History
Mission
Defining Faith and Civic Engagement at DePaul
Vision

History DePaul University carries a storied history that encompasses a variety of rich, interwoven commitments to faith and civic engagement made manifest in learning, teaching, scholarship, and service. Recently, the question of assessing the DePaul student experience as it relates to faith and civic engagement has emerged. The Vice President for Student Affairs, Jim Doyle, and the former Director of the Center for University Values, Jack Lane, envisioned DePaul University addressing this critical question. With the support of a number of faculty, staff, students, and community partners, Student Affairs initiated the Faith and Civic Engagement project in light of the following considerations:

• A DePaul commitment to advance the faith dimension of the Vincentian, Catholic, and urban mission by providing a transformative educational environment that embraces religious pluralism and service to the marginalized.
• Expertise and wisdom from the Institute on College Student Values at Florida State University and the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education's Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience that highlight an integrative vision of development and learning that embraces spirituality, leadership, and service.
• A catalyst grant, entitled the McCormick Presidential Civic Leader Fellow Grant, from Illinois Campus Compact and the McCormick Tribune Foundation was awarded to Fr. Dennis Holtschneider, C.M. in February, 2005. University Ministry and the Division of Student Affairs are helping implement this grant that, among other things, exposes DePaul students to the diverse faith and spiritual motivations of community partners who have made life-long commitments to civic engagement as a means of illustrating career and vocation possibilities.
• The development of a Faith and Civic Engagement student coordinator team of 4 students through scholarship and financial resource commitments from the Division of Student Affairs, Student Leadership Institute, University Ministry, and the Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning.

Mission The Faith and Civic Engagement (FACE) project seeks to assess, strengthen, and help shape DePaul University's support of its students in how they connect their diverse faith commitments and inner convictions to the idea and practice of civic engagement as a lifelong commitment, so that one reinforces the other.
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Defining Faith and Civic Engagement at DePaul By civic engagement, we mean DePaul's commitment to engage and serve the broader community, particularly those who are marginalized. DePaul's civic engagement can take many forms, including community service, activism, service-learning, political advocacy, community-based research, and educating for responsible democratic citizenship. These DePaul curricular and co-curricular forms seek to foster broader and deeper forms of civic or political engagement and a dedicated relationship with the marginalized of society.

By faith, we mean the operative set of values held by an individual or a set of individuals that are: oriented towards ultimate meaning and purpose; cultivated in one or more communities of belief and practice; and shaping one's relationship to the living community and the sacred.

By connecting faith and civic engagement, we mean to understand and promote the ways in which our faith invites us to transcend our particular selves for the common good and on behalf of the other, particularly the marginalized.
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Vision The Faith and Civic Engagement (FACE) project advances a core vision of Student Affairs and DePaul University: to connect, inform, and institutionally amplify faith and civic engagement work at the University. The McCormick Presidential Civic Leadership Team and FACE Student Coordinator Team will connect key faculty, staff, students, and departments that are already involved in co-curricular and curricular faith and civic engagement work on campus. Through these connections and the assessment at the dialogue and institutional levels, the teams will ensure that the key faculty, staff, students, and departments inform one another of their institutional work and collaborative possibilities. Ultimately, through connecting and informing, the teams will point to ways DePaul can strengthen and institutionally amplify its existing commitment to faith and civic engagement.
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