Where mission meets the life of the University
Within Duquesne University's Office of Mission Animation, the Center for Catholic Faith and Culture (CCFC) creates space for faculty to engage Duquesne's Catholic and Spiritan tradition, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and larger questions of faith, culture, education, and public life.
The Center seeks to cultivate an atmosphere of intellectual hospitality: a place where faculty across disciplines and traditions can bring serious questions, encounter perspectives beyond their own, and explore how Duquesne's mission can illuminate the work of teaching, scholarship, professional practice, and academic life.
What difference can mission make?
What might Duquesne's Catholic and Spiritan tradition illuminate about the work already being done across the University?
The Center helps faculty explore connections between mission and the concrete work of teaching, scholarship, professional practice, and academic life. That can mean asking how our disciplines contribute to the common good; how our classrooms and departments cultivate authentic relationships and respect for human dignity; how our work accompanies communities, especially where need is greatest; or how intellectual life can remain open to questions of vocation, purpose, possibility, and the Spirit.
These questions are not confined to theology or religious scholarship. They arise wherever faculty ask what their work is for, whom it serves, what kinds of relationships it creates, and what a distinctively Catholic and Spiritan university might contribute to the wider world.
What we do
Through faculty gatherings, interdisciplinary inquiry, grants, lectures and cultural events, and support for teaching and scholarship, the Center brings Duquesne's Catholic and Spiritan mission and the Catholic intellectual tradition into the shared intellectual life of the University.
The Center's work is developing around several overlapping areas:
- Faculty formation and conversation — creating hospitable spaces for faculty to reflect together on teaching, scholarship, vocation, and Duquesne's Catholic and Spiritan mission.
- Spiritan pedagogy — in partnership with the Center for Teaching Excellence, exploring what the Spiritan tradition can contribute to the practice of teaching, the formation of authentic relationships, and the intellectual life of the University.
- Teaching and scholarship — supporting faculty as they explore connections among their disciplines and professional work, the common good, human dignity, faith, culture, and the Catholic intellectual tradition.
- Grants and research support — supporting scholarship and inquiry that give concrete expression to Duquesne's mission through teaching, research, service, and professional practice.
- Lectures, cultural events, and interdisciplinary programs — convening conversations that bring Catholic and Spiritan resources into dialogue with substantive intellectual, cultural, and public questions.
Work with the Center
The Center's work develops in conversation with faculty across the University. It aims to create opportunities for listening, inquiry, connection, and shared discernment about the questions that emerge from academic life.
Faculty are invited to bring questions, ideas, projects, or areas of interest to the Center, whether that means exploring a connection between mission and a particular discipline, developing a program or conversation, seeking support for teaching or scholarship, or simply beginning a discussion.