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In the sixteenth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, S.J., President of Creighton University. Hendrickson begins by discussing the unique commitment Creighton makes to prepare health care professionals on its campus in Omaha but also on a campus it recently established in Phoenix. On both campuses, future leaders learn what it means to participate in the healing mission of Jesus Christ and how such a calling extends to the poorest of the poor. Ream and Hendrickson turn to Hendrickson’s own calling to serve as a priest, as a member of the Society of Jesus, and how that calling is expressed in the leadership he seeks to offer the Creighton community as its president. A detailed understanding of that calling is also found in how Hendrickson shared his ideas in Jesuit Higher Education in a Secular Age. Ream and Hendrickson also explore the leadership Hendrickson seeks to exercise as Chair of the Big East Conference’s Board of Directors, the challenges presently being posed to the student-athlete experience, and the ways Creighton and the Big East seek to enhance the education afforded student-athletes amidst these challenges. Finally, Ream and Hendrickson close by discussing the Jesuit charism of magis or greater and how the Church forms people to see more in themselves and in others because of what God sees in them.
- Daniel S. Hendrickson, S.J., Jesuit Higher Education in a Secular Age: A Response to Charles Taylor and the Crisis of Fullness (Georgetown University Press, 2022)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Father Daniel S. Hendrickson, President of Creighton University. Thank you for joining us.
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: Thank you very much. It’s great to be with you, Todd.
Todd Ream: Along with Georgetown, Loyola Chicago, and St. Louis University, Creighton is one of four Jesuit universities in the United States with an MD program, and one of the few Church-related universities in the United States with an MD program.
In what ways, if any, is the operation of a medical school, a means to opportunities for Creighton to exercise its mission as a Jesuit Catholic University.
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: That’s a great question. And I will tell you that having a medical school, as well as a dental school, there’s four of us with medical, there’s three of us with dental, and we have the full range of other health sciences programs are really important parts of our academic portfolio. But also I think a great expression of who we are as Jesuit and Catholic.
And I will say this, that the competitiveness to get into medical schools is acute coast to coast. Programs are so popular and in great demand. We, of course, screen for all the right kinds of metrics and tests, performance in their undergraduate years. We also look at service commitment as a priority when we are bringing students to Creighton Medicine. And that plays into who we are as Jesuit and Catholic.
And those students, you know, student by student not only bring a tremendous amount of service and commitment to their patient care and just that general sense of being for and with others, but they also bring that into their medical school years. So they’re not only doing their clinical exams and their clinical rotations, but they’re typically out in the community.
We also have another medical school, I think, as you know, in Phoenix, Arizona. And when we talk to our students about applying to medicine, we also reinforce that throughout all of health sciences, but for our medical students in particular, they’re stepping into or embracing a sacred vocation. Our dean of medicine is just terrific on this point.
And the Jesuits we have working in the School of Medicine, at one point, just a couple of years ago, Todd, we had six Jesuits in the medical school. I think we have three right now. But it was a great sense of presence. And it’s not just Jesuits, it’s also women and men, the faculty and the staff, who really embrace who we are as Jesuit and Catholic. The buy-in for mission across campus at the Creighton University in our programs is really remarkable for embracing mission.
And especially so in the School of Medicine, we speak to our medical students about the sacred vocation that they embrace and step into and grow into during their medical school years. We even speak to them about the healing mission of Jesus Christ that they participate in, and they embrace that. And we, of course, accept students from all faith traditions, and some who don’t have much of a faith tradition at all. And yet they really celebrate that sense of commitment and service and generosity. And that dimension of, you know, something that’s sacred and holy at work in their lives, where the kind of work that they’ll do to make the lives of others better.
The two medical schools we have now, one is here in Omaha, that’s, you know, it’s 130 years or older. And then the one in Phoenix, we just opened our campus there in 2021. When we grow into the enrollments in Phoenix, we’ll have 500 medical students in each campus, so 1,000 medical students. And, in some ways, another expression of mission is what we’re doing in Phoenix and why we’re there. The Phoenix community really celebrated our sense of presence for clinical rotations over the past few years, dating back to 2006, in fact, 2005. We sent four students to do clinical rotations. And we just kept building up over the years.
I came to Creighton in 2015, and working with the dean and the provost and others, we knew it was time to build a full separate four-year school of medicine. But we were actually responding to a call. We’re responding to a need in the Phoenix community, in Arizona, in the Southwest to help with workforce development, but to do so with healthcare practitioners in medicine and nursing and the therapies and pharmacy and physician assistant program. But we’re doing that with a sense of, of responding to a need in that community. So there’s also something very honorable about that.
One other thing that comes to mind is at least before we started the four-year program in Phoenix in medicine, we grew the first and second year classes in Omaha and then would send each year, another 40 to Phoenix before we opened that new school. In so many ways, it was that extra 40 each year who were taking what they were learning about being Jesuit and Catholic on the Omaha campus and taking that to Phoenix, they’re taking the sense of mission to Phoenix and showing faculty and staff and hospital partners at St. Joseph Hospital and Valleywise, what does it mean to be a student of Creighton University as a Jesuit Catholic studying medicine.
And again, it cycles through the other programs too, nursing and the therapies and pharmacy. So there’s something really special about you know, being a faith-based institution, having a school of medicine, recognizing our participation in the healing mission of Christ and the lives of others.
Todd Ream: Yeah, That’s wonderful. Thank you. With all of the complexity that goes into medical education, what challenges, if any, to Creighton’s mission emerge as a result of this kind of formation that you’re offering students?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: You can see that there’s, you know, competing interests and other kinds of medical schools of kind of working against each other as they just want to help each other perform. I think we really work against that at Creighton. We also bring a lot of ethical care and ethical concern and ethical decision making as who we are as Jesuit Catholic into the curriculum for medical school education.
One special program that’s really been built up over the past few years, we recruited a Jesuit from Georgetown University, Father Kevin FitzGerald, to join us. He’s actually the holder of the Creighton Chair across the university working in the School of Medicine. He helped us found and build up the medical humanities program. So as, as students are out doing their clinicals and they’re engaging difficult questions about healthcare or life and death issues with their patients or existential concerns, they also have the ability to come back into the School of Medicine and to process that with the questions of the humanities, which are tried and true of, I think, what it means to be a Catholic or a religious institution is to ask those questions about who are we, questions of self-awareness, questions of moral and ethics and theology and faith.
And the school of medicine is bringing that right into its curriculum in both Omaha and Phoenix, at least here with Creighton University. So that commitment to the medical humanities helps process difficult and evolving experiences for our students.
Todd Ream: Thank you. What have you and your colleagues then learned about providing medical education not only in two states, but also in two different regions of the country?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: We’re actually lucky in that regard, Todd, that our enterprise healthcare partnership in both cities in, in the past recent years has merged one within Omaha of CHI Health, which is Catholic Health Initiatives. And then this, the, the other in the West Coast and the Southwest is Dignity Health, both Catholic in in its origins.
They have merged as Common Spirit Health. And they actually keep leaning into the Creighton academic footprint in Omaha and Phoenix. So it downsizes number of divisions, eight divisions across the United States in the past couple of years to five, building one of its divisions around where Creighton’s present. And so that’s just created a remarkable synergy and a partnership with Common Spirit Health.
In some ways we have, we have three hospital, key hospital partnerships. One in Omaha with the Bergan Mercy Hospital. We closed our own hospital a few years ago just because of market demand and shifting populations and such and formed this great, through CHI Health, this great partnership with Bergan Mercy. And then on the Phoenix side, two essential partners. One with as I said a minute ago with St. Joseph Hospital there and then Valleywise, which is known as the former county hospital. All three of these hospital partnerships also express a care and concern for indigent populations of the poorest of the poor. They make the space and the room available for that.
I’ll just say one other thing too, that in both Omaha and Phoenix, we have these, these terrific outreach programs. In Omaha, with the homeless shelter, Siena Francis. We have a student-run clinic of medical students going in to work with patients on a weekly basis.
Perhaps more impressively, or more institutionally, in Phoenix, we work with the St. Vincent de Paul organization, which is maybe one of the biggest and best in the United States. It’s worked hard to get funding and support within the city and the state of Arizona, the city of Phoenix and the state of Arizona. It has a full medical clinic, a full dental clinic, it has great services for the poorest of the poor. A lot of them are migrants. If they’re not getting healthcare for whatever reason, at St. Vincent DePaul, they’re not going to get it at all. And so we’re there in that space.
We even have a faculty endowed chair running the medical clinic with St. Vincent DePaul partnership right on that campus. So it’s a, our students are working with the poorest of the poor just in their clinic rotations. And again, they come back to campus and process that and think through it. It’s quite remarkable.
Todd Ream: Yeah. No, that’s wonderful. Thank you.
I want to ask you about your own calling to the priesthood and the Society of Jesus. So you presently serve in Omaha, but Omaha is also your hometown. Would you please share with us some of the details related to your upbringing, your calling to the priesthood, and your calling to the Society of Jesus, to the Jesuits?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I am a man with a Benedictine monk foundation who became a Jesuit priest and not only just me, but my identical twin brother. There’s three of us. We have an older brother and then the two of us went to a Benedictine boarding school just outside of Omaha, a place called Elkhorn.
And actually I grew up in Fremont, which is really close to Omaha. It’s the bedroom community of Omaha, Nebraska. We were just really impressed with the religious life of the Benedictine monks in our high school. They were coaches, there were teachers, they were administrators of the school.
We all three ended up at Jesuit universities. I went to Marquette and I just fell in love with the Jesuits, Todd. I fell in love with the formation and training of a Jesuit priest, the Spiritual Exercises, which have a real true existential dimension to them, the global thrust and work and attention of the Society of Jesus, its commitment to education and to higher education in particular. But I was just, I was just really compelled by the life and the work of Jesuits on the Marquette campus when I was there as a young person.
I’ll tell you this. As I was trying to figure out what does it mean to be leaving the boarding school in an idyllic countryside location up above the Elkhorn River Valley and going into downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, joining the Marquette community and learning what does it mean to be a Jesuit, I called the Jesuit community one day and I said, hey, when do you guys pray the Vespers? And there was a long pause and he said, son, we’re not monks. We’re Jesuits. We pray differently. And so we don’t do the Vespers, but he said we are very prayerful and very spiritual. So I was learning, what does it mean to be a Jesuit? What is the Jesuit institution?
At the very same time on November 16th, in 1989, when I was a freshman, the Jesuits and two women were killed. They were gunned down at the University of Central America in San Salvador, El Salvador, and the Marquette community was just, just shocked by this. Jesuits and Marquette knew those Jesuits who were killed in San Salvador.
And so there was this, not only this recognition of who and what Marquette is as Jesuit Catholic, but then there was this global understanding of another Jesuit university with Jesuit priests and men and women embracing the Jesuit Catholic identity and this, this real tragedy to happen. So it really rounded out and filled in my understanding of the Jesuit mission on higher education. Some of that and more is at work and was stirring in my life in those years.
I left college. I graduated, you know, on time in 1993. I took a gap year during that gap here, really intensified my discernment to see if I, you know, if the Jesuit life was going to be it. I entered the novitiate, the Jesuit novitiate in 1994, very uncertain if it would work, but trusting, trusting that something that was working in my life and calling me to the Jesuits, trusting that, that impulse of the heart and hearing possibly something from God about being a Jesuit. It’s 30 years later.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you.
You’ve served in the Dominican Republic, in Tanzania, and then you were back at Marquette and served there as an administrator for a while. And now you’ve served as president at Creighton for almost 10 years.
What are some of the experiences you’ve had over the course of your presidency which most deeply resonated with your calling?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I will tell you this. I just led a delegation of investors. It’s a group of impressive colleagues and partners here in the city of Omaha who know Creighton very well. And we went to Africa and we traveled, we were gonna travel through Rwanda and bypass that because of the outbreak of the Marburg disease, but did a full itinerary in Uganda, Kenya, and Malawi.
We visited two refugee camps. We visited the Kibera slum of Nairobi. We visited projects of Catholic Relief Services. We visited the Jesuit Refugee Service. We visited Jesuit Worldwide Learning. Todd, we saw a lot. And as we were able to recognize resilience and perseverance and hope, we also were in pretty gritty circumstances. And toward the end of that trip, a Jesuit companion traveling with me as part of that delegation, we offered Mass in a hotel lobby, just with our small delegation. We took the time to reflect and to pray about the experience, to share some of our you know, our own takeaways.
And you know, one of the leaders pulled me aside and he said, you know, not only is it remarkable that you’re working as a priest and president, but to have you be able to offer that experience of liturgy for us. So there’s been many of those, obviously, the myriad experiences of stepping into my role as a president and doing so specifically, explicitly as a priest, that’s been meaningful to people. It’s also been meaningful to me. It’s of course an honor to be able to, to, to function like that.
But to exercise my priestly ministry, in some ways, I guess I’m surprised at how, how many times I’m called to do that. Tragedies here on campus. We can lean into other Jesuits to step up and help. We have women and men and women and men in the division of Mission and Ministry who are just so wonderfully compassionate and empathic and also very, very helpful. But the moments of exercising my priesthood as a president, I feel like a pastor of the campus on occasion.
Todd Ream: Well, it’s been my experience that often students who come to campuses such as ours, you know, have that expectation, regardless of size, regardless of whether they ever do personally interact with the president of their campus, that, that that person is somebody who fills that role, you know, other rather up closer from afar.
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I PhD’d in 2012, I went to Marquette as, as you noted, worked there in senior administration. From day number one at Marquette for those three years, every Tuesday night I was presiding with another Jesuit, Father Nicholas Santos, at a popular Tuesday night Mass at Marquette at the St. Joan of Arc Chapel.
So I go to Creighton as president. And a year or two later, he’s asked to be the Rector Superior of Creighton University Jesuit community and actually all the Omaha Jesuits, and he came to campus and I said, why don’t you stop by my office? And I said, we’re doing Tuesday night Mass at Creighton and I’m still doing Tuesday night Mass. So we’re in something like our seventh or eighth year of that.
It’s a commitment of mine. I don’t make every one of them. There’s also, you know, we doubled the Jesuit presence, Father Santos and I, two other Jesuits stepped in. So four of us are there on a regular Tuesday night on the Creighton campus. And we’ll have about a hundred students each week.
And you know, we storytell, you know, to the message of the Gospel, we hang out afterwards. It’s at 9 PM. I go over there just dead tired and, you know, wondering if this is a good idea. And at 10 PM, you know, they’re kind of pulling me out and say, it’s time to go home. And, you know, I’m energized and excited that I was able to do that and be with the students. I learned, I learned more students names and I’d like to be present in those situations.
Todd Ream: Published by Georgetown University Press in 2022, you’re also the author of Jesuit Higher Education in a Secular Age: A Response to Charles Taylor and the Crisis of Fullness. What led you to write that book?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I returned from one year of living in Africa. I was sent over to do pastoral work in the city of Dar es Salaam in a parish at Dar. And the Jesuits there said, this guy knows how to teach philosophy, he did so at Creighton University many years ago. We need teachers. We don’t need someone spending six months learning Swahili and then, you know, hopefully being effective in the parish. So they were very gentle, but persistent in getting me into a college.
So I spent that year in Morogoro, Tanzania and returned to the United States to go to Columbia University for their philosophy and education program. As I’m on the ground in 2007, Charles Taylor’s magisterial book at 900 pages, A Secular Age, is just released and it was just magnificent.
So I got together with a group of faculty, actually. One from my program, another one at the Columbia campus, someone from Barnard, and a faculty member from NYU. I was a little intimidated because I was the one graduate student. But we read Charles Taylor front to back. It was just a very informative conversation each time.
It was easier to read it in a group. I’ve never back paged through a book so many times, so like what he saying? And, you know, you get to Charles Taylor and there’s like three or four pages that are so lucid and to talk about Immanuel Kant or somebody, you know so eloquently is a real gift. But so we soldiered through that book and then the next day I got a group of Jesuits, and we formed a reading group and I read it a second time. And those two, they’re actually very different conversations and perceptions of the book.
But it was Taylor’s publication of A Secular Age that led me deeply into that book and to develop what I call the pedagogies of fullness. Taylor introduces the term fullness on the fifth page of A Secular Age. And it’s really the thread that carries through the book to the point where at the end, his last chapter, I’ve said this in other places, another podcast, his book isn’t easy. It’s informative and it’s wonderful and inspirational. And when you get to the last chapter, it’s like, he leaves the classroom or the library and he’s sitting down at a kitchen table and he’s talking very informally about how to move forward in a secular age. The tone changes, the feel of it is different. And he really returns very forcefully to the sense of fullness in our lives and how that can be achieved.
Just, just real quickly, I might say that the pedagogies I develop, I understand Taylor’s discussion of fullness as a, as a relationship construct. It’s about being more relational with ourselves, under self-awareness, prayerfulness, interpreting our hearts, our emotions, our thoughts. Secondly, as with others, a sense of solidarity and alterity. You know, embracing otherness, so to speak, and then a relationship with another or the other or what Taylor in true philosophical language calls us an antic other, which is God.
And so I developed a pedagogy as a fullness of Jesuit higher education can, can build and strengthen these three relationships, these three important relationships in our lives: our internal lives, our interiors with others, especially with others, you know, outside of our comfort zones, and then with another with God.
Todd Ream: No, thank you.
I want to shift gears now, perhaps abruptly, but to another very important topic, basketball. Some level, but in particular your leadership that you’ve provided the Big East Conference.
I’ll just mention here, self-indulgent note, perhaps on my part, that my brothers and I grew up watching Big East basketball during the early days of ESPN. And while we were never dedicated viewers of Monday night football in our house, we would watch it, but not with near religious devotion, not religious, near religious devotion. We were very dedicated viewers of ESPN’s Big Monday doubleheader with the Big East and Big Ten, and I have fond memories of those days.
While the Big East competes at the highest level in 22 sports, football’s not one of those sports that the Big East competes in formally. Institutions do, but not the Big East per se, formally. In what ways, if any, does the absence of football impact decisions that the Big East makes?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: That’s a great question. I will tell you this, that in some ways we’re in the Big East 2.0. And so, with conference realignment about 12 or 13 years ago, the Big East reformed itself. And in doing so, Creighton University became a member of the Big East and a couple of other schools. So initially we were 10. And then a legacy school, UConn, a couple of years after 2013, 2014, UConn came back into the Big East as an 11th school.
I will tell you this you know, almost exclusively we are basketball priority schools, UConn might be a little bit different in that regard. Other schools do have football programs, but at a Big East conference, we’re able to really focus on a priority sport and create conversation around women’s basketball and men’s basketball.
And other sports, other Olympic sports, other kinds of realities, research, the academic profiles of our institutions, all of that matters as well. All of that’s really important to the Big East. But I think it’s the sense of conversation and focus as basketball priority schools, for the majority of us, is really important. And it’s been really refreshing.
And if you look at the range of the Big East schools, there’s an affinity and a similarity to almost every single one of us. What’s important is the sense of mission, a commitment to a tradition or a heritage, each of our schools. So we’ve been really honored and pleased to be part of the Big East.
And I will tell you this, that the reboots or the second and new life of the Big East has been incredibly successful. The Leadership of Commissioner, Val Ackerman, has just been superb. We have won in eight years. If I’m doing the math correctly, we’ve won four national men’s national championships, two at Villanova, two at UConn.
UConn brings that really strong legacy women’s basketball program, you know, into the mix. And Creighton itself, Creighton has stepped into that remarkably. Marquette University and other schools with, with great women’s basketball. So, we like the sense of focus and we like a sense of institutional affinity and commitment to mission.
You know, on Big East championship games for the, for the men’s program and Madison Square Garden in New York City, every Saturday morning of that given week in March, we’re also hosting a poster, research poster presentation for undergraduate students. It’s just remarkable. There’s a true commitment to who we are as academic institutions.
Todd Ream: Thank you. What are your hopes for the student-athlete experience then at Creighton for basketball, but in other sports?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: So much of the student-athlete experience is under question right now. You know, we have name, image, and likeness payments coming from collectives or outside entities into the university. We’re with the current house settlement under review and evolving along the way for the class action suit for Autonomy 5 schools and Division 1 participating schools. All of that’s in question.
You know, our hope is that we really truly articulate what it means to be a student-athlete. And not to forget that these are students and there’s a commitment to their intellectual and emotional formation.
For any student on the Creighton campus, we hope for an incredible experience of transformation in their lives, that these men and women are understanding who they are as a special, special people in the eyes of God. And they’re just constantly invited to keep moving forward and offering what they can to make the world a better place.
We ask the same of our student-athletes, that they understand that important relationship and that call to give back to the world and to others around them.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In what ways are those hopes then also reflective of Creighton’s membership in the Big East and this Big East 2.0 as you talked about it, and in what ways has that perhaps even been enhanced in recent years?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I would say this, that as it’s let Creighton in many ways I think become a little bit more competitive and to evolve and to grow, to continue upgrading our facilities, our recruitment efforts.
We’re blessed with a great, great portfolio. Not the best word, but a great team of coaches, actually, who work with our students in very genuine ways. They build communities, sometimes year after year after year, as we see students transferring through portals. We have Greg McDermott and Jim Flanery and Kirsten Booth in volleyball and Johnny Torres in soccer. Just go down the list.
They’re building really genuine communities of their, their student-athletes together and supporting one another. And I think maybe Creighton’s always done a good job at that, but the Big East has helped us be just a little bit more intentional.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You mentioned just a few minutes ago, name, image, and likeness NIL the transfer portal and these realities that are influencing and a presence within the student-athlete experience and college athletics.
I’m going to ask you if you, if I may, to envision what the future might look like then and what do you see, you know, in the near future as the student-athlete experience might look like, and then will we come to a steady state at some point in terms of what the student-athlete experience will be?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: Those are terrific questions.
Here at Creighton, we formed if anything, something of an urgent strategic assessment on issues with the NCAA and being a D1 school and a Big East school at that. We’ve done the same at the level of the Big East to form a strategic planning committee to ask those exact kinds of questions. And our hope is that we continue to step forward to respect the student-athlete, to assure that the voice of the student-athlete is in all decision making, that we concentrate on issues of mental health, of academic performance, of team building, of their skills, all of that’s so important.
The future is in some ways kind of scary and it’s a, you know, I hate seeing student-athletes monetized and to some degree that’s in some ways what’s happening. It’s understandable given the money that comes through media contracts and other realities of the world of college sports. Again, the football schools are a little bit different even in that regard. There’s just so much more money on the table, salaries and media contracts and et cetera.
So we certainly want to maintain a commitment to the student experience and to what it means to be on a college campus and to be part of that kind of community.
Todd Ream: Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you.
As our time begins to become short, I want to ask you a couple of questions, if I may, about the academic vocation. And at Creighton, in what ways do Jesuit charisms permeate the understanding of the academic vocation as it is practiced perhaps by curricular educators, faculty in the classroom, but also co-curricular educators that are working in campus ministry or the residence halls, student government?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I think there’s such a real commitment to who we are to open inquiry, and conversations about our lives and that, you know, the expressions really of free speech and free thinking. That doesn’t mean we can’t offer a real sense of guidance and ideals and aspirations about who we are as Jesuit and Catholic and expectations and hopes for the kind of people we become. But you see that, you know, filtered throughout all of the university.
Many years ago, Creighton adopted the provost model and in doing so it brought student life under the provost, which is a, you know, it’s an academic leadership and it brings those questions of inquiry and care and concern into the work of student life, the same with campus ministry, the same with our program service and justice.
I’ll tell you this. We just finished fall break, you know, not so long ago. And we sent 19 teams of about eight students each, so a significant amount of students, around the United States for service trips you know, to 19 different locales around the U.S. They’re out there having a good experience. They’re connecting with people. They’re rolling up their sleeves and doing work.
But they’re also, in the evenings, thinking and reflecting and asking questions of their own lives and of one another and of the partners they’re working with. So they’re also bringing in that sense of an open-minded inquiry and problem solving into those experiences.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Are there any virtues in particular, other than those you’ve, you know, mentioned that you would highlight as being more distinctive of the academic vocation at Creighton?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: Yeah, I’ll tell you, we talk about being for and with others, we talk about the, the finding God in all things, the sense of magis that Latin term for greatness sometimes translated as doing more really resonates with me.
I came to Creighton in 2015 as I said. It’s my, the theme of my inauguration was the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.” There’s a line in there that he says, I say more. I say more about who we are as individual persons. I say more about our sense of vocation. I say more about changing the world and make it better. I say magis in many ways. That’s what Hopkins is saying.
And I think it’s present life of our students who are so aspirational back to where we began this conversation about being doctors who can heal other people’s lives, being in other programs around the university to go out and be equipped to make the world a better place to be more and to do more. And that’s part of who we are as in the intellectual life, but also as a faith-based institution.
Todd Ream: And correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that it’s also part of what permeates the core curriculum there on campus, too.
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: Yeah, great point. So we have the magis core, in fact, you’re right to recognize that. And I’ve been bullish about two things coming to Creighton in these 10 years. I can’t believe it’s been 10, to be honest.
But we have a full and I think aspirational strategic plan. We’ve accomplished a lot in it. One of it is building that new campus in Phoenix, Arizona, a thousand new students, half of which are students of medicine.
I asked the university to be incredibly mindful of two realities. One is the commitment to the humanities or the liberal arts. And we’ve talked about one or two examples of where that’s come to fruition in new and exciting ways over the last couple of years. I think it’s just so essential to study the questions of philosophy and theology and language and literature and history and the lives of our students who are going to become doctors and bankers and lawyers teachers, social workers, but they have that really incredibly strong foundation to stand on as they continue their other studies in areas of expertise.
The other has been a commitment to global studies or global programming of some kind or bringing more of the world to the Creighton campus. Creighton’s been impressive on the global stage, you know, for well over half a century. I think there’s more we can do, there’s ways we can expand, but we can be very intentional here in Omaha, Nebraska and in Phoenix, Arizona about bringing more of the world onto our campus and asking those really important questions about sustainability and climate change and global politics conflict in the Middle East.
You know, there’s never enough topics really, but to really wrestle with those. And we’re part of the global community in our place in the world.
Todd Ream: With the challenges that higher education today is facing, what vices perhaps circulating in the academy as a whole, do you believe pose the greatest threat to such an understanding of the academic vocation? Where do we need to be most vigilant?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I’ve been concerned with the political rhetoric of the, you know, this current presidential election cycle, and maybe even the one before from both parties, who discount the relevance and importance of higher education. You just hear that as part of the political discourse today.
We see college life and higher education as a real investment and commitment in, in one’s life and one’s growth. We have all the data to show, you know, the changes for oneself and his or her family as well. You know, on issues on learning and growing and better jobs and lifestyles and such, and then being able to get back to the community. It’s not to say it’s a better life than other commitments, but I do bristle a bit when I hear those concerns, you know, people kind of downplaying the importance of the investment in higher education that’s so important.
We were cognizant of the demographic shifts in the United States. We’re, you know, stepping into the 2026 enrollment cycle. And for FY 26, it’s the year where we’ll see 15 percent fewer 18 year olds in the nation from coast to coast, which is 18 years after the economic downturn of 2008, it’s already fiercely competitive to build an undergraduate class.
Creighton continues to defy the odds in many ways, but we want to stay vigilant just about recruiting students who want to be doctors and nurses and physical therapists and teachers and bankers and lawyers and all of that. So we’ve got our work to do certainly to stay on our toes.
Todd Ream: As we close our conversation, I want to ask you about the academic vocation and the Church, in what ways do you believe the health of the academic vocation, perhaps as practiced at Creighton and other Jesuit Catholic universities is related to the health of of the relationship that the university shares with the Church?
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: I tell you, we met as a group of Midwestern Jesuit universities in Chicago last year at our, really our, the Jesuit province headquarters. And the keynote speaker was Cardinal Blase Cupich. And he spoke about our mission and identity as the apostolate, the intellectual apostolate of higher education in the Church of Jesuit institutions. He talked about the work we do, creating the thinking heart of the Church. It was a beautiful image.
So we continue to work with the Church to, to educate and transform lives, to bolster the health and the vitality and the mercy and all of the good stuff, the work of the Church, you know, through the students we’re educating, to the faculty and staff who participate in our mission. I think it’s just a beautiful opportunity for us.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Our guest has been Father Daniel S. Hendrickson, President of Creighton University. Thank you for taking time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson: Thank you very much, Todd. It’s great to be with you today.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
Super interesting!
Creighton University is the greatest enterprise in the world today!