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SLU's Mission Priority Examen Affirmed by Jesuit Leadership

August 18, 2025

Dear members of the SLU community,

With gratitude for the tangible and enduring ways you keep SLU’s Jesuit mission at the heart of our university’s work, I write to share that Saint Louis University has received a positive affirmation of our recent Mission Priority Examen (MPE) process from Superior General Arturo Sosa, S.J. and Provincial Thomas P. Greene, S.J.

The MPE is a self-study and peer review process created to affirm the Jesuit, Catholic mission of Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States and Belize. The MPE process is guided by the Characteristics of Jesuit Higher Education and the Universal Apostolic Preferences of the Society of Jesus.

SLU’s recent MPE process – the University’s second – was launched in December 2023, at the invitation of Thomas P. Greene, S.J., provincial superior of the Central and Southern Province of the Society of Jesus. Our MPE was grounded in the Examen, a practice of Ignatian reflection, and invited our campus community to reflect upon areas of strength in embodying our Jesuit, Catholic identity and to discern opportunities for deepening our mission.

After consultation with Fr. David Suwalsky, S.J., Vice President for Mission and Identity, then-President Fred Pestello, Ph.D., invited a steering committee representing the university community to begin its work. Composed of faculty, staff and administrators from every academic unit, the 22-member steering committee convened focus groups on the north campus, south campus, School of Law, Madrid, and virtually. More than 600 members of the SLU community participated in these sessions, representing more than 45 campus units.

The resulting self-study report of August 2024 captured the university community’s sense of the health and vitality of the Catholic Jesuit mission of Saint Louis University. SLU hosted a peer-review team in October 2024 that spent three days speaking with faculty, staff, students, trustees, and university partners. Its report was added to the self-study and submitted to Fr. Sosa and Fr. Greene.

In their July affirmation of SLU’s Catholic Jesuit identity and mission, Fr. Greene thanked us for “the way in which SLU undertook this important process, which allows both the Society and the University to see how God is at work in the heart of St. Louis.” Fr. Sosa affirmed that “participation in the examen itself reveals something about the strength of the culture of mission at SLU.”

Fr. Sosa further endorsed the mission priorities that the University identified in our collective process of reflection. We have completed the MPE process that the University undertakes every seven years. We are now charged with the ongoing process of deepening our sense of mission.

In the years ahead, we will work to:

I am grateful to steering committee co-chairs Fr. David Suwalsky, S.J., and Director of Mission Formation Virginia Herbers, to the steering committee members, to all who participated in the Mission Priority Examen, and to Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski for his prayers and support.

I thank all of you for your sustained commitment to the Jesuit mission that guides our daily work. May God continue to bless and guide Saint Louis University.

Edward Feser, Ph.D.

President