Title:Values based lecture underscores service values

Continuing a tradition established in 2008 by the School of Nursing & Health Studies, this year’s Values Based Lecture for faculty and staff was hosted by the new School of Nursing and School of Health with the theme, “Reenergizing Our Values: Reflections on the Spirit of Georgetown in Our New Moment.”

According to Father Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president for Mission & Ministry, the lecture series is designed “to help faculty and staff find the language to talk about what it means to be a mission-driven health and nursing educational project in the Jesuit tradition,” Bosco says. “As we share resources, we discuss how we can expand and embody the values Georgetown lives by.”

For Sister Celeste Mokrzycki, SSJ, chaplain for the School of Health and the School of Nursing, co-hosting her first Values Based Lecture allowed her to help “present Georgetown values in a way that fit both of these schools at this time.

“When our students come here, we present the values as a difference, but how do they differentiate our experience as faculty and staff? I think it’s these values that we want to nurture in our students and interdisciplinary approaches as far as curriculum and immersion experiences,” Mokrzycki says.

The lecture also emphasized fostering inclusion and community for all, serving with respect, taking time for contemplation and reflection, and putting values into daily action.

Carol Taylor, professor of medicine and nursing, served as the lecture moderator and emphasized that bettering the community, on campus and at large, is also about giving back.

The School of Nursing and the School of Health worked together to organize a toy drive at Mary’s Center, a community health center, during the holidays and recently held a Day of Service at Food & Friends, a community organization that delivers meals to those in need. Curriculum leaders in the schools are also developing programs for student engagement in the areas of migration and refugee health care, as well as a new Ph.D. nursing program with a health ethics and equity focus.

“The lectures provide us with an opportunity to speak with faculty and staff, the ones who will shape and form the conversations in the schools across campuses, who will shape and form the kinds of projects that we might do for both research or for teaching,” Bosco says. “It’s a really important opportunity.”