In the present context of chaos, “accompanying young people in the creation of a hope-filled future,” faculty teaching applied subjects are challenged by the effects of our social environment and political and economic upheaval. Many business courses are directly or indirectly affected by news headlines that change by the hour, including human resources (e.g., due process, non-citizen employees), marketing (brand vulnerability), diversity (example), strategy (example), leadership (example/law firms under attack), business ethics (law firms under attack), and sustainability (leaving the Paris climate accords and the SDGs). Many students are witnessing their own “Great Recession” in real-time in a way that prompts feelings of desolation about the present and hopelessness about the future.
This workshop is an opportunity for faculty to discuss their challenges while engaged fully in “accompanying young people in the creation of a hope-filled future.” How do we manage (and nurture) ourselves and provide our students the education they deserve while they prepare to enter a world of economic inequality, political division, and a chaotic environment that threatens stability, individual rights, and the aims of the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs).
The workshop is intended to involve a high degree of participant involvement and will also demonstrate the potential of Ignatian Pedagogy. The introduction of the workshop will frame the workshop by providing specific examples of issues that have arisen in the first four months of 2025. Participants will discuss the challenges encountered teaching applied business courses in the present context at all levels. Participants will identify and share themes across their experiences and will discuss solutions and ideas that may be used by faculty colleagues (experience). We will then engage in a guided reflection, in which participants can explore what the ideas discussed mean to them and how they can personally appropriate those ideas with competence, conscience, and compassion. Participants will be asked to consider what action they may take when teaching their own courses and support colleagues who may be encountering challenges teaching amidst a context of chaos. The workshop will conclude with an evaluation of the workshop as a learning experience and an articulation of unmet needs as a pathway for participants to personal growth in the service of our students.
Author notes
Ideally, this workshop would be conducted in a 75- or 90-minute session. I would be concerned about adequate time for discussion in a 60-minute session.
Personal
The author is well-familiar with Ignatian pedagogy and the inspirational paradigm for Jesuit business education, having participated in CJBE since 2003 and been involved in work for the Inspirational Paradigm Initiative in multiple cycles.
The motivation for this workshop is that sustainability was a “different” (read: challenging) course amidst the 2024 U.S. election, but it was nothing like the atmosphere in which students take (and faculty teach) this course in 2025.