that opposite connota-tions can be suggested using shades of blue.

Our “Lights, Camera, Audio” course not only immersesstudents in how to use technical equipment, but in how tocreatively wield those tools to convey meaning. For exam-ple, they learn that aiming a camera at people from belowtheir eye-level can suggest that they are heroic or powerful,but that aiming lights at them from the same position canmake them seem corrupt or sinister. Likewise, we teach themthat a constantly gliding camera can convey a sense of

dynamism and energy, whereas symmetrical compositionsshot from a tripod can connote stability and order.

In our film and TV editing course they learn about the“Kuleshov Effect,” in which individual shots of film have nofixed meanings on their own, but rely instead on their juxta-position before or after other shots. We show students howalternating sequences of shots (called “parallel editing” or“cross-cutting”) suggest that two or more lines of action areoccurring at the same time in different locations, and howsteadily decreasing the amount of time that shots are on thescreen will quicken the pace of a scene — and the heart rateof audience members.

Our history and analysis courses sensitize students todepictions of race, gender or class, and how those depictionscan influence their self-images and aspirations in the world.For example, after watching the “Poor Unfortunate Souls”

scene from The LittleMermaid in our “Films ofthe 1980s” course, studentsare surprised to discoverthat a beloved cartoonheroine actually chooses tolose her voice and changeher body (for legs, no less)

in order to get the man of her dreams. Ultimately, the courses in our program at Fairfield strive

to educate our students in “perfect eloquence” as storytellers.In our film studies, screenwriting, or senior capstone courses,we constantly ask them, “Does this story perpetuate racial orgender stereotypes, or undermine them?” “How does itexplore the human condition or what it means to live anauthentically human life?” “Does it shed light on issues thathelp to promote social justice?” When students graduate fromour program, we not only want them to discover their creativevoices and to find jobs in the film or television industries. Wewant them to think about how they can use their technicalskills and media savvy to help make the world a more just andhumane place.

Of course, our program at Fairfield is only one of sever-al Jesuit colleges or universities across the country that teachfilm and television production and/or media studies.Together, we are all doing our part to adapt the tradition ofeloquentia perfecta to our post-textual, audio/visual age. ■

Mark P. Scalese, S.J., is a professor of visual and perform-ing arts at Fairfield University.

“Eloquent” Film and TV

How to Quicken a Heart RateBy Mark P. Scalese, S.J.

We educate our students asstorytellers

Conversations 31

As early Jesuits traveled across Europe,Asia, and the Americas, they carried notonly their faith and their mission butalso their era’s newest medium: print. Apowerful and mutually sustaining mix,conviction inspired calling, callinginspired print, print inspired conviction,and so on. Jesuit education developed

within this cycle, and lessons in eloquentia perfectahelped lay and Jesuit students participate. At the out-set, when rhetoric was taught alongside humanitiesand grammar, studying classical speeches and stylemeant integrating orality with scribal and print litera-cies. Today, instruction in eloquentia perfecta is con-centrated in (though not limited to) first-year compo-sition, English, and writing and communication curric-ula, where it involves a range of media. As a result, anew version of eloquentia perfecta is emerging: whatwe call EP 2.0. Still dedicated to communicating withand for others, EP 2.0 enables students to make good,ethical and effective media choices while learning touse media well.

Legacy

As teachers of EP 2.0 at Jesuit institutions, we areinheritors of a significant legacy: consistently early,yet careful and critical adoption of new media forpedagogical purposes. As John W. O’Malley remindsus in The First Jesuits (1993), “[A]t least some Jesuitsconsidered publication incompatible with theirvocation,” while Ignatius and others took great careto demonstrate how print might “aid Jesuits in theirministry.” The Ratio studiorium (1599) is an excel-lent example. The product of thirty years’ collabora-tion, written correspondence, and print technology,the Ratio represents the same balance of innovation

From Class to CommunityEP 2.0 and the New Media Legacy

of Jesuit Education

By Allen Brizee and Jenn Fishman

Allen Brizee is assistant professor of writing in thedepartment of writing at Loyola UniversityMaryland. Jenn Fishman is assistant professor ofrhetoric and composition in the English departmentat Marquette University.

32 Conversations

and consideration we seek as we incorporate availablemedia into our pedagogy.

Certainly now the need for EP 2.0 instruction isgreater than ever before. As Fr. Adolfo Nicholás warns in“Depth, Universality, and Learned Ministry: Challengesto Jesuit Higher Education Today” (2010), new mediacan short-circuit the work of serious critical thinking andcommunication (2). However, when new media are usedwell, Fr. Nicholás explains, they can help us “find creativeways of promoting depth of thought and imagination,”and “maximize…new possibilities of communication andcooperation.” Online, JesuitNet and AJCU members’ digi-tal repositories support these objectives, and the JesuitConference has even developed a mobile app(http://tinyurl.com/bqs3kav). In turn, when we integratethese resources into instruction, we have similar goals.

Classroom

For Jenn, teaching advanced composition means assign-ing new media “readings” and research, as well as invit-ing students to make new media texts in response toproblems they want to address. When, for example, oneclass declared Stuart Selber’s monograph Multiliteraciesfor a Digital Age (2004) “outdated,” she challenged themto change it—and they did. Working in small groups, herstudents transformed the book into a blog populatedwith their own examples. They also expanded Selber’stext, adding a section on new media and reflection.

This assignment challenged students to engage EP 2.0fully, from choosing a medium to drafting and editing theirarguments and related computer code. Since many stu-dents initially equated digital literacy with knowingMicrosoft Office, their learning curve was steep, and theytook Selber’s ideas seriously even while they took over hiswriting. Working together, they gained new functional lit-eracy, which Selber associates with technical knowledge.They also refined their critical literacy by analyzing peers’and professionals’ multimedia writing, and they extendedtheir rhetorical literacy by producing a group blog(http://multiliteraciesremix.wordpress.com/). For the final,students designed individual capstone projects, whichinvited—and challenged—them to celebrate their growingmastery of EP 2.0. Matching argument and audience tomedium, their projects ranged from an academic essayabout video games to research-based resource blogsdesigned for a variety of audiences.

Community

For Allen, EP 2.0 means helping students learn aboutrhetoric, social justice, and new media in and beyondthe classroom. For many of his courses, he assigns serv-ice-learning projects that pair students with economical-ly challenged communities near Loyola UniversityMaryland’s Baltimore campus. As students work withcommunity partners to help them develop onlineresources, they experience how EP 2.0 enacts the Jesuitnew media legacy. Students’ work in the communitybegins in the classroom, where they read excerpts fromIsocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, and St. Augustine to under-stand historical connections between eloquence andcivic participation. Students also read service-learningscholarship and articles on Baltimore and websitedesign, all in preparation to meet—and exceed—com-munity partners’ needs for capacity-building civic rheto-ric. As representatives from one service partner, theRichnor Springs Neighborhood Association (RSNA), putit: “We need a website that helps us organize, communi-cate, and grow.” Richnor Springs works with Loyola’sYork Road Initiative to provide such resources, includinginformation about local meetings, schools, bus routes,and voting locations.

Contemporary life requires active citizens to be com-petent and confident, principled and powerful commu-nicators in print and electronic formats. The conversa-tion on how to do all these things well continues. ■

Marquette University.

Conversations 33

Universities are faced with the chal-lenges posed by the highly mediatedculture embraced by our students andthe need to adapt older pedagogicalmodels to our new globally net-worked society. Some Jesuit institu-tions, including Regis University, areadapting the classical concept of elo-

quentia perfecta during students’ initial exposure tocollegiate life.

First-year experience programs are typicallydesigned to expose freshman to the kinds of writingand speaking skills needed to synthesize ideas anddemonstrate mastery of course content. The discipli-nary separation between English and communicationmeans that the inter-connected processes of writingand speaking are often presented to students as sep-arate acts. Students learn composition and speech asgrounded in distinct academic areas, taught in com-pletely different courses. Highlighting the differences

between these skills does a disservice to studentsgiven the increased reliance on digital media includ-ing videos, websites, blogs, and social media whichseamlessly combine writing and speaking. The con-cept of eloquentia perfecta can be used as a found-ing principle for first-year experience programs sinceit enables faculty to address the traditional isolationof these two fields, ultimately giving students moretools to succeed in a digital world.

By promoting “perfect eloquence” as a founda-tional first-year principle, Jesuit institutions can cultivatestudents’ practice of graceful communication, and bindthe act of communicating to a larger calling: civicengagement and the common good. Eloquentia perfec-ta shifts the classroom focus from students’ proficiencyin disciplinary content (i.e., English and communica-

Morgan T. Reitmeyer is writing director and SusanA. Sci is a rhetoric teacher at Regis University.

How To TalkEthicallyCultivating the Digital Citizen through Eloquentia Perfecta

By Morgan T. Reitmeyer and Susan A. Sci

34 Conversations

tion) for solely scholarly purposes to a commitmenttowards social justice. The tradition of eloquentia perfectawas incorporated to help students develop the compositionand speaking skills needed to addresspolitical, social, and cultural issues in auniquely ethical manner – focusing onthe needs of the community over thedesires of the self.

When students can imagine amore “just society,” and learn how toeloquently describe their vision inwriting and speech, it helps themcreate shared meaning with othersregarding the type of communitythey collectively want to live in. Thevast array of digital media our students use every daycan be invaluable for reaching a wide, diverse audience.What being a “just society” means increasingly is debat-ed and negotiated in virtual media.

In first-year experience programs that focus on elo-

quentia perfecta as a foundation for composition andspeech, faculty members can reframe students’ relation-ship to digital media as a civic platform on which they canpublicly share their written and spoken work. There is aninherently civic quality to our interactive, digital, and net-worked culture. News is no longer something to simplyconsume; rather it is something to which we are com-pelled to respond within a wide array of media. We cancomment, blog, dig, pin, tweet, or create memes and videoabout current events, social issues, and political policy.

Our digital culture is a space in which private indi-viduals can have a public voice, in text and video, asthey intentionally share in conversation with a commu-nity. Current technological advances allow audiences tobe engaged as digital citizens, urging individuals to joinin public discourse. Eloquentia perfecta as a guidingprinciple for first year experience programs provides avibrant framework for students as digital citizens andoffers them a more nuanced understanding of speakingand composing as inter-connected, complex, appliedacts. As students engage audience members outside ofthe classroom on real-world issues, they begin to under-stand that although the principles of good communica-tion may be considered universal, the application ofthem is concertedly contextual.

For example, students participating in a forum onImmigrationVoice.org regarding H.R. 3012, the Fairnessfor High-Skilled Immigrants Act, are encouraged to cul-tivate analysis—the ability to understand a community’scompeting values affecting this legislation—as well asgood writing skills. Since the forum will abjure memberswho engage poorly, students must be knowledgeable,ethical, and eloquent to remain in the dialogue. When afaculty member has students create and post video blogsabout immigration to YouTube, he/she is encouraging avery public form of oral argument. Students mustresearch, write, edit, practice, and deliver their claims,

and constructively respond tofeedback. These videos may beposted and reposted by viewers,which is an added incentive forstudents to make sure their con-tent is well constructed andprovocative. Jesuit universities, like Fordham,

Loyola Marymount, and Regis, areusing the concept of eloquentiaperfecta to bring the acts of writ-ing and speaking in concert. They

invite increasingly complex civil spaces of communicationinto the first-year classroom. Ultimately, through the prin-ciples of eloquentia perfecta our 21st century students willbecome active digital citizens and continue their criticalengagement well beyond their collegiate careers. ■

We can blog, dig, pin,

tweet, or create

memes and videos

about current events

for justice.

Regis University.

Conversations 35

Book Review

The goal of RobertB. Lawton, LoyolaM a r y m o u n tUniversity’s four-teenth president(2000-2010), wasnothing less thanmaking it the pre-

mier Catholic university of the West.In commissioning Kevin Starr to writethe history of Loyola Marymount’sfirst century, Lawton indicated theintellectual level to which he wasaspiring. With his Jesuit educationalbackground and as the author of theaward-winning volumes on the histo-ry of California, Starr was ideally qual-ified to tell the story.

Starr has not disappointed. Withaccess to administrative recordsthrough the 1990s, delvings into uni-versity and city news publications,and extensive interviews with across-section of the LoyolaMarymount community, Starr hasproduced an outstanding institution-al history. Like Fordham, Holy Cross,and Loyola of Baltimore, LoyolaMarymount had roots that predated

the Society of Jesus. At the conclu-sion of the Civil War, theCongregation of the Mission, theVincentians, had begun the firstCatholic college in southernCalifornia. The earthquake of 1906,which had leveled St. IgnatiusCollege and badly damaged SantaClara, had left St. Vincent’s as theleading Catholic institution in thestate. The Bishop of Los Angeles, aformer rector of the CatholicUniversity of America, was pressur-ing the Vincentians to acquire a newcampus and develop a comprehen-sive Catholic university. TheVincentians, for their part, weigheddown by debts had little interest inrelocating, much less expandingtheir operation. When the Jesuitsexpressed an interest in movingSanta Clara to Los Angeles, theVincentians used it as an excuse toshut down St. Vincent’s and return totheir original apostolate of service tothe poor. The Jesuits kept the name“St. Vincent’s College,” but, proddedby the bishop, opened their schoolin September of 1911 on a remote

site in the western section of the city.Initially they confined their academ-ic program to the high school level,with college offerings to come at someundetermined date.

R. Emmet Curran is a former professor of history at GeorgetownUniversity and author of the three-volume Georgetown history.

The Road to Greatness

Kevin Starr, Loyola Marymount University,1911-2011: A Centennial History.

Los Angeles: The President and Trustees of Loyola Marymount University, 2011.

By R. Emmett Curran

36 Conversations

Book Review

The Jesuit St. Vincent’s had arather peripatetic existence duringits first two decades, with a tempo-rary location in Hollywood before alonger stay, beginning in 1917, onPico Heights, midway betweendowntown and the western por-tions of the city. In 1918 the schoolacquired a new name, LoyolaCollege of Los Angeles. It awardedits first degrees to six graduates inJune of that year. Two years later, alaw school opened on the formerVincentian property on GrandAvenue and bore the Vincentianname, as a gesture to older alumni.

SullivanUntil the legal separation of thehigh school from the college in1926, the high school dominatedthe enterprise, including theteams which included both prepstudents and collegians. In the fallof 1927 the Jesuits welcomed theoffer of Harry Culver of one hun-dred acres on the western edge ofthe city, part of a remote mesathat Culver was attempting todevelop. The president of Loyola,Joseph Sullivan, envisioned agrand Tudor Gothic campus atDel Rey that would eventually

contain 10,000 students (this at atime when no Jesuit school hadclose to half that number) andthirty structures, including aGreek amphitheater and an athlet-ic bowl seating sixty thousand. Tofund this Sullivan established theLoyola University Building FundCampaign. Sullivan tended towardsthe grandiose. For the ground-breaking the president precededthe actual event with a PontificalMass at the Hollywood Bowl. Tocoach the fledgling football team,Sullivan offered the already leg-endary Knute Rockne $10,000(Rockne graciously declined).

The move to Del Rey enabledLoyola to accommodate boardingstudents among a population thatexceeded four hundred before theGreat Depression cut enrollmentand brought fund-raising and con-struction to a halt. By the middleof the 1930s the school was insuch dire financial shape that offi-cials considered opening part ofthe campus to exploratory drillingin a desperate attempt to catchlightning in a bottle. The bishopthought they should return totheir former home in the city.Loyola resisted and managed not

merely to survive but to increaseenrollment that, by 1939, wasapproaching five hundred. Thefaculty was beginning to do origi-nal research. The library surpassedthe 30,000 mark in its holdings.Student culture, in the form ofintercollegiate sports (football, bas-ketball, and hockey) and otherextracurricular activities (band, dra-matics, radio), flourished.

By theend of World War II more than1700 Loyolans, including alumni,would be on active duty, includ-ing ten Jesuit chaplains. For ayear, a special Army training pro-gram provided students and fund-

Conversations 37

Book Review

ing that had helped the schoolsurvive. With war’s end, the GIBill led to an enrollment fourtimes what it had been on the eveof Pearl Harbor. The Federal gov-ernment not only paid GIs’ tuitionbut accounted for most of thecampus construction as well.Over the next six decades Loyolawould benefit greatly from fivepresidents who shaped its destinyfor the good, a consistency ofacademic leadership that few, ifany institutions of higher learn-ing, Catholic or not, could match.

CasassaCharles Casassa, in his twentyyears, like Jesuit counterparts atBoston College, Georgetown, andSt. Louis, led his school into themodern world of higher educa-tion through his making planningan integral part of university gover-nance, involving the institution inthe larger academic community,initiating graduate education, andintroducing targeted fund-raising.His introduction in 1942 of“Manifesto: The Loyola Man,Citizen of Two Worlds,” predatedby at least a generation the missionstatements which became sine qua

non in the late twentieth century.Casassa also was responsible forco-education at Loyola when henegotiated in 1968, with SisterRaymunde McKay, an eventualmerger with Marymount College.

MerrifieldCasassa’s successor, Donald P.Merrifield, brought an MIT Ph.D.in physics, that would preparehim not only to steer the institu-tion through the social tumult ofthe Sixties and seventies, but alsoto lead an increasingly diverseLoyola Marymount community atthe student, faculty, and adminis-trative levels. Under Merrifield,governance radically changed asthe Jesuit community was legallyseparated from the university,and the board of directorsbecame an autonomous bodywith a lay majority.

Loughran, O’Malley, andLawton

Three gifted Jesuits followedMerrifield over the next threedecades. James Loughran wasbrought in from the East Coast toinculcate the academic culturethat had distinguished Jesuit insti-

tutions like Fordham andGeorgetown. Loughran articulat-ed institutional goals, raised facul-ty standards (decreased teachingloads, sabbaticals, summerresearch grants, etc.), andacquired property for expansion.Thomas Patrick O’Malley, withChancellor Merrifield as pointman, vigorously pursued thefund-raising, which his predeces-sor eschewed to realize, andachieved a record of nearly $145million within three years. FinallyRobert B. Lawton, president dur-ing the first decade of the newcentury, specialized in buildingcommunity relations in the broad-est sense, from the intramurallevel to the larger urban worldbeyond the walls. On his watchhe also managed to steer LMU’sship against the academic cur-rents by increasing the endow-ment (to $355 million), increasingthe number of tenured andtenure-track faculty, and addingdoctoral education. By the timeLMU inaugurated its first lay pres-ident, David W. Burcham, in2010, it was well on its waytoward becoming the premierCatholic university of the West. ■

38 Conversations

This year, 2012, marks the centenary ofFr. Walter J. Ong, S.J., a scholarwhose work in literature, orality, andinteriority helped to shape his ownacademic discipline of English,influenced other disciplines as farafield as psychiatry and biblicalstudies, and served as foundations

for new approaches such as media ecology.Ong spent his career at Saint Louis University.

While studying philosophy there as a Jesuitscholastic from 1938 to 1941, he also completedan M.A. in English (on the sprung rhythm ofGerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry), directed by ayoung Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan called Ong’sattention to Perry Miller’s work on Peter Ramus,the 16th century French educational reformer.Under Miller at Harvard, Ong took up the study ofRamus. In his dissertation (published as Ramus: Methodand the Decay of Dialogue by Harvard University Pressin 1958), he demonstrates how Ramus’ use of the newishprinting press complemented Western thought’s visualbias and shifted thought patterns away from the moreoral dialogue of Greek rhetoric to the more visualmethod of Greek science. In a nice turn, McLuhan latermade use of Ong’s research to bolster his own mediastudies. As professor of English from 1954 to 1989, Onghimself continued to explore the interlocking roles of

orality and literacyin human thinking,with a trilogy ofbooks on the role ofthe word in its spo-ken, written, andtechnologized forms.

The essays col-lected in Language,Culture, and Identityprovide both a snapshotof and an introduction toOng’s thought throughkey themes of Ong’s workas they find homes in dif-ferent disciplines.

Thomas Zlatic uses thepairing of “in and out” todescribe Ong’s work—the

interior and the surface, the sounding word and theprinted page, the frontier, the interface. In trying to situ-ate him, Zlatic provides this summary:

Walter J. Ong resists classification. He had been, of

course, University Professor Emeritus of Humanities

Book Review

Paul Soukup, S.J., is a professor of communications atSanta Clara University.

A Hundred Years of Walter Ong

Sara van den Berg and Thomas M. Walsh(Eds.). Language, Culture, and Identity:

The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J. Hampton Press, Inc., 2011. 266 p. $65.00; (paper) $27.95.

By Paul Soukup. S.J.

and William E. Haren Professor

Emeritus of English and Professor

Emeritus of Humanities in

Psychiatry at Saint Louis University,

a Roman Catholic priest, a member

of the Society of Jesus, and one

of America’s most informed

spokespersons within the humani-

ties and media studies. However,

his twenty-two books and approxi-

mately 440 articles uniquely inter-

weave, among other disciplines, lit-

erary analysis, linguistics, psychol-

ogy and psychoanalysis, the history

of ideas, composition studies, phi-

losophy, phenomenology, theology,

communications studies, cultural

studies, noobiology, and media

ecology … (p. 7)

Zlatic highlights Ong’s interest in humanconsciousness and interiority, in thesounding forth of language, and in theways that humans have used tools to sup-plement their language.

Ong’s recognition of the separationof the printed word from living speechled him to an exploration of hermeneu-tics: one does not require interpretationin a live dialogue. Hermeneuticsrequires distance just as distancerequires hermeneutics. And so,hermeneutics begins in earnest withwriting. C. Jan Swearingen traces theinterplay between rhetoric, homiletics,and hermeneutics across the yearsbetween 1250 and 1750 (years to whichOng paid great attention in his historyof the changing fortunes of rhetoric).

Hermeneutics played a role earlieras oral biblical performances receivedwritten form. Werner Kelber uses Ong’sresearch on the relationship of oralityand literacy in proposing approachesto understanding the Gospels. Here,Professor Kelber provides a clearlyargued critique of the historical criticalparadigm in biblical studies as well as

of form criticism, based on more recentscholarship on orality. He notes ofOng’s contribution:

Ong himself … was strictly speaking

an expert in the literary and intellec-

tual history of the Renaissance, and

not a biblical scholar … Yet his work

is dotted with intriguing and often

profound insights into the Bible both

from the perspective of orality-litera-

cy studies (aural assimilation, tribal

memory, oral substratum, changing

sensoria, rhetoric, interiority, corpus-

cular epistemology, Bible reading

and divisiveness, textual criticism

and philology, etc.) and of theolo-

gy… Moreover, his intense concen-

tration on the “word” as speech

event and his rethinking of textuality

from the vantage point of orality has

given us a theoretical framework that

is highly suitable for a revitalization

and revision of assumptions, meth-

ods and practices that govern current

biblical scholarship.

Throughout the rest of his essayProfessor Kelber demonstrates theimportance of Ong’s insights in ten keyaspects of form criticism.

John Miles Foley, the late directorof the Center for Studies in OralTradition, credits Ong’s “emphasis onthe nature and relationship of commu-nication media” as central to noetics, orhow people think. Foley’s own work inoral performance in antiquity and inmore recent oral cultures built on what

Conversations 39

Book Review

Walter Ong, S.J., with a group of students taking turns looking at books during an event

for the Saint Louis University Classical Fraternity, 1955. (Photo courtesy of Saint Louis

University Libraries Special Collections).

40 Conversations

Ong began. Here Foley describes the Pathways Project (www.path-waysproject.org), a multimedia suiteof online resources to link oral per-formance with texts and to use infor-mation technology to shed light onhow humans organize their knowl-edge orally.

Othercontributors to the collection useOng’s work in developing their ownfields of endeavor, fields in whichOng had published. Catherine Snowlooks at literacy in young children, inthe light of governmental and educa-tional policy initiatives. Roy Schafertakes the reader into the world ofpsychoanalytic insight, making linksonce again to the realm ofhermeneutics. The distance the ana-lyst seeks to bridge lies not in media,but in the interior self. TodChambers recalls Ong’s essay, “TheWriter’s Audience Is Always aFiction,” as he examines the chal-lenge of bioethics. The ethicist writesfor an audience—but just whomakes up that audience? Walter Jostreturns to language, poetry, com-monplaces, and meaning, taking thereader from classical Roman tropesthrough the protomodernism ofEmily Dickinson to the high mod-ernism of Wallace Stevens. StephenCasmier extends Ong’s thoughtsbeyond the application of orality-lit-

eracy to African-American literatureand the realm of what Ong called the“sensorium.” “According to Ong,each sense perception brings the indi-vidual into contact with the world ina different way and thus has a differ-ent relationship to abstract principlesand the conceptualization of time,space, and the organization of knowl-edge.” In this place, Casmier locates adistinctive character of African-American literature.

Two essays situate Ong’sthought about the media and (com-munication) technology. Lance Strateranks Ong as “one of the three schol-ars who make up the core of mediaecology,” the study of media envi-ronments and their impact. Strateoffers a kind of intellectual history ofOng’s scholarship and role in mediastudy from the perspective of mediaecology. John J. Pauly attempts a dif-ferent kind of intellectual history.“My goal is to open Ong’s work toother kinds of scrutiny by placinghim in different company—not nec-essarily the company in which hewould have imagined himself orchosen to stand, but in relation to awider range of twentieth-centurythinkers on mass media.” For Paulythese include technologists and his-torians of technology, literary histori-ans, and linguists.

The book concludes with a 434-item bibliography of Ong’s writings,compiled by the late ProfessorThomas Walsh. The bibliography,drawing on the collected materials ofthe Ong Center archives at SaintLouis University forms a frameworkfor ongoing work.

This collection offers a look atthe range of Ong’s work. Few willtake to every path outlined in itschapters. But all should appreciatethe exceedingly fertile harvest grow-ing from Ong’s initial ideas. Havingso much in one volume makes theinitial exploration a bit easier. ■

Book Review

Above, Walter J. Ong, S.J., perusing books in

De Smet Hall, Saint Louis University, 1957.

(Photo courtesy of Saint Louis University

Libraries Special Collections).

Conversations 41

The narrative of Jesuithigher education crisplydetailed by Fr. Schrothin Conversations 41 is apervasive one, but it isat least as worrisomeas encouraging. Inmoderate caricature:

the triumphal story-line has the oldpious but academically underachievingand relatively unprofessional clericallords of the manor dethroned for thesake of a more democratic brave newworld of secular and universally recog-nized standards. And yet Schroth alsorealistically points to serious challenges,particularly those concerning theauthentic embodiment, ownership, andguidance of “the mission.”

But let us press this narrative. Wasit really crippled and benighted, thatold Jesuit system of education? I meanthe one that nurtured — even if it didnot immediately appreciate — Gerard

Manley Hopkins and Karl Rahner andHenri de Lubac and Pierre Teilhard deChardin and Michel de Certeau andJohn Courtney Murray and Walter Ongand Bernard Lonergan and countlessothers less celebrated. I find it hard tobelieve that the wide respect achievedby Jesuit educational institutions waslargely baseless. Rather it is easier tothink that the very idea of Jesuit educa-tion is already blurring into irrelevancy.

In an ethics textbook used by mymother, Gertrude Gentilich, at Loyola ofNew Orleans, I found some indicationsof what was being given in collegeclasses. A mid-term exam of March 9,1943, had twelve questions askingabout the following: the nature of inspi-ration; the non-contradiction of theBible and science; the canonicity ofBiblical books; apocryphal books; theHexapla of Origen; the Septuagint; theVulgate; the meaning of “gospel” and“synoptic”; what gives a book genuini-

ty, integrity, and historicity; how cangospels be proved genuine; and specif-ic interpretations of particular gospeltexts and phrases. And here are two testquestions from Philosophy 311 and onefrom Theodicy: 1. Prove: The proximateconstituent norm of morality is man’srational nature. 2. Explain the definitionof determinants of morality. Which arethe three determinants? Explain each. 3.Explain the definition of simple, meta-physical and physical simplicity. Hardlythe stuff of soft and fuzzy piety, this.

No doubt there was a range ofquality in the schools and teachers andcourses, but should we think that therewas something terribly second-rate andunacceptable about the whole system?What if we should hold the secular

How We Might Move OnFrom Here: A HopeResponse to “How We Got Here: A History” by

Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Conversations 41 [Spring 2012]

By Claude N. Pavur, S.J.

Claude N. Pavur, S.J., is in the department of modern and classicallanguages at Saint Louis University.

42 Conversations

standards and particulars to anequally hard review, especially nowthat we have a mountain of literaturecritiquing them? They are often notwithout the need for drasticimprovements. (See my “Re-Envisioning Classics as a LiberalArt,” available on the Web.) Whatare the judgments of the secularauthorities themselves? Harry Lewis,former dean of Harvard College,published in 2007 an indictment ofhis home institution (ExcellenceWithout Soul: How a GreatUniversity Forgot Education). In2008, former dean of Yale’s lawschool Anthony Kronman gave usEducation’s End: Why Our Collegesand Universities Have Given Up onthe Meaning of Life, pleading thatthe ethical-spiritual content of edu-cation not be sold out to specializa-tion and socio-political activism.Well, there you have it: Yale andHarvard saying that they have beenmissing the boat in a big way.Should we really rejoice over beingremade in their images?

No, we have to move on, tocome up with a better reformulationand synthesis. I am as sure of this asI am of the truth that is refracted inSchroth’s presentation, that is, the

fact that much of the old systemneeded revision and improvement.But semper reformanda goes foreveryone. And yes, secular normshave been a help. But they were anundeniably partial kind of help. Theycannot be the touchstone. Here is mythumbnail sketch of what an authen-tic Jesuit education demands:

1. Leaders who “get it.” Weneed the right kind of moral, admin-istrative, and executive oversight bythe right kind of people (i.e., pru-dent, well-informed, intelligent, andcommitted people who deeplyunderstand the documents, the tradi-tions, the ideas, the goals, the situa-tions, the needs of Jesuit education).They have to be able to be bothfaithful and creative, and they them-selves must be subject to some com-petent superior oversight.

2. Teachers who “get it.” Weneed teachers aware of the largerpurposes and vision of the educa-tion — particularly the formationalpurposes — teachers who are com-mitted to comply intelligently withauthentic leadership, fully cognizantof their own particular roles in theeducation, and skilled at the meth-ods for achieving those goals.

3. Ratio studiorum. We need

a standing order or plan of studiesthat cultivates in a living, disci-plined, yet not straight-jacketed way,proven, definite high-quality con-tent, at least for a substantial core.Organization and appropriation, ofwell-chosen material is paramount.Rampant choice and diversity aredecidedly not the leading values.The building of an intellectual-spiri-tual community requires shared aca-demic focal points. I am thinking of(a) the sine qua non works ofScripture, particularly the gospels; (b)classic works, especially those createdor adopted by the Judaeo-Christianintellectual tradition; and (c) recentworks of rich, wide-ranging, integra-tive synthesis, like Eagleton’s LiteraryTheory, Fukuyama’s The End ofHistory, McCloskey’s BourgeoisDignity, D’Souza’s What’s So GreatAbout Christianity, Beckwith’sDefending Life, and Polanyi’sPersonal Knowledge.

Without the cultivation of definitecontent, Jesuit and Catholic identitywill remain forever elusive. Such a listas the one just proposed does notmean that the curriculum is restrictedto those titles in a new air-tight ortho-doxy. It means only that certain high-quality materials have been responsi-bly selected as promising points ofdeparture for deeper and broaderunderstanding. So then, we have awork of renaissance and reformationahead of us. We can make friendswith the past, and we can use it innew ways to support that Christianhumanism that is “the greatest serviceto development” (Caritas in Veritate).Agreeing on these things, then, let usbegin our discussion. ■

Santa Clara

University.

Conversations 43

GonzagaUniversity

44 Conversations

Letters

Don’t Forget UCCE

To the Editor:

Ialways look forward to read-ing the latest edition ofConversations. The articles inthe magazine tend to be

thought provoking. I would like toadd to the article by John Savard,S.J., “The Heart Feels What theEyes See.” He briefly refers to postgraduate work: “…many do con-sider a year of post-graduate serv-ice with the Jesuit Volunteer Corpsor Teach for America.” There is nomention of the UCCE.

There are fifteen colleges/uni-versities that are members of theUniversity Consortium for CatholicEducation, of which five are Jesuit

(Boston College, Creighton, LoyolaChicago, Loyola Marymount, and St.Joseph’s)

The UCCE works to support,strengthen and sustain Catholiceducation. Each of the 15 memberuniversities hosts a teaching serv-ice corps whose members teach inprimarily under-resourced Catholicschools throughout the country.Participants of the programs makea two-year commitment to serve asfull –time teachers while living incommunity, developing profession-ally, and growing spiritually. Somesay a UCCE program is like takingthe Jesuit Volunteer Corps, Teachfor America, and Peace Corps andmixing them all together. If in thefuture JVC and TFA are mentionedas “post-grad service opportuni-

ties,” please consider mentioningthe UCCE programs as well. Moreinformation about the UCCE canbe obtained by the visiting theconsortium website: www.ucce-connect.com In addition, the staffhere at the PLACE Corps office(LMU’s UCCE program), would behappy to share program and con-sortium literature to anyone inter-ested in learning more about thevarious teaching service corpssponsored by the Jesuit institutionslisted above.

Respectfully Diana Murphy

Diana Murphy is PLACE CorpsDirector, Loyola MarymountUniversity

Right, Magis Catholic

Teacher Corps, Creighton

University. Areas of study

are secondary teaching,

leadership, and counsel-

ing, serving urban, rural,

and suburban areas as

well as American Indian

reservations.

Left, Vanessa Estrada PLACE

Corps Cohort 11, Loyola

Marymount University, is

teaching Kindergarten at St.

Athanasius School in Long

Beach CA,

MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL SEMINAR ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION

Laurie Ann Britt-Smith is an assistant professor in the English department at University of Detroit Mercy.

Lisa Sowle Cahill is a professor in the theology department at Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts.

Susanne E. Foster is an associate professor in the philosophy department at Marquette University,Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Patrick J. Howell, S.J., is chairman of the seminar and professor of pastoral theology and rector ofthe Jesuit community at Seattle University, Seattle, Washington.

Steven Mailloux is a professor of rhetoric in the English department at Loyola Marymount University,Los Angeles, California.

Diana Owen is associate professor in the department of communications, culture and technology atGeorgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Stephen C. Rowntree, S.J., secretary to the seminar, is in the philosophy department at LoyolaUniversity New Orleans, Louisiana.

Alison Russell is associate professor in the English department at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., editor, is also literary editor of America magazine.

Sherilyn G.F. Smith is an associate professor in the biology department at LeMoyne University.

William E. Stempsey, S.J., is professor of philosophy at The College of the Holy Cross, Worcester,Massachusetts.

HOW TO WRITE FOR CONVERSATIONS

The goal of the National Seminar on Jesuit HigherEducation and its publication of Conversations is tostrengthen the Jesuit identity of our 28 colleges anduniversities. First, each issue is written to stimulate thecampus dialogue — through departmental discussionsor faculty symposiums — on the pursuit of variousideals. Second, through our various departments —feature articles, forums, book reviews, reports, andTalking Back — we want to keep the conversationgoing to build on the progress we have made.

Our ten faculty members, representing various institu-tions and disciplines, visit three colleges and universi-ties a year and listen to groups of faculty and studentsin order to decide the themes for each issue. Althoughmost of the articles are commissioned, we welcomeunsolicited manuscripts. Ideally they should explorean idea that will generate discussion rather thandescribe a worthy project at an institution.

Writing Guidelines. Please keep the article to fewerthan 2000 words. DO NOT include footnotes.

Incorporate any references into the text. Don’t capitalize: chairman of the biology department,names of committees, or administrative titles unlessthe title precedes the name: President WoodrowWilson. We welcome photographs, fully captioned,preferably of action rather than posed shots. Send by CDcontaining digital images scanned at not less than 300 dpior by online download. Send the ms as a MicrosoftWORD attachment to ESchmidt@jesuits-chi.org.

Permission is granted to reprint articles fromConversations for any educational purpose, providedcredit is given. Archive issues are available at http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/

COMING UP Issue #44 (August 2013) On Fire at theFrontiers: the Commitment to Justice in Jesuit HigherEducation, we will collaborate with the CreightonConference on social justice, August 1-3.

A Note to Contributors

Georgetown UniversityWashington, DC, 1789

Saint Louis UniversitySaint Louis, 1818

Spring Hill CollegeMobile, 1830

Xavier UniversityCincinnati, 1831

Fordham UniversityNew York, 1841

College of the Holy CrossWorcester, 1843

Saint Joseph’s UniversityPhiladelphia, 1851

Santa Clara UniversitySanta Clara, 1851

Loyola University MarylandBaltimore, 1852

University of San FranciscoSan Francisco, 1855

Boston CollegeBoston, 1863

Canisius CollegeBuffalo, 1870

Loyola University ChicagoChicago, 1870

Saint Peter’s UniversityJersey City, 1872

University of Detroit MercyDetroit, 1877

Regis UniversityDenver, 1877

Creighton UniversityOmaha, 1878

Marquette UniversityMilwaukee, 1881

John Carroll UniversityCleveland, 1886

Gonzaga UniversitySpokane, 1887

University of ScrantonScranton, 1888

Seattle UniversitySeattle, 1891

Rockhurst UniversityKansas City, 1910

Loyola Marymount UniversityLos Angeles, 1911

Loyola University New OrleansNew Orleans, 1912

Fairfield UniversityFairfield, 1942

Le Moyne CollegeSyracuse, 1946

Wheeling Jesuit UniversityWheeling, 1954

Coming in August 2013: #44 On Fireat the Frontiers: the Commitment toJustice in Jesuit Higher Education.