Lilly Endowment awards Fairfield University half-million-dollar grant to continue the Ignatian Residential College | Press Releases

The Lilly Endowment has awarded Fairfield University a half-million-dollar grant to sustain Fairfield's Ignatian Residential College through 2010. The Ignation Residential College is grounded in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuit higher education tradition. It is designed to examine the question of purpose or vocation for sophomores living in a unique residential and learning setting.

The program is the result of an ambitious undertaking five years ago by the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment entitled, "Theological Exploration of Vocation." The intent was to encourage college students to draw on the wisdom of their religious traditions as they make decisions about their intellectual development and their futures, including their consideration of ministry as a career. Fairfield University was selected to participate in 2001 and was awarded a $2 million grant under which it initiated the Ignatian Residential College the following year.

The program offers academic courses, mentor groups, retreats, lectures, and cultural trips, as well as spiritual, social, and intellectual service events, in an attempt to help students learn more about themselves and discover some insights into what their individual callings or vocations might be.

James Mayzik, S.J., director of the program, says the IRC has received strong support from the faculty who have created new courses or adapted existing ones so they address the three questions posed by the program: Who am I? Whose am I? and Who am I called to be? "We are excited by the student response to the program and the leavening effect on the entire university," said Fr. Mayzik. "The program's impact reaches far beyond the 200 sophomores involved. It touches students, staff, faculty and friends of the university in ways never imagined."

Noël Appel, Fairfield University director of foundation relations, said, "The Lilly Endowment recognizes that schools that have established comprehensive programs as a result of the original Theological Exploration of Vocation Program need additional time to fully realize the long-term funding requirements to sustain these programs." She said that over the next three years the University will be raising money to establish a

$3 million permanent endowment, which will be matched with institutional cost share commitments, so that the Ignatian Residential College can be permanently funded into perpetuity.

Since 2000, the Lilly Endowment, under The Theological Exploration of Vocation program, has provided grants to 88 church-related liberal arts colleges and universities across the country. Fairfield University was among 37 schools nationwide, and the only one in Connecticut, to receive this sustainability grant.