Resources, News, Events and Happenings related to the integration of DePaul’s Vincentian mission into the ongoing life and work of the university community.
Mission Monday
Photo Illustration by Jeff Carrion / DePaul University
Taking the Long View
What might the lessons of the past teach us about facing the hurdles of the present? Read More
Mission-Related Events and Happenings This Week
Are you a faculty or staff member who has a child attending DePaul as a student? This luncheon is for you, together with your student-child or just on your own. Join us to meet others who share a similar experience, and to hear words of wisdom from parent and DePaul colleague, Darryl Arrington, the event keynote speaker. Please share word of this event with others you know who are part of this unique community of DePaul colleagues!
Photo Illustration by Jeff Carrion / DePaul University
For the last several years, a group of dedicated managers has been meeting regularly to discuss how DePaul’s Vincentian mission can guide and inform our management practice. A central objective of the committee has been to consider ways in which we might invite DePaul managers to come together on a regular basis to network, share resources, build community, and support one another. Such discussions bore fruit this past May with the inaugural Vincentian Managers’ Forum that was attended by approximately seventy DePaul managers. The committee is now in the process of planning further forums when DePaul mangers will be invited to meet with their peers once again to connect with one another and reflect on the relationship between their work and our common Vincentian mission.
Having served as a manager at DePaul for twenty-five years, it has often occurred to me that a foundational pillar of Vincentian management is to help new staff reflect on what it means to be part of an unfolding Vincentian legacy and to situate themselves within the arc of DePaul’s history. This is especially important whenever we are confronted with challenging chapters in our DePaul story, such as navigating the recent budget deficit. What might the lessons of the past teach us about facing the hurdles of the present?
In contemplating this question, I consulted DePaul’s own record of our rich history, which was written to commemorate our centennial.[1] This collection of essays traces DePaul’s journey from “the tiny parish-based St. Vincent’s College on the north side of Chicago”[2] through many fits and starts, to the culmination of DePaul as the large, multifaceted institution of higher learning that we would recognize today. Through my research, I was astonished that amid the many successes and times of triumph in our history, there were also certain defining moments of adversity that threatened our very survival. However, as I read about these times and learned more about their circumstances, it became apparent that no matter how daunting the path ahead may have seemed, DePaul always managed to traverse these treacherous waters. It may have meant treading water for a while, but usually the university has not only survived but flourished.
It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. When we do, echoes of old may tell us what we need to hear.
One such echo emanates from the early 1900s when DePaul was still in its infancy. During this period, “the financial panic of 1907 shrank both DePaul’s enrollment and its reputation among its creditors.”[3] As a result, by 1909, our “foundling university (now) found itself bankrupt.”[4] Clearly, this was not the end of the story though. During the next few years, DePaul managed to procure sufficient resources to continue its expansion and academic innovation. Indeed, just a decade later, the university was poised for solid growth.
Many years later, during the period of 1947–1948, another seeming insurmountable obstacle would arise when DePaul almost lost its accreditation as ruled by the North Central Association. This was due to a combination of factors such as DePaul’s “financial instability, its small number of faculty with doctoral degrees, its low per-student expenditures, and its inadequate library.”[5]
To rectify such gaps, a fundraising campaign was launched in 1952 which effectively bridged these shortfalls. Specifically, a significant number of PhD faculty were hired, and the library budget was increased. The crisis abated, and DePaul earned its accreditation.
I would hazard to guess that not many working here today would know of any of these struggles in our history. Yet such defining moments have helped shape contemporary DePaul. Indeed, the way in which DePaul weathered these crises and the innovation that brought us through these storms may have much to teach us still.
In reflecting on the peaks and valleys of our DePaul journey, it may serve us well to return to this small piece of wisdom that Vincent shared with his confreres long before the university’s naissance: “Never … be surprised at current difficulties, no more than at a passing breeze, because with a little patience we shall see them disappear. Time changes everything.”[6]
Reflection questions:
What has been a time in your personal or professional life when seeds of hope from the past have helped show you the way forward?
When was the last time you stepped back and took the long view? What pearls of wisdom did this action reveal to you?
Reflection by: Siobhan O’Donoghue, PhD, Director of Faculty and Staff Engagement, Division of Mission and Ministry
Resources, News, Events and Happenings related to the integration of DePaul’s Vincentian mission into the ongoing life and work of the university community.
Vinny Fest 2023
Don’t Miss Vinny Fest 2023!
Join in the fun at Vinny Fest – a DePaul tradition – on either Tuesday, September 26 from 2-4PM in the DePaul Center Concourse or Friday, September 29 from 2-4PM in the LPC Quad. See the Vinny Fest Promo Video!
Mission-Related Events and Happenings This Week
Celebrate St Vincent de Paul Heritage Week in the Loop and Lincoln Park!
St. Vincent de Paul Heritage Luncheon
Wednesday, September 27, Noon – 1:00pm, Loop Campus – DePaul Center
Join the DePaul community for the heritage luncheon focusing on “A Welcoming City, A Welcoming Mission: DePaul University, Chicago Migration, and the Vincentian Mission.” Zoom participation is available as a hybrid option. RSVP Here
St Vincent de Paul Heritage Breakfast
Friday, September 29 | 9:00am – 11:00 am | Lincoln Park Student Center 120 A & B
Come celebrate our shared Vincentian heritage with delicious food and great community at the annual St. Vincent de Paul Prayer Breakfast! This year, Dr. Sulin Ba, the Dean of the Driehaus College of Business, will be the keynote speaker. Dr. Ba will share how she integrates the mission in her professional and personal life. Please join us! RSVP here
Apply for Service Immersions by September 30th
Apply for Winter Break 2023 Service Immersions. Deadline: September 30. Participants will travel to St. Louis, Denver or El Salvador to learn about social justice issues and engage in community service. Scholarships are available! Click here to learn more and apply.
Mission Monday
Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Vincent de Paul from whom we derive our name, vision, mission, and identity. Read More
Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Vincent de Paul from whom we derive our name, vision, mission, and identity.
St. Vincent was a visionary. He understood the realities of his time and saw new possibilities for his world within the massive socio-economic and religious chaos of 17th century French society. As he searched for meaning and direction in his own life, he found purpose and direction that always guided his vision and extraordinary pragmatism.
The practical ways of St. Vincent de Paul focused entirely on societal and church transformation by establishing communities dedicated to serving and healing those most in need. The work of St. Vincent de Paul, of some 400 years ago, focused on a new, transformed society, and this should resonate with us today, as we try to respond to our current and chaotic times.
Designing DePaul, our opportunity to shape our own society, allows us to be in touch with the inner soul of DePaul University. During this time of institutional conversation, we acknowledge the values in which we are founded and our collective dreams. We commit to being an educational institution that contributes to social mobility, breaking the cycle of poverty, designing for equity, responding to the challenges of artificial intelligence and technological development, caring for and protecting our planet, and educating leaders capable of generating a societal model where hate and violence have no place.
As you carry out your work, research, and studies this year, please consider the following four elements, which summarize the essence of St. Vincent de Paul as we embrace his heritage today:
Focus on a mission-centered horizon. This necessitates understanding your unique contributions to DePaul, firmly grasping the realities of the current situation and institutional needs, and yet also dreaming of what could be and leveraging ethical imagination to move beyond the world we know to what it could become.
Create people-centered approaches to all you do as we drive forward the initiatives within Designing DePaul. The wellbeing, the joy, and the fulfillment of individuals in a healthy environment will organically lead to a vibrant organization and better outcomes for those we serve.
Amplify a sense of co-responsibility, solidarity, and collaboration at all levels as the goals of St. Vincent de Paul. Our individual work and studies are all a part of an institutional fabric. They are interconnected in explicit and implicit ways because we all serve the same purpose, the same common good, and the same mission.
Develop strategies that are implementation-oriented, that respond effectively to real issues based on lived experience, and that systemically address solutions following the model of St. Vincent and the very spirit of our students. At DePaul our students demand that we not only ask the Vincentian question of “what must be done?” but that we also develop our response by understanding the current situation and data-based needs, by adopting a willingness to innovate and break out of old ways of thinking, and by changing our assumptions as we get new information.
And as we say, “Happy Feast Day,” let us also embrace the spirit of St. Vincent in everything we do, and also say to each other, “DePaul – be pragmatic, in a Vincentian way.”
Robert L. Manuel
President
Fr. Guillermo (Memo) Campuzano, C.M.
Vice President for Mission and Ministry
We are so excited to celebrate Vinny Fest 2023! Vinny Fest is a DePaul tradition to honor and celebrate St. Vincent de Paul’s legacy with fun, games, photos with Vincent, t-shirts, free food, and more! This year we are excited to also celebrate with the Loop Mini Vinny Fest on Tuesday, September 26 from 2-4PM in the DePaul Center Concourse. We can’t wait to celebrate with you on Friday, September 29 from 2-4PM on the LPC Quad! See the Vinny Fest Promo Video Below:
Resources, News, Events and Happenings related to the integration of DePaul’s Vincentian mission into the ongoing life and work of the university community.
Mission Monday
Entering into the Heart of Another
What might Vincent de Paul – and our volleyball team – teach us about how to make DePaul a more caring community?? …read more
Mission-Related Events and Happenings This Week
Celebrate St Vincent de Paul Heritage Week in the Loop and Lincoln Park!
St. Vincent de Paul Heritage Luncheon
Wednesday, September 27, Noon – 1:00pm, Loop Campus – DePaul Center
Join the DePaul community for the heritage luncheon focusing on “A Welcoming City, A Welcoming Mission: DePaul University, Chicago Migration, and the Vincentian Mission.” Zoom participation is available as a hybrid option. RSVP Here
St Vincent de Paul Heritage Breakfast
Friday, September 29 | 9:00am – 11:00 am | Lincoln Park Student Center 120 A & B
Come celebrate our shared Vincentian heritage with delicious food and great community at the annual St. Vincent de Paul Prayer Breakfast! This year, Dr. Sulin Ba, the Dean of the Driehaus College of Business, will be the keynote speaker. Dr. Ba will share how she integrates the mission in her professional and personal life. Please join us! RSVP here
Apply for Service Immersions by September 30th
Apply for Winter Break 2023 Service Immersions. Deadline: September 30. Participants will travel to St. Louis, Denver or El Salvador to learn about social justice issues and engage in community service. Scholarships are available! Click here to learn more and apply.
“Another effect of charity is to rejoice with those who rejoice. It causes us to enter into their joy.” – Vincent de Paul[1]
Recently, I spent time in the bleachers of Sullivan Athletic Center, cheering on our women’s volleyball team as they faced the Huskies of Northern Illinois. Though I don’t really understand the finer points of the game, I love the intensity, pace, and athletic prowess that are fundamental to volleyball. And, I have tremendous admiration for the competitiveness and teamwork that are so critical to any sport at the elite collegiate level.
There is something else I love about volleyball: the behavior of the players on the court after each point. In those moments, if DePaul wins the rally with a spike or block or great serve, the players quickly gather in something resembling a group hug, rejoicing with the one who made the winning play and celebrating the moment before resuming the set. If DePaul loses the point, the response is very similar— a brief group huddle that is not celebratory but instead seems to communicate support to the player who may have missed a shot and also helps the team refocus for the next point. In both scenarios, despite the different outcomes, players are empathizing with one another. In those few moments, they are strengthening their bonds as teammates and pushing themselves to work together to win the next point and, ultimately, the match.
This simple demonstration of unity and devotion by our volleyball players seems to resonate with the quote that inspired today’s reflection. In the conference from which this quote is taken, Vincent de Paul is addressing members of the still-developing Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentian priests). He is urging them, for the sake of their mission’s ultimate success and sustainability, to ground their communities in virtue, particularly the virtue of charity (or what we might call today love). Vincent believed that the presence of a generous amount of charity within a community would lead to its members being able to “enter in” to the hearts of one another, to rejoice with those members who rejoice and grieve with those who are saddened. In other words, charity would create a community where there is genuine empathy, ever-present support, and abundant compassion among its members for one another.
When I have the privilege of visiting with university colleagues and learning what they value most about being at DePaul, their answers are almost always animated by their gratitude for our community. They speak of the affection they feel for treasured coworkers who are also good friends, the admiration they have for talented colleagues who diligently work on behalf of students, the enjoyment they take at campus-wide events that unite us in celebration, ritual or, simply, fun. On a large-scale and in small, personal ways—and even on a volleyball court—evidence abounds that DePaul, at its best, is a living example of the community grounded in love that Vincent de Paul set out to establish.
But, being a place where the lived norms are empathy, support, and compassion is not easy to achieve or maintain, nor does it automatically result from having a Vincentian identity. To be a community of charity needs to be made a priority both institutionally and individually. Then, it must be backed up by commitment, hard work, humility, equity, shared goals, cordial relationships, placing the good of the whole over that of the individual, and so forth. Although the challenges are real, DePaul has a history of being this type of loving community and a mission that supports this going forward.
Reflection Questions:
Are there people you know at DePaul who have recently accomplished something of note or celebrated a joyful experience? Or, alternatively, suffered a loss or are going through a particular struggle? Consider reaching out to these people to offer congratulations and celebration or support and sympathy.
Where have you witnessed examples – either large or small – of empathy, support or compassion that help to make DePaul a more caring community? How might you be called to contribute to or build upon these examples?
Reflection by: Tom Judge, Assistant Director and Chaplain, Faculty and Staff Engagement, Division of Mission and Ministry
Connor Creadon, the brother of Kaitlin Creadon, faculty in the College of Computing and Digital Media, passed away on July 3, 2023, at the age of 30. He is survived by his parents, sister, and daughter Jaidyn.
Connor loved spending time with his beloved daughter Jaidyn. He also had a special bond with his best friend and favorite four-legged companion, Stormy. Connor had a special talent to effortlessly connect with others, and his contagious sense of humor, clever jokes, and fun storytelling will be sadly missed. He had a passion for fast cars and fast boats. Some of his favorite family times were spent in the Northwoods of Wisconsin wakeboarding, skiing, kayaking, and other water activities.
Resources, News, Events and Happenings related to the integration of DePaul’s Vincentian mission into the ongoing life and work of the university community.
DePaul Celebrates Jewish High Holidays
Beginning later this week on September 15, we join in solidarity with the Jewish members of our DePaul University community as they celebrate Rosh Hashanah and the annual beginning of the Jewish New Year. Click here for more information
Mission Monday
Seeing the Dignity of Every Person
Irish poet and spiritual writer John O’Donohue suggests that “if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us.” How can how we see affect what we see when we look at others in the DePaul community and beyond? …read more
Mission-Related Events and Happenings This Week
St. Vincent de Paul Heritage Week 2023
The Division of Mission and Ministry invites you to an array of exciting events to honor St. Vincent de Paul’s Heritage Week during 9/24-9/29. Please join us as we celebrate St Vincent’s living legacy in Lincoln Park or the Loop by participating in one or more of these signature events. Learn More Here
Apply for Service Immersions by September 30th
Apply for Winter Break 2023 Service Immersions. Deadline: September 30. Participants will travel to St. Louis, Denver or El Salvador to learn about social justice issues and engage in community service. Scholarships are available! Click here to learn more and apply.
Sadly, we have learned of the death of Barbara J. O’Brien (nee Sullivan), mother of Kate O’Brien of Athletic Academic Advising. Barb passed away at the age of 80 on August 24, 2023.
This year DePaul is working closely with its Jewish partners to bring High Holidays to campus.
On Saturday, September 16, Metro Chicago Hillel Rabbi Nicole Berne will lead a Rosh Hashanah service at 10 am in the Lincoln Park Student Center 120 B. No tickets are necessary and all students, faculty, staff, and community members are welcome.
Lincoln Park Chabad will lead the DePaul community in a Shofar Blowing Service in the Quad on Sunday, September 17 at 5:00 pm (note: new time). Rabbi Mendy Benhiyoun will lead this service and then process with students, faculty, staff, and community members to Lake Michigan for a 5:30 pm Tash Lich Prayer. Once again, all are welcome, and no tickets are necessary.
Finally, Yom Kippur will be celebrated with Lincoln Park Chabad on Sept. 24-25. Details on the services, tickets (free for students), and reservations can be found at www.jewishlincolnpark.com/highholidays.
Don’t Miss Vinny Fest 2023!
Connor Creadon, the brother of Kaitlin Creadon, faculty in the College of Computing and Digital Media, passed away on July 3, 2023, at the age of 30. He is survived by his parents, sister, and daughter Jaidyn.
St. Vincent de Paul Heritage Week 2023
