Chicago Province Jesuits give $2 Million Gift for Education of Jesuit Graduate Students at Loyola University
Monday, February 25, 2002

(L to R): Fr. John Libens, SJ, Provincial Richard J. Baumann, SJ, Fr. Michael Garanzini, SJ, Fr. Jack O’Callaghan, SJ.
Loyola World Story from February 13, 2002

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CHICAGO PROVINCE JESUITS

Provincial Richard J. Baumann, SJ, head of the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus, handed Loyola University’s president, Fr. Michael J. Garanzini, SJ, a $1,000,000 check at 5:00 PM on Tuesday December, 18. It was the first installment of a $2,000,000 gift to Loyola from the Chicago Province for the university’s philosophy and theology departments.

Fr. Richard H. McGurn, SJ, executive assistant to the provincial, said the Jesuits directed their $2,000,000 gift to Loyola in order to expand the Jesuit First Studies Program in which Jesuit scholastics and brothers do graduate studies in philosophy and theology. Loyola is one of only three universities nationwide where Jesuits in training complete their first studies, a three-year graduate program requiring two years of philosophy and a first year of theological studies. Loyola’s program currently serves 39 Jesuit graduate students who are beginning their formal studies for future ministry in the Church and, for most of them, ordination as priests.

The gift will also benefit Loyola’s philosophy and theology departments in their larger purpose of educating the overall student body in the best Jesuit tradition. This fall Loyola welcomed 1,425 incoming freshmen students, the largest freshman class since the school opened in 1870. The funds will be used to support a number of initiatives, such as the hiring of new faculty to strengthen the educational and formational values of the Jesuit First Studies Program, and supplementing academic enhancements of the program, e.g., seminars, lectures, and short-term visiting professors.

Fr. Daniel Hartnett, SJ, Loyola University professor of philosophy and academic director of the Jesuit First Studies Program, said, “This stage of Jesuit formation aims to develop certain ‘habits of the mind’ such as careful reading, critical understanding, and sound judgment, as well as certain ‘habits of the heart’ such as attention to one’s interiority, balance, and inner harmony. The ultimate goal is to take seriously what Christ said about loving God, neighbor, and self ‘with all of our hearts, with all of our minds, with all of our strength’.”

In addition to the funds contributed by the province, Loyola University’s Jesuit community, represented by rector, Fr. Jack O’Callaghan, SJ, will contribute the interest from its visiting professor fund, currently endowed at $2,000,000, to the philosophy and theology departments for five years. Fr. John Libens, SJ, superior of the Jesuit First Studies Program at Loyola, is responsible for the formation of the Jesuits in the First Studies Program.