The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education offers numerous leadership opportunities for students – Summer Donovan Fellowships, Immersion Coordinator positions, and Community Development Fellowships. Through these experience-broadening programs, students will be challenged to strengthen their leadership abilities, engage in vocational discernment, and deepen their understanding of social justice issues in order to deepen their education at SCU.
Arrupe Fellowship
The Arrupe Fellowship offers undergraduates a formation experience rooted in the Ignatian Center’s mission of creating men and women for others. Fellows deepen their understanding of solidarity and vocation through community engagement with organizations in underserved communities and bi-weekly formation gatherings in community-based learning and Catholic Social Thought.
Thriving Neighbors Fellowship
The Thriving Neighbors (TN) Community Fellowship is a paraprofessional community-based learning experience, which allows undergraduate students to obtain professional work experience while pursuing defined learning goals and objectives. Fellows are matched with a community partner for a full academic year, spending an average of eight to ten hours per week in the community.
Immersion Coordinators
Immersion Coordinators prepare and accompany students for a week long, immersive experience outside of the immediate Silicon Valley, during which they will help students explore both the lights and shadows, the beauty and unjust realities of a region through direct encounter with its inhabitants and those organizations working in solidarity with these people. After returning from immersion, Coordinators have the amazing privilege to further facilitate the students’ return in impacting their local community.
Jean Donovan Fellowship
The Jean Donovan Summer Fellowship (JDF) is named in honor of Jean Donovan, an American woman who lived, worked, and died in solidarity with the impoverished and oppressed of El Salvador in the 1980s. This Fellowship is designed to support undergraduate students who desire to deepen their understanding of social justice issues through a summer community-based learning experience of 6-8 weeks.
Ignatian Fellowship
The Ignatian Fellowship offers SCU undergraduates the opportunity to deepen their commitment to social justice through an entirely virtual community-based learning experience. Ignatian Fellows will receive funding to work with a non-profit of their choice. Think about it as an internship with enhanced reflection, community, and support!
Alpha Sigma Nu
Alpha Sigma Nu upholds the Jesuit values of academic excellence and service to the University and the community. Juniors and seniors who are in the top 15 percent of their class and have a demonstrated record of service and loyalty to the Jesuit ideals of education are eligible for membership.
Student Leadership - Article Highlights
Feeling Connected from a Distance
This Winter Quarter, Ignatian Fellow Afton Burrell '21 completed her fellowship working with A Step Ahead Foundation. Afton shares how the virtual aspect of her fellowship provided surprisingly intimate and direct connection with the community.
Practicing Gratitude & Finding Joy
As part of her fellowship working with the Northern California Innocence Project this past quarter, Alexis Takagi '22 led the creation of a podcast aimed at engaging the public with the organization's work of challenging wrongful convictions. One of her interviews was published on StoryCorps and aired on National Public Radio (NPR).
The Gospel According to Lazarus
Riley Scherr, 2019 Jean Donovan Fellow, spent part of his summer in San Jose, Costa Rica working in the medical field. While the experience was valuable for his pre-med studies, it is the lessons he learned in humility, generosity, and second chances that will contribute to his development as a person for others.
Reflections of a Self-Proclaimed Talker
Sri Ramesh, 2017 SCU graduate, finds herself in a place of reflection. It’s a surprising place to be, for this self-proclaimed “talker,” but it’s where she often lives since going on her first immersion trip the summer after her freshman year.