About Heartland-Delta

A Brief History

Up to the end of the Second World War, Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States were much smaller than they are today and many of the faculty and administration were themselves Jesuits. A quarter century later, the scene had changed dramatically. The schools were much larger and served many more students, Jesuits constituted a minority of the faculty and administration, and there was much less of a sense that these 28 institutions were part of a whole, sharing a common identity and purpose.

By the late seventies, steps were initiated to restore a sense of commonality among these schools as a nationwide learning community. The first full-scale meeting, "Assembly '89," drew representatives from throughout the American Jesuit landscape to Georgetown University, the eldest of the 28, on its 200th birthday. Renewed with a sense that Jesuit higher education in the United States was a whole greater than the sum of its parts, those in attendance at "Assembly '89" planned regional follow-up meetings.

In 1994, nine Midwest schools assembled at Loyola University Chicago for "Jesuit Higher Education in the Heartland," Heartland I. Three years later, Saint Louis University hosted Heartland II, as the list grew to eleven institutions and expanded beyond the Midwest.

When the next meeting was hosted at Creighton University in Omaha in 2000, a dozen colleges and universities gathered and the name was changed to Heartland-Delta III to reflect the growing presence of schools in the South and in Belize.

Now in its 10th anniversary year, the Heartland-Delta gathering has become an essential venue for dialogue and learning about Jesuit education, collaboration and Ignatian spirituality. With a continuing emphasis on welcoming new participants, the planners and sponsors of the conference eagerly look forward to our next meeting — Heartland-Delta IV at Marquette!