Reflections on Mission-Centered Hiring

Mission-Centered Hiring assists those responsible for hiring to consciously and deliberately consider Marquette's mission and its Catholic, Jesuit, and humanistic identity in the selection process. Mission-Centered Hiring brings together a variety of interpretations of the mission, mission values, and what it means to be a Catholic, Jesuit and humanistic university. With source materials and guidance, search committees and hiring supervisors can reflect, discuss, and discern those meanings for themselves, translate them into desirable qualities, and select the candidate who best mirrors them. It helps those who answer the questions: Who do we want to be? Who do we want those we invite into our community to be?

The simplicity of the foregoing statements belies the difficulty, enormity, and risk of the task that Central Administration wishes to highlight as critical to our future. Unless we integrate new hires into our identity, the future of Marquette could suffer from a lack of specificity about who we are. What is enclosed is the work of some dedicated Marquette employees who truly feel a calling to help the University find ways to hire those who will appreciate and enhance Marquette's identity and tradition, while preserving the freedoms of belief, inquiry, and expression so central to it. The program is a grass-roots effort, a labor of institutional love, the product of much input from many in the Marquette community, a program endorsed by both top administration and those who are hired.

This fall, campus conversations with a variety of directors expressed polarized views on the value of the mission in hiring. Some felt it should be considered only by choice; others believed that both its interpretation and consideration should be mandated. Desiring a common ground from which to proceed, we culled recommendations from focus groups and other Jesuit institutions where people are wrestling with the same issues. What followed is documentation about what works when people have focused on mission in their hiring. Great indebtedness goes to Gonzaga University for providing the general direction and program for the content of these pages.

During this time of examination and creation, we

• Confirmed that Marquette's mission is alive - and much larger than just the Office of University Mission and Identity.
  
  
• Confronted our own and others' fears, objections and concerns about its meaning and relevance.
  
  
• Realized the importance of inviting into the dialogue those members of the community who do not share the Catholic tradition but support its values.
  
  
• Became less tentative about the undertaking, more deliberate and focused.

We are more committed than ever to see this program implemented at Marquette University. Central Administration recognizes the importance of continually supporting and communicating our tradition and heritage. Mission-Centered Hiring is a way to keep our tradition alive by keeping the dialogue on-going - and to actively engage both new and long-time members of our community in it.