Concern about the future of work and workers raises important questions for Jesuit higher education. Are our institutions resisting or replicating the yawning inequalities that characterize work in the 2020s? Are we alleviating or perpetuating the precarity of our own essential workers? Are we preparing graduates to reform or profit from the trends that have made work less secure and rewarding for the many?

Jesuit universities are poised to take a leadership role in engaging fundamental questions of how artificial intelligence and machine learning should be developed. Where are we getting our data? What generated it, and what underlying biases are present? How do we really define “progress” and “success”? How does our work have meaning?

As human resources professionals reflect on the long and challenging two-and-a-half years wrought by the pandemic, what are some key lessons learned regarding employee mental health in the workplace?

Instead of asking how AI or any other technology will improve teaching and learning, we should first ask how we want to help learners become better people. Then, we can design technology-enhanced learning experiences that help people become their best selves intellectually, socially, and spiritually.

Despite the challenging contemporary context for Jesuit colleges and universities, how can our Ignatian-inspired institutions be both mission-driven and donor-centric?

Long before COVID, the balance of power at universities was shifting to bureaucrats with little or no understanding of the unique nature of the university enterprise. The way forward involves true joint governance and a reversal of exploitative higher education trends. Will Jesuit universities choose to walk the mission and not simply mouth the words? That remains to be seen.

The images in the Fall 2022 edition of Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education (No. 61) are the work of artists from across the AJCU network. We thought you would like to know a little bit more about the people behind the work.

What is the unique link between Jesuit education and chess? How have Jesuit-educated chess champions changed the game?

How might the Ignatian pedagogical formula undergirding Jesuit higher education help institutional leaders confront the complex challenges of this new post-Covid era?

When was the last time your institution’s mission statement was refreshed and/or rewritten? How intentional, collaborative, and transparent could/should the process be for such an endeavor?

Rev. Abby King-Kaiser, director of the Dorothy Day Center for Faith and Justice at Xavier University, reminds us that accompanying students as their vocations unfold is a long road, and we all need companions along the way.

With an inevitable decline in high school graduates expected to take hold in 2025-26, how might Jesuit institutions deploy more forward-thinking and inclusive strategies to cast a wider net to prospective students?

Current data suggest that we will encounter further surges of COVID-19, though the size and timing remain unclear. When the time comes that we are forced again to choose between our individual preferences and the needs of our community, how willing will we be to make the sacrifice?

Since the athletic and academic parts of our universities often appear to be separate universes, how might administrators, staff, and faculty at Jesuit educational institutions co-create more integrated structures, strategies, and practices to help student-athletes reflect on their embodied experiences at play in sport and other contexts?

With the final act of the climate crisis starting, what can Jesuit colleges and universities do to help recast the show, right now, behind the curtain, perhaps with BIPOC leaders and other less-centered voices, with women in charge, with powerful declarations of peace and possibility?

What role ought the Western canon play in a contemporary liberal arts education? How can Western authors speak to both white and BIPOC students alike?

How does your Jesuit institution of higher learning cultivate a mission-driven culture of companionship - of relationship rooted in accompaniment - through messaging, organizational socialization, systems, and other ways of proceeding?

What is institutional mission drift? What forms can it take in Catholic and Jesuit higher education? What are some possible corresponding remedies?