How faith-based higher education can best serve society is focus of symposium

WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- The second convening of the Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities of the American Council on Education was the first for Holy Cross Father Robert A. Dowd, who became the 18th president of the University of Notre Dame last September.

Calling the meeting "a very diverse group of interactions," Father Dowd told OSV News it was "for me, the opportunity to listen and to teach, and contribute to the conversation about the challenges we face."

"To me, the important thing is that we learn from each other. I think that's the most important thing … about how we can best serve this society."

The public portion of the meeting at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington June 9 included the showing of a documentary in a new series from Brigham Young University with stories of individual students, including Isabela Barboza, then a junior at The Catholic University of America in Washington, about the impact faith-based colleges have had on their lives.

Barboza said, "If religion is part of my life, it has to be part of my education and formation." At CUA, "Faith is acceptable, always."

Other Catholic representation among the commission's 18 members, which span several Protestant denominations, includes Peter Kilpatrick, CUA's president; Thayne McCulloch, president of Jesuit-run Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington; and Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

The commission's stated purpose since its 2024 founding is "to increase visibility for the important contributions of religious and faith-based colleges and universities and to foster collaboration between religious and nonreligious colleges and universities that benefits the whole of higher education, such as on access, affordability, and completion."

Co-chairs are Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and Clark Gilbert, commissioner of the Church Educational System of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, told the gathering, "Faith-based institutions are the bedrock of American higher education, and we've not paid adequate attention to that role and to that responsibility."

The convening did not produce public policy recommendations, instead focusing on the uniqueness of faith-based education and the importance of sharing ideas.

"Gathering together is magic," Mitchell said. "Nothing else ever tried has replaced that thing. Nothing."

Citing surveys that indicate that the people most likely to attend church services have received graduate degrees, keynote speaker Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University, said, "College is not antithetical to religion. In some ways, it actually accelerates religion, enhances religion."

He also cited atheist author Jonathan Rauch's statement that religion is "the load-bearing wall of American democracy."

Religion, he added, "helps kids do better in school. It gives them discipline and self-control. It gives them the structure they need to be successful."

During the panel discussion following the screening, Father Dowd said, "Notre Dame is a place where we educate the whole person, where both faith and reason are engaged, where matters of the heart as well as the life of the mind are very much valued."

Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University in New York, said of his students, "They can actually talk honestly about Israel. This has never happened to them. We bring out the passion and the purpose. And it's everywhere we go."

Michael Lindsay, president of the nondenominational Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, said what he's found that appeals to his students "is that we can be our full selves."

With a current enrollment of more than 13,000 undergraduates and graduate students, "Notre Dame is rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition. It implies a moral framework, but allows us to ask questions," Father Dowd told OSV News.

And that moral framework "doesn't close us off to the world. It opens us up to the world."