From President Robert Wild, S.J.

Inspired by our involvement with the Opus Prize , Marquette University is immersed in a yearlong dialogue entitled Human Dignity, Human Rights: A Call to Service in which we are reflecting on how we, as a university, can deepen our commitment to work for justice for people around the world. As a Catholic, Jesuit university, engaging the world in this way is not an option ­— it is a moral imperative.

There is a tendency to think of global engagement as separate and distinct from the university’s academic programs. We have a wonderful Service Learning Program that combines excellence in the classroom with compassion in the community. But other than that, what does our insistence on academic rigor really have to do with our call to serve? Quite a bit, in fact.

I am reminded of the words of Ignacio Ellacuría, the late Jesuit who served as president of the University of Central America in El Salvador. Seven years before he was murdered (along with five of his Jesuit brothers and two women) for speaking out for the rights of the poor, Father Ellacuría delivered the 1982 Commencement address at Santa Clara University. In part, he said:

A Christian university must take into account the Gospel preference for the poor. This does not mean that only the poor will study at the university; it does not mean that the university should abdicate its mission of academic excellence — excellence which is needed in order to solve complex social issues of our time. What it does mean is that the university should be present intellectually where it is needed: to provide science for those without science; to provide skills for those without skills; to be a voice for those without voices; to give intellectual support for those who do not possess the academic qualifications to make their rights legitimate.

Marquette is not and never will be a social service agency — we are a university. Yet as such we can through some of our academic programs make a more direct and immediate contribution toward solving some of the more challenging problems in our world. And this we are doing. We are, for example, providing further education to nurses in Kenya who work with HIV/AIDS patients, enabling them in turn to train local health care workers to bring improved modes of treatment to a continent devastated by this disease. Or, to take another example, our program in civil engineering offers students an opportunity to work with local people in Central American countries, helping them to build bridges, obtain better sources of drinking water and otherwise to improve the infrastructure of their communities. Our students volunteer all over the world; in fact, 90 percent of our students engage in some form of community service before graduation.

Closer to home, our students actively work to make our Milwaukee community a better place, whether it is in bringing lunch to the homeless each day, in offering dental services here in Milwaukee and in rural communities around the state to people who couldn’t otherwise afford dental care, or in working with Habitat for Humanity to build homes. Faculty and staff too are deeply involved in urban renewal efforts, in offering increased training and opportunities for minority students in government service and commercial real estate, and in providing legal assistance to those without resources.

What these and other similar initiatives affirm is that academic excellence and service not only can go together but actually combine quite dynamically with outcomes that can change peoples’ lives in extraordinary ways. And that’s why we strive to combine them every chance we get.