Be the difference. Most Marquette students look at those short, sweet words and reminisce about campus tours and college applications. But our Marquette mantra goes much deeper than freshman year flashbacks. As students at Marquette, we are called to be men and women for others.
At Marquette we have the opportunity to question who we are. What do we want to do with our lives? We question what talents we have. How can we use them to best serve the world? We question our faith. How does faith in God play a role in our lives?
Enter The Manresa Project, our guide to discovering ourselves and exploring our vocations. We see its logo on posters, remember its name from our First Year Reading Program selection and sometimes fail to understand the developmental role it plays in our lives as Marquette students.
In 2000, University President the Rev. Robert A. Wild received an invitation to apply for a $2 million grant for Theological Exploration of Vocation from the Lilly Endowment Inc., said Susan Mountin, director of The Manresa Project. Marquette received two months and $50,000 to research and reflect on how the grant could affect the school.
In 2002, Marquette was one of a total of 88 colleges and universities that were rewarded the grant to explore vocation, Mountin said. Each school designed a program based on its individual needs. Marquette’s needs sparked the idea for Manresa.
Program coordinators approached Manresa from three vantage points: academics, ministry and student development.
“We didn’t want to create an alternate ministry,” Mountin said. “We tried to enhance programs already existing on campus.”
When deciding on a name for the program, Mountin said she knew its roots must be grounded the teachings of St. Ignatius Loyola. The name Manresa comes from a small town in Spain where Ignatius spent time in prayer.
Out of the 88 schools awarded the Theological Exploration of Vocation, Lilly said Marquette gave its program the best name, according to Mountin.
So Manresa quietly enhanced programs, leadership conferences and classes, Mountin said.
But unfortunately, Mountin said Manresa’s funding from the Lilly Endowment is coming to a close. The project was initially funded for five years, from 2002 to 2007. It then received a sustainability grant from 2008 through 2009.
“This is the last real year of funding,” Mountin said. “Given Marquette’s and the world’s finances, it’s a difficult time to make decisions about resources.”
Mountin said she knows that parts of the program will continue in the future, but which parts will be a priority has yet to be decided.
“We must be realistic with the economy,” she said.
Manresa has collaborated with a variety of campus organizations to provide programming that includes speakers, service learning and leadership opportunities, Mountin said.
Mara Brandli, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences, has been involved in Manresa since her freshman year.
“There are so many different paths to finding a vocation,” Brandli said. “Manresa wants to provide the tools and the means for students to do it.”
Brandli said speakers often highlight Manresa’s goals and pose questions relatable to all students.
“Education goes beyond the classroom,” Brandli said. “Life is not a textbook or a multiple choice test. You need to contemplate things.”
Brandli said she considers Manresa one of Marquette’s strongest attributes. The program instills students with a sense of vocation that lingers long after graduation, she said.
“Manresa is the heart and soul of Marquette,” Brandli said.
However, a struggling point of the project is its diffusion.
“We can’t claim things that are just ours,” Mountin said.
Manresa has worked with the Office of International Education for Real People, Real Stories, a speaker series about the vocations of people with diverse backgrounds, she said. It has helped incorporate discernment into the Office of Student Development’s Women’s Leadership Conference. It incorporated vocation into the College of Business Administration’s LEAD program with a portion called “Life Beyond the Bottom Line.”
The project also created Manresa classes, Mountin said. The project gives faculty a small award to design coursework that integrates discernment into the classroom.
John Pustejovsky, associate professor of German, has developed two Manresa courses and is instructing a Manresa course called “The Modern German Short Story” this semester.
He said he finds ways to let the course material speak to students about the issues of the world and incorporates vocation broadly.
“Most people won’t become professors,” Pustejovsky said. “If literature is going to mean anything for them it will be finding greater meaning in the text.”
The literary works encompass post-war pieces written after 1945. The selected stories have to do with human relationships after World War II. Stories include women who have lost husbands in battle, men who return from the war and young men psychologically ruined from its impact.
“Literature is a face-to-face encounter with another person,” he said.
Pustejovsky said he intentionally designed the course to raise questions among students and is always open to talking about how faith shapes the classroom.
He said he calls attention to the relationships within literature and the fact that we all will live our lives in committed relationships with others in one form or another.
“Literature is really about real life,” Pustejovsky. “It’s only about the real world and how to deal with its social and political realities. It’s about how to make your way among these things as a whole person.”