Ignite: Teaching and Learning at Saint Louis University : SLU

Ignite: Teaching and Learning at Saint Louis University

What makes teaching and learning at Saint Louis University distinctive and transformative? At the heart of a SLU undergraduate education is the University Core.

This integrated educational experience invites both students and faculty to explore the ideas and questions that inspire them as learners and teachers. The Core begins with the Ignite First-Year Seminar. Ignite Seminars make visible for students the rich interplay of intellect and identity, wonder and certainty, rigor and play that characterizes academic inquiry rooted in the Ignatian ideal of care for the whole person (cura personalis).

In these small, discussion-based learning experiences, SLU faculty members’ own distinguished and diverse areas of expertise provide the lens through which first-year students practice the Ignatian learning process—an personal approach to learning rooted in context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation.

The Core is animated by four key values: Discovery, Integrity, Courage and Connection. By illuminating these values in a student’s first year, the Ignite Seminar begins a journey. Students are inspired to approach all future courses–both in the Core and in their majors–with this same spirit of curious, open inquiry.

SLU graduates pursue careers rooted in both their own personal interests and convictions and also in SLU’s mission: “the pursuit of truth for the greater glory of God and for the service of humanity."

About Ignatian Pedagogy

Ignatian pedagogy embodies five key teaching elements: context, experience, reflection, action and evaluation.

Context

Where are we learning? What contexts shape our classroom environments? What do students need to know about themselves, and what do professors need to know about their students, to begin learning together? Cura Personalis – care and concern for the whole person—invites us to be curious about and open to the life experiences of all class participants.

Experience

Teachers and students alike are invited to bring our whole persons into the process. Instructors design educational experiences that invite students to consider how prior experiences shape how we enter into the intellectual, moral, and emotional dimensions of the subject matter at hand.

Reflection

By pausing after a learning experience to reflect upon both what and how we learned, we amplify that learning experience. In reflection, we use memory, feeling, imagination and understanding to create meaning from what we learned; to create connections between experiences; and to consider how a learning experience will guide us as we engage with the world around us.

Action

After entering into teaching and learning from a place of rich context and meaningful reflection, we move beyond learning to action. How can we use newly acquired knowledge to imaginatively and compassionately act upon that knowledge with clarity and purpose?

Evaluation

Taking a step back from the learning process, we evaluate the extent to which classroom experiences, and the purposeful actions they inspire, help students develop their minds, hearts, and spirits as they pursue truth for the greater good of humanity.

Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm

Two students in masks sitting at a classroom table

St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, did not create the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP). But when the International Commission on the Apostolate of Jesuit Education published Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach in 1993, the Commission drew upon the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the lived experience of Jesuit education as reflected in the Ratio Studiorum, a way of studies that has shaped Jesuit education since the late 16th century.

The dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises is essentially that of relationship – the relationship between God and the retreatant and the relationship between the retreatant and the spiritual director. As schools emerged as a essential element of mission for the Jesuits, Ignatius and his companions drew upon their studies at the University of Paris that emphasized the classics of ancient literature, the study of Latin and Greek, philosophy and theology , grammar and rhetoric—all in service to the creation of eloquent, compelling and moral graduates capable of exceptional service to their cities, their leaders, and their church.

The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm distills all of this into a contemporary practice of Jesuit education. The IPP encourages a classroom of active engagement that builds upon experience as well as dreams and aspirations. Here at Saint Louis University, the IPP shapes and upholds Saint Louis University’s mission to “care for the whole person” – in mind, body and spirit – cura personalis.

— Fr. David Suwalsky, Vice President for SLU Mission and Identity

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Ignite: Teaching and Learning at Saint Louis University

Inside Core Classes

Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm