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.
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
Creating a Network of Advocacy
This past July, two of the Ignatian Center's student associates, Marissa Ocampo and Yesenia Magdaleno-Solis attended the Ignatian Solidarity Network's 2019 Ignatian Justice Summit on Immigration. They connected with 25 other student-advocates and were all given tangible tools to work for immigration justice on their campuses. “Seeing what I can actually do, what action I can bring back to SCU, has been so powerful,” Ocampo shared. “I have a vision now for what action I want to take as an advocate in the future.”